ARYAN NATIONS DEFLATES ‘SOVEREIGNS’ IN MONTANA

The number of hate and antigovernment ‘Patriot’ groups grew
last year, and terrorist attacks and radical plots proliferated
BY MARK POTOK ILLUSTRATION BY ALEX WILLIAMSON
Charleston. Chattanooga. Colorado
Springs. In these towns and dozens of
other communities around the nation,
2015 was a year marked by extraordinary
violence from domestic extremists
— a year of living dangerously.
Antigovernment militiamen, white
supremacists, abortion foes, domestic
Islamist radicals, neo-Nazis and
lovers of the Confederate battle flag targeted
police, government officials, black
churchgoers, Muslims, Jews, schoolchildren,
Marines, abortion providers, members
of the Black Lives Matter protest
movement, and even drug dealers.
They laid plans to attack courthouses,
banks, festivals, funerals, schools,
mosques, churches, synagogues, clinics,
water treatment plants and power grids.
They used firearms, bombs, C-4 plastic
explosives, knives and grenades; one of
them, a murderous Klansman, was convicted
of trying to build a death ray.
The armed violence was accompanied
by rabid and often racist denunciations
of Muslims, LGBT activists and others —
incendiary rhetoric led by a number of
mainstream political figures and amplified
by a lowing herd of their enablers in
the right-wing media. Reacting to demographic
changes in the U.S., immigration,
the legalization of same-sex marriage, the
rise of the Black Lives Matter movement,
and Islamist atrocities, these people fostered
a sense of polarization and anger
in this country that may be unmatched
since the political upheavals of 1968.
When it comes to mainstream politics,
the hardcore radical right typically
says a pox on both their houses. Not
this time. Donald Trump’s demonizing
statements about Latinos and Muslims
have electrified the radical right, leading
to glowing endorsements from white
nationalist leaders such as Jared Taylor
and former Klansman David Duke.
White supremacist forums are awash
with electoral joy, having dubbed Trump
their “Glorious Leader.” And Trump has
repaid the compliments, retweeting hate
posts and spreading their false statistics
on black-on-white crime.
In the midst of these developments,
hate groups continued to flourish. The
number of groups on the American radical
right, according to the latest count
by the Southern Poverty Law Center,
expanded from 784 in 2014 to 892 in 2015
— a 14% increase.
The increase in hate groups was not
even across extremist sectors. The hardest
core sectors of the white supremacist
movement—white nationalists,
neo-Nazis and racist skinheads—actually
declined somewhat, a reflection,
perhaps, that hate in the mainstream had
absorbed some of the hate on the fringes
But there were significant increases in
Klan as well as black separatist groups.
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