SPLC says decreasing numbers of hate groups doesn’t mean there’s less hate
21st March 2022 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
Fifteen organizations in Louisiana were among the 1,221 hate and anti-government extremist groups found to be active in the United States in 2021, according to an annual report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
While that number represents a decrease in the number of officially designated hate organizations in the country, SPLC representatives say the drop has resulted from many of the groups’ bigoted and potentially violent beliefs going mainstream and found acceptance in the overall sociopolitical discourse in America.
SPLC Intelligence Project Director Susan Corke said that hate organizations “are operating more openly in the mainstream,” with numerous leaders who hold hate or anti-government beliefs running for office at every level of government, or becoming law enforcement officers and even judge, positions from which they can leverage coverage on social media to disseminate their extremist, far-right beliefs.
Corke said the SPLC report shows “a continuum from the mainstream to empowered hard-right movement that’s undermining our democracy.” She added that far-right activists seek to tear Americans apart on lines of identity.
“That is actually a political strategy,” she said, “to divide communities around issues of race, gender, inclusive education [and] vaccines.”
Such activities “have real world consequences,” Corke said, like voter suppression targeting people of color, virulent hostility and outright violence against LGBTQ people, and deadly terrorist attacks and mass shootings.
“Democracy is under threat,” she said, “and this is an alarm bell. Protecting democracy will require pushing back against the hard right.”
Cassie Miller, a senior research analyst at the SPLC, said the drop in the number of hate groups is deceptive in terms of gauging the level of hate beliefs or anti-government extremism in the U.S. While the raw statistics are decreasing, the influence of hate groups and their philosophical adherents is rising in profile and overall influence.
“What we’re seeing is actually the opposite [of decreasing power],” she said. “We’re seeing that extremist groups are declining because the ideas that mobilize them now operate so openly in the political mainstream.
“Far-right organizing doesn’t need to take place in hate groups when those extremist ideas are already part of the larger political conversation, when there are so many places online across so many different platforms where extremists can organize, propagandize and recruit without ever having to join a formal group.”
Miller said the far right has become frighteningly powerful in the Republican Party and threatens to fully take control of the GOP and further infiltrate America’s halls of power. Mixed in are the millions of Americans who retain fierce loyalty to former President Donald Trump and cling to baseless allegations and disproved conspiracy theories about the so-called “stealing” of the 2020 election. Also of influence are right-wing policy “think tanks” and conservative media figures like Tucker Carlson.
Underpinning such beliefs and movements is the idea that white Americans, who traditionally have maintained an often-malevolent, bigoted grip on U.S. society and politics, are being “replaced” by less deserving and “un-American” minorities, whose voting rights are gradually being taken away by empowered proponents of race-driven extremism and paranoia.
Also being affected by the virulence of racist, nonsense “replacement” theories is the restricting of educational curricula and classroom discussion of the extensive, lingering effect of race on American society and government.
“The Great Replacement is the central narrative driving the white nationalist movement,” Miller said, “and now it has moved beyond the pages of terrorist manifestos, and it’s being repeated and given legitimacy by people with power and influence. When we combine that with the hard-right effort to silence conversations about racism in our schools and other public places.
“What you create is an atmosphere where anti-Black, anti-immigrant ethnonationalist policies can really take root,” she added.
Miller added that the SPLC has seen a related rise in hateful, reactionary anti-LGBTQ activity, especially negative actions toward the trans community. The SPLC identified 65 such groups being identified in 2021, mostly at the state level, a movement that has resulted in state legislation banning LGBTQ-positive curricula and denying and effectively criminalizing gender-affirming care. Miller said such policies have actively harmed LGBTQ citizens, especially youth, and encouraged violence against the trans community in particular.
Also of particular concern to the SPLC is the surging popularity, prevalence and impact of anti-government extremism and the proliferation and legitimization of baseless conspiracy theories, trends that culminated most publicly on Jan. 6, 2021, when hundreds of far-fight insurrectionists overran the U.S. Capitol Building in a violent, deadly effort to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election.
Rachel Carroll Rivas, a lead senior policy analyst at the SPLC, said the swell in anti-government extremism has been augmented and magnified by the rapid spread of Q-Anon theories, anti-vaccine conspiracies, anti-immigrant vigilantism at the southern border, anti-Semitism, gun-rights fervor and absolutism, and other forces that become entwined with overall governmental distrust.
Rivas said the 2021 SPLC report identified 488 anti-government extremist groups, including 92 militia groups, 75 sovereign citizens groups and 52 conspiracy propagandists groups.
Rivas said a crackdown on anti-government activity, including the violence of Jan. 6, has resulted in more legal action and criminal charges against insurrectionists, which hopefully is a sign that the larger community is willing to stop such extremism.
“The future of the militia movement in particular will be determined by how communities hold these groups accountable going forward,” she said.
Locally, the SPLC reported 15 hate and extremist groups operating in Louisiana in 2021. Included in that figure are two chapters of anti-Muslim group ACT for America; two chapters of Faith Baptist Church, an anti-LGBTQ Christian identity group; the neo-Confederate League of the South; the white nationalist group Patriot Front; and the Ruth Institute, a Lake Charles-based anti-LGBTQ Catholic organization.
U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, the state Congressional delegation’s sole Democratic member and its only person of color, told The Louisiana Weekly that the new SPLC report reflects the continuing need to stay vigilant against the spread of extremism.
“This report demonstrates an extremely worrying trend of flagrant, unabashed hate across our country,” Carter said. “Normalizing hate, extremism or conspiracy theories creates an unacceptable reality. We must act to prevent that from happening. I stand ready in Congress to fight for anti-hate legislation and to face the rising challenges disinformation presents.”
Also included on the Louisiana list are several organizations identified by SPLC as Black nationalist and separatists organizations like Great Millstone, the Nation of Islam, the New Black Panther Party, and multiple Black Israelite churches.
The discussion was moderated by SPLC Chief of Staff and Culture Lecia Brooks and included a panel discussion about community resilience to hate and extremism featuring SPLC Chief Program Officer Ann Beeson and representatives from two community activism organizations: Aneelah Afzali of MAPS-AMEN and Ki Harris of the Freedom Project Network.
“It is more important than ever to lift up the voices of unity and resilience in our communities,” Beeson said. “This year in our report we’re highlighting specific ways that Americans are changing lives and overcoming hate through action.”
The March 9 roundtable also featured a Q&A session and a discussion between U.S. Rep. Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi and SPLC President and CEO Margaret Huang regarding hate and extremism in America, as well as a conversation between SPLC Chief Policy Director LaShawn Warren and U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland about the way legislation and policy can be employed to address hate and extremism.
Much of the conversation between Huang and Thompson centered on the prevalence of hate crimes and the gradual process of finally actually labeling as hate crimes those acts of violence based on race, ethnicity, religion or other cultural differences.
As an Asian-American, Huang noted the sociocultural impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Asian community in America, pointing out the sharp rise in violence and hate crimes against people of Asian descent by some Americans who unfairly blame all Asians for the pandemic. She said the passage last year of the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, of which Thompson was a Congressional sponsor, reflects a growing awareness that such anti-Asian is all too common.
Huang echoed the thoughts of Afzali regarding the importance of coalition-building across different communities of color, including, in this case, the traditional partnership between the Asian-American and African-Americans communities.
“I’ve learned a lot about the history of collaboration and solidarity between Asian Americans and African Americans in this country that goes back decades,” Huang said. “It’s something I didn’t fully know until these stories [of anti-Asian hate crimes] started coming out and before we started talking together about how we have to come together to fight these crimes.”
The SPLC report defines hate and extremist groups as organizations that “vilify others based on such immutable characteristics as race, religion and gender identity.”
The report states that “the anti-government movement believe[s] that the federal government is tyrannical, and traffic in conspiracy theories that often malign the same marginalized communities that hate groups target.”
The report asserts that such groups “often overlap and work alongside one another. Over the past year, they have converged around a willingness to engage in political violence, either inflict or accept harm, and deny legally established rights to historically oppressed groups of people.”
The SPLC document and Center officials and researchers stress that such activity and beliefs strike at the very heart of American values of democracy and equality.
This article originally published in the March 21, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
