(MintPress) – Hate groups are on the rise in the United States topping at one thousand for the first time since the 1980s when the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) began documenting hate groups.
Recent events capturing media attention highlight this disturbing trend. A shooting spree that left three African-Americans dead in Oklahoma; the murder of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida; and Iraqi immigrant Shaima Alawadi, who was beaten to death with a tire iron inside her California home. These incidents reveal the sad reality that all is not well in a country founded on the belief that all are created equal, and endowed with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The SPLC report details the growth of hate groups to a record 1,018 in 2011, up from 1,002 the year before and the latest in a series of increases going back more than a decade.
Mark Potok, editor of the SPLC’s quarterly investigative journal Intelligence Report said, “For many extremists, President Obama is the new symbol of all that’s wrong with the country – the Kenyan president, the secret Muslim who is causing our country’s decline. The election season’s overheated political rhetoric is adding fuel to the fire. The more polarized the political scene, the more people at the extremes.”
Potok told Mint Press that the rise in hate groups is being fueled by two primary factors. Many Americans have become enraged by what they see as America’s decline, and opportunistic politicians have done their best to stoke those fears and demonize President Obama in the process. For some, the prospect of four more years under the country’s first black president also is an infuriating reminder that non-Hispanic whites will lose their majority in this country by 2050.
This “perfect storm” of factors is what Potok says are driving these groups.
“Second Coming” for Patriot Groups
The report also detailed that the most dramatic growth in the radical right came from the antigovernment Patriot movement, which is composed of armed militias and other conspiracy-minded organizations that see the federal government as their primary enemy.
These groups saw their numbers skyrocket for the third straight year in 2011, this time by 55 percent – from 824 in 2010 to 1,274 groups last year.
In 2008, just before the Patriot movement took off, there were 149 Patriot groups, a number that metastasized to 512 in 2009.
In all, Patriot groups have increased by 755 percent during the first three years of the Obama administration. Their number has now surpassed – by more than 400 groups – the previous all-time high set in 1996, when the first wave of the militia movement peaked shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing that left 168 people dead.
Potok describes this era as the “second coming” of the Patriot movement.
Evidence of this disturbing trend has also been widely documented in media reports. Many mainstream politicians have promoted ideologies and conspiracy theories important to these groups, and have worked to weave this ideology into the political and legal fabric of the nation.
Consider the fact that in 2010 Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed S.B. 1070, the harshest state anti-immigrant law in the country, which opened the door for a number of other proposals for similar laws being debate currently.
State legislators, urged by various special interest groups across the nation have been introducing proposals that would roll back birthright citizenship, bar judges from considering Islamic law in state courtrooms, institute an alternative currency, and even allow a state to disregard federal laws and regulations.
And, the SPLC says that there “are growing signs that the extremist movement is already producing significant acts of terrorism,” citing an 11-day period in January of 2011, when a neo-Nazi was arrested as he headed for the Arizona border with a dozen homemade grenades; a terrorist bomb attack planned on a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Spokane, Wash. was averted when police dismantled a sophisticated bomb; Roger Stockham, a Vietnam War veteran and convert to Islam was arrested in a car filled with explosives outside a packed mosque in Dearborn, Mich. Officials said had he a long history of antigovernment activities
And that’s also in the same time period that US Rep. Gabrielle Giffords narrowly survived an attempted assassination in Arizona. The attack left six dead, and while the assailant appeared to be severely mentally ill, he also seemed to have absorbed certain ideas from the radical right, including the notion that the federal government is evil.
“We are in a very dangerous spot,” Potok said, “and it has to do with the fact that we are generally becoming a multi-racial democracy for the first time in history.”
Potok believes that we are living through a “historic backlash” and we have gone through other such backlashes as slaves were freed after the Civil War, women won the right to vote in 1920 and at other points of societal change in America.
“Like other backlashes, this too shall pass,” said Potok. “Ultimately things will get better,” he acknowledged, pointing to studies which indicate that in each new generation, young people become more open to ideas of tolerance and multiculturalism. In one recent study Potok cited, 95 percent of people under the age of 28 were open to interracial dating and marriage.
A Case for Peace and Nonviolence
Jared Loggins, Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Scholar and Political Science major at Morehouse College writes, “As we all continue to further develop our understanding of what it means to live in a truly peaceful and nonviolent world, we must do so even amidst a culture of racism, militarism and materialism. As costly wars rage around us; as weaponless young black men are killed for appearing ‘suspicious,’ and even as society continues to drown in material wealth, we must still find a way to move toward living in what Dr. King called ‘the beloved community.’ This community must be one that embodies multiculturalism; it must look beyond the hue of one’s skin; and it must cease accepting laws that directly conflict with the foundation of America.”
Loggins says that what prevents society from being truly peaceful and just is that “nonviolence has not been accurately contextualized to fit the 21st century. Nonviolence is so much more than marching, sit-ins, and picket rallies. Nonviolence is an attitude. It is through our actions that we will ever see justice through nonviolence. However, in order to see justice through nonviolence, it is important to not mistake justice with vengeance.”
A Murder Never Forgotten
June 2011, James Craig Anderson, a 49-year-old Afrtican American auto plant worker, who was murdered in Jackson, Mississippi in June, was was standing in a parking lot, near his car, when he was approached by three white teenage boys. The teens beat Anderson repeatedly, yelling racial epithets, including “White Power!” according to witnesses.
The teens next got into their Ford F250 pickup truck, floored the gas, and ran over Anderson, killing him instantly.
The three plead guilty to the crime.
Loggins says that what’s remarkable about the story is that Anderson’s sister, Barbara Anderson Young asked the district attorney not to seek the death penalty in the case, believing that the crime was “diametrically opposed to their Christian beliefs; and they believed killing these men would not aid in moving closer toward racial reconciliation in Mississippi and across the country. The outcome of this case is important as we continue to inch toward a nonviolent society,” Loggins urges, “We must all come to terms with the fact that hate and reciprocal violence will not bring us together, it will continue to divide us.