Imagine a cynicism so deep that a group creates the conflict they purport to fight — and you have the case the U.S. Department of Justice laid out against the Southern Poverty Law Center Tuesday.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters that the DOJ indicted the SPLC on 11 counts of fraud and money laundering for paying white supremacist groups to foment racial hatred. In the past decade, the SPLC paid out at least $3 million to eight members of such groups as the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America, Aryan Nations, the Nationalist Socialist Party of American Nazis and the Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club.

Over an eight-year period, the leader of the 2017 Unite the Right rally collected about $270,000.

Blanche slammed the SPLC for its depraved behavior in taking money from well-meaning supporters to fight racism — only to turn around and use it for exactly the opposite purpose.

“The SPLC is a nonprofit entity that purports to fight white supremacy and racial hatred by reporting on extremist groups and conducting research to inform law enforcement groups, with the goal of dismantling these groups,” Blanche said.

“As the indictment describes, the SPLC was not dismantling these groups,” he added. “It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”

FBI Director Kash Patel also denounced the fraudulent scheme, calling it a “widespread, decade-long multi-million-dollar fraud.”

The supposed civil rights watchdog group “fraudulently raised money by lying to their donor network, thousands of Americans, to go ahead and actually pay the leadership of these supposed violent extremist groups,” Patel said.

The SPLC is presumed innocent until proven guilty — so now it’s up to the courts to decide the case.