True Texas Project labeled as extremist, anti-government group

The Tarrant County-based conservative group True Texas Project has been added to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s national list of extremist groups, categorized as a general anti-government organization. True Texas Project was founded more than a decade ago as the NE Tarrant Tea Party and then rebranded with its current name in 2019. According to its website, the organization believes in “Constitutional government, national sovereignty, fiscal responsibility, personal responsibility, and rule of law,” and promotes “citizen engagement in all levels of government.” The Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual report — dubbed “The Year in Hate & Extremism” — includes a list of 733 active hate groups and 488 active anti-government groups across the country.

Both of those categories decreased in number in 2021, compared with 2020. The nonprofit center based in Alabama monitors and publicizes these organizations’ activities. The hate group list includes organizations that advance racist, anti-semitic and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, among other things; that category includes the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi groups and white nationalists. The anti-government list includes citizen militias and conspiracy propagandist groups; that category includes the Three Percenters and Oath Keepers. True Texas Project was added to the second category, anti-government groups, although it was labeled as a “general” anti-government group as opposed to a militia or conspiracy propagandist group. Freddy Cruz, a research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said anti-government groups “tend to vilify the federal government as working to undermine the interests of Americans” and often use talking points that are not based on fact or reality. He added that, unlike hate groups, anti-government groups are not necessarily racist or discriminatory.