By Sarah Jones
There are at least 1,020 hate groups now active in the U.S., the Southern Poverty Law Center announced on Wednesday. The civil-rights group, which has tracked extremist activity since the 1980s, says it’s documented a 30 percent increase in hate-group activity over the last four years ...
... white extremists engaged directly in promoting nativism and myths about racial superiority make up the bulk of activity ... SPLC researchers documented 112 active neo-Nazi groups, 148 white nationalist groups, and 63 racist skinhead groups, in addition to 36 neo-Confederate organizations. Though some white supremacists have become disillusioned with Trump over his unrealized border wall, the SPLC argues that the president’s vitriolic anti-immigrant rhetoric and soft-pedaling of white supremacist violence have emboldened hate groups ...
... members of the far-right have been responsible for an escalating number of high-profile violent incidents over the last several years. It’s also true that Trump, and some of his surrogates in the conservative press, have helped mainstream certain white nationalist myths. Both Trump and Fox’s Tucker Carlson briefly became fixated on the alleged persecution of white South African farmers, though there’s no evidence of a white genocide unfolding in South Africa or anywhere else, and Trump frequently amplifies myths about the disproportionate criminality of immigrants. Since Trump took office, white nationalists have beaten left-wing activists and murdered one protester; one of his supporters, Cesar Sayoc, is on trial for a failed domestic bombing campaign. In November, authorities arrested a white nationalist in Washington, D.C., on firearms charges; the man, Jeffrey Clark, owned body armor and hollow-point ammunition and had called Sayoc’s campaign “a dry run” on a social media account.
... Hours after the SPLC released its report, Seamus Hughes of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism broke the news that a lieutenant in the U.S. Coast Guard will go on trial for domestic terrorism charges. The lieutenant, Christopher Hasson, identified as a white supremacist, possessed around 1,000 rounds of ammunition, and created a hit list of liberal politicians and media figures ranging from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes ...
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/hate-group-activity-is-rising-civil-rights-group-says.html
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