Number of hate groups has shot up 30 percent over the last 4 years, says Southern Poverty Law Center – By Deepa Bharath (Orange County Register) / Feb 20 2019
A screenshot of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hate Map, which tracks hate groups across the United States. In 2018, the SPLC counted 83 hate groups in California. (Screenshot via SPLC)
The number of hate groups in the United States, particularly white nationalist groups, rose in 2018 for the fourth consecutive year, according to a report released Wednesday Feb. 20 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based civil rights watchdog group.
The center’s Hate Map shows 1020 documented hate groups in the United States in 2018, the highest in two decades. Hate groups increased 7 percent between 2017 and 2018, and have shot up 30 percent in just the last four years.
White nationalist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi and racist skinhead groups, saw the biggest increase at 50 percent. Also notable was a 13 percent increase in black nationalist groups.
The center’s hate map counts 83 hate groups in California, the most populous state in the union, including several in Southern California.
Unabated rise
The Southern Poverty Law Center defines a hate group as “an organization that — based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities — has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.”
The unabated rise in hate groups year after year is worrisome, said Heidi Beirich, director of the center’s Intelligence Project, who oversees the report.
“What we’re seeing is an enlivened hate movement,” she said.
The growing number of hate groups takes place amid an increase in hate crimes for the fifth consecutive year, according to a recent FBI report.
The Anti-Defamation League reported last month that there were 50 domestic extremist killings on U.S. soil in 2018 of which an overwhelming 98 percent were perpetrated by individuals involved in far-right movements, particularly white supremacy.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has been critical of President Donald Trump. Beirich says Trump not just “a polarizing figure, but a radicalizing one.”
“Rather than trying to tamp down hate, as presidents of both parties have done, President Trump elevates it — with both his rhetoric and his policies,” she said. “In doing so, he’s given people across America the go-ahead to act on their worst instincts.”
Targeting hate speech
The center has vocal and passionate opponents who call its labeling of hate groups heavy-handed.
Anti-immigrant and anti-LGBT groups, in particular, have spoken out that they feel targeted by the center for their personal or religious beliefs. The center has also been called a leftist group that targets conservative groups.
Beirich said the center is not targeting conservative groups.
Rather, she said, they are specifically targeting hate speech that demonizes entire groups of people — whether it’s calling immigrants “dirty” or “diseased,” or equating gay men with pedophiles.
Last year, the center’s president Richard Cohen issued a public apology and the organization paid $3.4 million to settle a lawsuit brought by British political activist Maajid Nawaz for including him on their anti-Muslim extremist list in 2016.
Nawaz, a former Islamist extremist, is criticized by Muslims for demanding reforms within Islam. But even his critics were befuddled by his inclusion on the list.
Beirich said the center has learned from its past mistakes.
“What we’ve tried to do is be extra careful that what we’re saying is correct,” she said.
Beirich pointed out that 2018 also saw an increase in black nationalist groups by 13 percent compared to the previous year.
These are organizations that tend to be anti-white, anti-Semitic, anti-LGBT. But, unlike white nationalist groups, these organizations are “extremely fringe and have no power,” Beirich said.
“They are a reaction to white supremacy and oppression and that’s a different dynamic,” she said. “These groups are using the current political climate to tell black people: ‘This country doesn’t care about you and we’ll protect your civil rights.’”
Anti-white hate crimes are also on the rise in the nation’s largest cities, said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism in Cal State San Bernardino.
“The rise of black nationalism can be attributed to resistance-oriented groups and a fragmented socio-political landscape,” he said.
The African-American community’s frustration with police and criminal justice reforms and the ascendance of white nationalism have also fueled the rise of black nationalism in the United States, Levin said.
However, he agreed with Beirich that these groups are nowhere near as violent or powerful as white nationalist groups.
Since Charlottesville
Both white and black nationalist groups preach anti-Semitism, which has been consistently on the rise since the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally when white nationalists marched carrying tiki torches on the University of Virginia’s campus chanting: “Jews will not replace us.”
The Internet is where most hate groups influence people and recruit, Beirich said. Dylann Roof, who killed nine churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, and Robert Bowers,who killed 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue in October, were influenced by online white supremacist propaganda.
“Hate groups in the physical space are used as a means to suck people into their world view and push propaganda,” Beirich said. “The Internet, on the other hand, is exposing people to propaganda in a way people weren’t able to access before.”
