FORT WORTH
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.
Cruz said that True Texas Project is “one of the more clear-cut groups” in the anti-government category, because the organization has aligned itself with already-known extremists.
For instance, the True Texas Project has hosted numerous events in coordination with Shelley Luther, a Dallas salon owner who opened her business in defiance of pandemic-related shutdowns. Luther has publicly spoken positively of the Oath Keepers, tweeting in 2020 that the militia group does “an amazing job protecting my salon!”
Cruz said anti-government groups in general tend to push unfounded views on controversial topics, sometimes with perspectives so extreme they amount to conspiracy theories.
“It’s just a lot of fabricated talking points that don’t necessarily have any evidence to back them up,” Cruz said. “It is quite dangerous, because it does pull in a large number of people who maybe don’t have a whole bunch of knowledge in specific areas regarding some of the more hot-button policies.”
Julie McCarty, the CEO of True Texas Project, didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story.
Nationwide, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s report, the number of hate groups and anti-government groups declined in 2021, but the groups that are active have grown more vocal in recent years.
The “decrease isn’t a sign of far-right extremists being vanquished or diminished,” the report says. “Instead, they are emboldened to the point that what used to be said in a hushed whisper or through a dog whistle is now emblazoned on T-shirts and blared through loudspeakers.”
The group’s social media feed includes posts that dispute the safety and necessity of the COVID-19 vaccines and posts that classify health care for transgender youth as “child abuse.” The Star-Telegram has previously reported on True Texas Project members, including when Julie McCarty’s husband, Fred McCarty, posted on social media about the “replacement theory” in 2019. In April 2021, a man involved in the group shouted “white power” at an Asian candidate for Colleyville City Council.
True Texas Project is involved in elections across Tarrant County and Texas and has consistently endorsed right-wing candidates over mainstream Republican candidates. In the county’s March primary elections, the organization supported Tim O’Hare, the right-wing candidate for the county’s top elected seat. O’Hare handedly won the Republican primary for the county judge seat, beating out establishment candidate Betsy Price. (O’Hare will face Democratic nominee Deborah Peoples in the general election.)
While the group is based in Tarrant County — Julie and Fred McCarty live in Grapevine — it is working to expand across the state, according to its website and social media posts.
True Texas Project is not the only local group named in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s lists..
Patriot Front, which the report classifies as a white nationalist hate group, was founded by Thomas Rousseau. ProPublica identified Rousseau as a Grapevine resident, and the Southern Poverty Law Center identified him as a former student at Coppell High School. Rousseau founded the group after he helped lead the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group that’s been in the news over the past year for its involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, was also founded by a North Texas man. Stewart Rhodes, of Granbury, is credited as the founder of the group, which is headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada. Rhodes was arrested and charged with seditious conspiracy this year for his involvement in the riot. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the Oath Keepers as both an anti-government militia group and a general anti-government group.
Other local organizations that were included in this year’s extremism list are:
- Silver Bear Cafe, based in Garland and classified as a conspiracy propagandist anti-government group.
- Israel United in Christ, which has many chapters including one in White Settlement, categorized as a general hate group.
- Nation of Islam, which has many chapters including one in Dallas and one in Fort Worth, classified as an anti-semitic hate group.
- Stedfast Baptist Church, based in Hurst and classified as an anti-LGBTQ hate group. The Star-Telegram reported in February that the church was facing eviction after its pastor called for the killing of LGBTQ people; the pastor later responded that “the death penalty is sanctioned toward homosexuality” in Biblical teachings.
A number of groups categorized as hate or anti-government are also active in the Dallas area, including a chapter of the Proud Boys, a chapter of Sicarrii 1715 and the religious organization Probe Ministries in Plano, among others.
