Quote
By Mark Potok
The radical right caught fire last year, as broad-based populist anger at political, demographic and economic changes in America ignited an explosion of new extremist groups and activism across the nation.
Hate groups stayed at record levels — almost 1,000 — despite the total collapse of the second largest neo-Nazi group in America. Furious anti-immigrant vigilante groups soared by nearly 80%, adding some 136 new groups during 2009. And, most remarkably of all, so-called "Patriot" groups — militias and other organizations that see the federal government as part of a plot to impose "one-world government" on liberty-loving Americans — came roaring back after years out of the limelight.
The anger seething across the American political landscape — over racial changes in the population, soaring public debt and the terrible economy, the bailouts of bankers and other elites, and an array of initiatives by the relatively liberal Obama Administration that are seen as "socialist" or even "fascist" — goes beyond the radical right. The "tea parties" and similar groups that have sprung up in recent months cannot fairly be considered extremist groups, but they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism.
"We are in the midst of one of the most significant right-wing populist rebellions in United States history," Chip Berlet, a veteran analyst of the American radical right, wrote earlier this year. "We see around us a series of overlapping social and political movements populated by people [who are] angry, resentful, and full of anxiety. They are raging against the machinery of the federal bureaucracy and liberal government programs and policies including health care, reform of immigration and labor laws, abortion, and gay marriage."
Sixty-one percent of Americans believe the country is in decline, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Just a quarter think the government can be trusted. And the anti-tax tea party movement is viewed in much more positive terms than either the Democratic or Republican parties, the poll found.
The signs of growing radicalization are everywhere. Armed men have come to Obama speeches bearing signs suggesting that the "tree of liberty" needs to be "watered" with "the blood of tyrants." The Conservative Political Action Conference held this February was co-sponsored by groups like the John Birch Society, which believes President Eisenhower was a Communist agent, and Oath Keepers, a Patriot outfit formed last year that suggests, in thinly veiled language, that the government has secret plans to declare martial law and intern patriotic Americans in concentration camps. Politicians pandering to the antigovernment right in 37 states have introduced "Tenth Amendment Resolutions," based on the constitutional provision keeping all powers not explicitly given to the federal government with the states. And, at the "A Well Regulated Militia" website, a recent discussion of how to build "clandestine safe houses" to stay clear of the federal government included a conversation about how mass murderers like Timothy McVeigh and Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph were supposedly betrayed at such houses.
Doing the Numbers
The number of hate groups in America has been going up for years, rising 54% between 2000 and 2008 and driven largely by an angry backlash against non-white immigration and, starting in the last year of that period, the economic meltdown and the climb to power of an African American president.
According to the latest annual count by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), these groups rose again slightly in 2009 — from 926 in 2008 to 932 last year — despite the demise of a key neo-Nazi group. The American National Socialist Workers Party, which had 35 chapters in 28 states, imploded shortly after the October 2008 arrest of founder Bill White for making threats against his enemies.
At the same time, the number of what the SPLC designates as "nativist extremist" groups — organizations that go beyond mere advocacy of restrictive immigration policy to actually confront or harass suspected immigrants — jumped from 173 groups in 2008 to 309 last year. Virtually all of these vigilante groups have appeared since the spring of 2005.
But the most dramatic story by far has been with the antigovernment Patriots.
The militias and the larger Patriot movement first came to Americans' attention in the mid-1990s, when they appeared as an angry reaction to what was seen as a tyrannical government bent on crushing all dissent. Sparked most dramatically by the death of 76 Branch Davidians during a 1993 law enforcement siege in Waco, Texas, those who joined the militias also railed against the Democratic Clinton Administration and initiatives like gun control and environmental regulation. Although the Patriot movement included people formerly associated with racially based hate groups, it was above all animated by a view of the federal government as the primary enemy, along with a fondness for antigovernment conspiracy theories. By early this decade, the groups had largely disappeared from public view.
But last year, as noted in the SPLC's August report, "The Second Wave: Return of the Militias," a dramatic resurgence in the Patriot movement and its paramilitary wing, the militias, began. Now, the latest SPLC count finds that an astonishing 363 new Patriot groups appeared in 2009, with the totals going from 149 groups (including 42 militias) to 512 (127 of them militias) — a 244% jump.
That is cause for grave concern. Individuals associated with the Patriot movement during its 1990s heyday produced an enormous amount of violence, most dramatically the Oklahoma City bombing that left 168 people dead.
Already there are signs of similar violence emanating from the radical right. Since the installation of Barack Obama, right-wing extremists have murdered six law enforcement officers. Racist skinheads and others have been arrested in alleged plots to assassinate the nation's first black president. One man from Brockton, Mass. — who told police he had learned on white supremacist websites that a genocide was under way against whites — is charged with murdering two black people and planning to kill as many Jews as possible on the day after Obama's inauguration. Most recently, a rash of individuals with antigovernment, survivalist or racist views have been arrested in a series of bomb cases.
As the movement has exploded, so has the reach of its ideas, aided and abetted by commentators and politicians in the ostensible mainstream. While in the 1990s, the movement got good reviews from a few lawmakers and talk-radio hosts, some of its central ideas today are being plugged by people with far larger audiences like FOX News' Glenn Beck and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn). Beck, for instance, re-popularized a key Patriot conspiracy theory — the charge that FEMA is secretly running concentration camps — before finally "debunking" it.
Last year also experienced levels of cross-pollination between different sectors of the radical right not seen in years. Nativist activists increasingly adopted the ideas of the Patriots; racist rants against Obama and others coursed through the Patriot movement; and conspiracy theories involving the government appeared in all kinds of right-wing venues. A good example is the upcoming Second Amendment March in Washington, D.C. The website promoting the march is topped by a picture of a colonial militiaman, and key supporters include Larry Pratt, a long-time militia enthusiast with connections to white supremacists, and Richard Mack, a conspiracy-mongering former sheriff associated with the Patriot group Oath Keepers.
What may be most noteworthy about the march, however, is its date — April 19. That is the date of the first shots fired at Lexington in the Revolutionary War. And it is also the anniversary of the fiery end of the government siege in Waco and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/spring/rage-on-the-right
Southern poverty law center. If I recall Lettow hated them. Also they've updated their map of hate groups in the US. I've got two in Cole county! Check your closest Klan or Nazis.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 04, 2010, 06:08:25 PM
Southern poverty law center. If I recall Lettow hated them. Also they've updated their map of hate groups in the US. I've got two in Cole county! Check your closest Klan or Nazis.
4 "hate groups" in Atlanta - 3 black separatist and 1 white nationalist.
The closest Nazis are up in Kennesaw, not far though.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 04, 2010, 06:08:25 PM
What may be most noteworthy about the march, however, is its date — April 19. That is the date of the first shots fired at Lexington in the Revolutionary War. And it is also the anniversary of the fiery end of the government siege in Waco and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
That is an interesting factoid.
I've got white nationalists and neo-nazis. I wonder if they'd let me join their clubs.
They have an extremely liberal view of what a hate group is.
I think they are exaggerating the problem.
Quote from: Jaron on March 04, 2010, 06:21:38 PM
They have an extremely liberal view of what a hate group is.
Of course they do. They're the SPLC. If racial tensions in the US recede, they'd be out of a job.
Both Ku Klux Klan and National Socialist Movement in the city of Detroit. The self loathing must be getting worse. :(
Quote from: garbon on March 04, 2010, 06:20:00 PM
I've got white nationalists and neo-nazis. I wonder if they'd let me join their clubs.
Did you catch them with GHB or Crystal Meth, or what? :lmfao:
Not that the need of informed consent really counts when fucking Neo-nazis. They are fair game. :sleep:
Quote from: Savonarola on March 04, 2010, 06:29:29 PM
Both Ku Klux Klan and National Socialist Movement in the city of Detroit. The self loathing must be getting worse. :(
It's time to bring in Delta City. :lol:
Quote from: Drakken on March 04, 2010, 06:29:49 PM
Did you catch them with GHB or Crystal Meth, or what? :lmfao:
Not that the need of informed consent really counts when fucking Neo-nazis. They are fair game. :sleep:
While I applaud your willful misreading as an interest in my sexuality, I'm not interested in joining your seduction community.
Quote from: garbon on March 04, 2010, 06:33:01 PM
Quote from: Drakken on March 04, 2010, 06:29:49 PM
Did you catch them with GHB or Crystal Meth, or what? :lmfao:
Not that the need of informed consent really counts when fucking Neo-nazis. They are fair game. :sleep:
While I applaud your willful misreading as an interest in my sexuality, I'm not interested in joining your seduction community.
But... we have free cookies. :(
I was just curious on how the hell you could actually have had neo-nazis and white supermacists and still be alive. Their hate is so strident. :blush:
L2Rthx
I wonder how many of those 136 new groups have, say, 10 or more members. My guess would be: not many.
Ohio: Derspiess book club
Quote from: Jaron on March 04, 2010, 06:52:59 PM
Ohio: Derspiess book club
Here, have some haterade.
the SPLC is ridiculous. Morris Dees needs to keep up the scare of an ever-impending supremacist revolution or he has no job.
I note they say America's biggest such group fell apart last year...wouldn't it then follow that the number of groups would rocket? Thats kinda what a big group falling apart usually involves....
Quote from: ulmont on March 04, 2010, 06:15:11 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 04, 2010, 06:08:25 PM
Southern poverty law center. If I recall Lettow hated them. Also they've updated their map of hate groups in the US. I've got two in Cole county! Check your closest Klan or Nazis.
4 "hate groups" in Atlanta - 3 black separatist and 1 white nationalist.
The closest Nazis are up in Kennesaw, not far though.
Black seperatist? :lol:
Quote from: Tyr on March 04, 2010, 07:10:55 PM
Black seperatist? :lol:
QuoteBlack separatists typically oppose integration and racial intermarriage, and they want separate institutions — or even a separate nation — for black people in America. Most contemporary forms of black separatism are strongly anti-white and anti-Semitic, and a number of religious versions assert that blacks — not Jews — are the Biblical "chosen people" of God.
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/ideology/black-separatist
Quote from: Lettow77 on March 04, 2010, 07:07:09 PM
the SPLC is ridiculous. Morris Dees needs to keep up the scare of an ever-impending supremacist revolution or he has no job.
Lettow has a point.
QuoteSmall Oregon town rallies against Aryan Nations
Posted: Feb 26, 2010 2:10 PM PST
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fkhq.images.worldnow.com%2Fimages%2F328281_G.jpg&hash=01e0177bef6bcae82cf1c2177a0c86b0816650ed)
(Grant County residents packed a community hall in Canyon City to
voice fears that a white supremacist from Idaho may go ahead with
his plan to move to nearby John Day. About 200 people were turned
away from the Canyon City community center on Friday because fire
laws limited attendance to 300)
CANYON CITY, Ore. - Residents in a small Oregon were out in force Friday doing everything they could to let the Aryan Nations know they're not welcome in John Day.
The controversy in the town of only 1,800 began last week when Paul Mullet, who claims to be the national director of the Aryan Nations, came to town looking to buy property to be used as a headquarters.
Mullet expressed interest in a an old junior high school as well as a vacant church and opera house. He said he needs the property for training, barracks and a national gatherings. Mullet claimed he would start a soup kitchen for the community.
Residents of the town rallied Friday in opposition of the Aryan Nations setting up shop in their town and want to make sure Mullet and his followers know they are not welcome.
Many businesses along the main street through John Day have put new signs in windows stating they have the right to refuse service to anyone. Others have go so far as to place signs reading "No Nazis" and "No Aryan Nations."
Residents say even the threat of the white supremacist group coming to town is hurting business; a motorcycle club that holds an annual rally in the town says they won't continue to do so if the Aryan Nations moves in.
At a community meeting held Friday morning, a team of experts involved in the civil rights case that brought down the Aryan Nations in Idaho encouraged residents to take a strong stand against the group.
Yay, I got the nation of islam nearest me.
In'shallah
mmm, only 32 hate groups in Alabama, slackers.
4 hate groups in Austin.
We got Neo-Confederates, Nation of Islam, Nazis, and a group that hates everthing.
:cool:
My county is free of hatred. We do have a Nation of Islam chapter in Louisville however. :bowler:
Around my neck, we're stuck with the Aryan Knights. In fact, they've adopted a local road. When I get some time to go over there, I'll run down and see if I can snap a pic of the Adopt-A-Road sign. :D
Quote from: Lettow77 on March 04, 2010, 07:07:09 PM
the SPLC is ridiculous. Morris Dees needs to keep up the scare of an ever-impending supremacist revolution or he has no job.
Says Mr."Crippling hatred of Yankeedom"
Quote from: Valmy on March 04, 2010, 08:45:03 PM
4 hate groups in Austin.
We got Neo-Confederates, Nation of Islam, Nazis, and a group that hates everthing.
:cool:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texe_Marrs Found your group that hates everything. Some kook church.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSkik6EUQUc
I'm somewhat disappointed. There are only a couple of Klan "branches," or whatever they are (United White Knights and National Knights), in San Antonio. :(