March 2, 2010
Dear Friend,

Today, we’re releasing our annual report on the number of active hate and extremist groups in our nation. The figures are alarming, and I’m deeply worried about what this means for our country.

This sign was photographed at a recent demonstration in Washington D.C.

We’ve documented a 244 percent increase in the number of conspiracy–minded, anti–government “Patriot” groups in a single year. Militias — the paramilitary arm of the “Patriot” movement — were a major part of the increase. Like other extremists, “Patriot” groups have been fueled by anger over immigration, the troubled economy and an array of initiatives by President Obama.

This extraordinary growth is cause for real concern. During its 1990s heyday, the “Patriot” movement produced an enormous amount of violence, most dramatically the Oklahoma City bombing that left 168 people dead.

Racist hate groups are at record levels — rising from 926 in 2008 to 932 in 2009. The increase caps a decade in which the number of neo–Nazi, racist skinhead and other hate groups surged by more than 50 percent. We’ve also seen a sharp increase in “nativist extremist” groups — vigilante organizations that actually confront or harass suspected immigrants.

These three strands of the radical right — the hate groups, the “nativist extremist” groups, and the “Patriot” organizations — are the most volatile elements on the American political landscape. Taken together, their numbers increased by more than 40 percent, rising from 1,248 groups to 1,753.

There are already signs of a resurgence of radical–right violence like the kind we witnessed in the 1990s. Right–wing extremists have murdered six law enforcement officers since Obama’s inauguration. Racist skinheads and others have been arrested in alleged plots to assassinate the president. Most recently, a number of individuals with antigovernment, survivalist or racist views have been arrested in a series of bomb cases. And, tragically, a man furious with the government crashed his plane into an IRS building.

With your help, we’ll continue to track and expose these groups’ activities and provide law enforcement with the information they need to keep our communities safe. Thank you, once again, for your commitment to stand with us as we fight the hate that threatens to divide us.

Sincerely,

Morris Dees    Founder, Southern Poverty Law Center

P.S. SPLC President Richard Cohen and Intelligence Project Director Mark Potok will host an interactive webcast and take your questions on this and other SPLC work on March 17th. We’ll contact you soon with details. Also, please visit our updated Hate Map to find out what groups are active in your state.

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   Mark Potok
In Haiti, tens of thousands of earthquake victims are dead, with at least one official estimating the number could reach half a million when the full, horrifying effects of Tuesday afternoon’s earthquake in the island nation are finally known.

In Arkansas, Billy Roper figured that made for a pretty amusing joke. So the former high school teacher and current head of the neo-Nazi White Revolution group today announced a food drive he called “Nutrition for Neutering.” “Yes,” Roper’s White Revolution website said, “you can get started on the ground floor with this charitable effort to provide one can of nonperishable food to each and every Haitian citizen affected by the earthquake who agrees to be sterilized.”

Roper’s charming post, featuring a photo of castration shears, goes on to say that if those citizens then go for nine months without producing children, he will send them a can opener. “Physical evidence of the castration process should be mailed by the applying food aid recipients to Barack Obama,” he adds.

For most Americans, the sight of the catastrophe in Haiti provoked an outpouring of sympathy and support for the victims. Early reports suggest that most structures in the island’s capital city of Port-au-Prince were damaged or destroyed. Men, women and children are wandering the streets with horrific injuries, and the cries of trapped victims still are emanating from underneath tons of rubble.

But Billy Roper and those with similar ideas — characters like the sterling defenders of the white race who populate the loathsome Stormfront.org, the world’s largest white supremacist Web forum — are not like most Americans.

Just have a listen to some of the voices on Stormfront:

•    ”Money showered on simians is wasted.” — “Karl von Muller”

•    ”F*ck Haiti. …. I’m fed [up] to the core with hearing of Haiti and how we must help these ‘poor’ abominations to [sic] humankind.” — “Iberian88”

•    ”Negroes left to their own devices turn everything into a pest hole.” — “Herr Leutnant”

•    ”Nature left to its own devices will clear itself of the blight.” — “AngelEyez”

And on the web page of the Council of Conservative Citizens — a group that has described black people as a “retrograde species of humanity” — a report on Haiti was illustrated with an engraving of a white man being hanged by blacks, presumably in Haiti.

Most of these comments are far beyond the pale of what most Americans, of any race, felt when they heard news of the Haitian tragedy. But it wasn’t only neo-Nazis who said ugly things. Some of the most astounding comments came from people in the ostensible mainstream — people like radio heavyweight Rush Limbaugh.

To Limbaugh, President Obama, in calling for Americans to open their hearts and their wallets to the plight of the Haitians, is interested in nothing but political gain. “This will play right into Obama’s hands,” Limbaugh said on his Wednesday radio show. “He’s humanitarian, compassionate. They’ll use this to burnish their, shall we say, ‘credibility’ with the black community ? in the both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country.” Anyway, Haiti “has been run by dictators and communists.” It produces “zilch, zero, nada.” And Obama is asking “people who have lost their jobs because of his policies to donate.”

Limbaugh: Obama will use Haiti to boost credibility with “light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country“

[ Find More Videos Here ]

“Besides,” the millionaire broadcaster added later in his show, “we’ve already donated to Haiti. It’s called the U.S. income tax.’

For his part, Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson said on Wednesday’s “700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network that the Haitians had brought it all on themselves. “They were under the heel of the French… . And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince.’ True story. And so the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’ … [E]ver since, they have been cursed by one thing after another.”

Robertson’s “true story“: Haiti “swore a pact to the devil” to get “free from the French” and “ever since, they have been cursed“

[ Find More Videos Here ]

Robertson, who once blamed the 9/11 attacks on abortionists, feminists and others, didn’t mention how he knew this to be a “true story.”

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Bob Cesca: “I seriously don’t believe that Hannity is provoking any lynchings, but it certainly can be implied. The other thing is this: suddenly the far-right is all about liberty?. Ask Sean Hannity if he supports liberty for same-sex couples. No one cheerlead the unprecedented expansion of unitary executive power under Bush and Cheney more than Hannity.”

Bob is being soft/politically correct!

I say, this syphilis deranged goon is in LYNCHING MODE. The son-of-a-bitch, night after night, calls out for vigilantes to “HANG” president Barack Obama. Ever since Obama declared his candidacy, this NEO-NAZI shit-face has thrown at his viewers — every imaginable form of loathing and fear-mongering he can conjure.

The sickest motherfucker on TV has never uttered a single word of praise for what the President is trying to do — under extremely difficult circumstances.

No one should treat this THUG with kid gloves. In fact I wish someone would cut off his hairy pink balls and stuff them into his filthy mouth — to shut him up permanently.

This baboon has taken a big dump on the Freedom of Speech dictum — and we must call his daily HATE-SPEECHES on Fox exactly what the are: TERRORIST DEATH THREATS to President Obama.

A Sample of Sean Hannity’s Hi-Tech Lynching on FOX

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Allow me to state that Republicans will NEVER change, as long as the despicable and racist base still threatens to hang the party by the neck. They are buying guns in buckets — rocket-propelled grenade launchers, bazookas and concealable sniper rifles. Neo-NAZISM is on the rise –goaded by blind hate and psychopathic delusions like: “Obama is going to enslave whites,” “Obama is a Marxist who will take away all our guns” and that Obama has an agenda whereby all Americans will herded into FEMA-run concentration camps by a volunteer army of glassy-eyed liberal college graduates.

The G.O.P needs to split into two — so that these dangerous extremists in the party are relegated to a minority in America — permanently! They can then run Rush Limbaugh for president with Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Republican Radio Host Blames Swine FLU on Race

Matthew Shepherd Hate Crime Revisionism

Swine FLU Stirs Racist Talk

Pandemic Paranoia: “Swine Flu” Fear & Loathing in the Conservative Media — Media personalities from the conservative echo chamber have baselessly blamed Mexican immigrants for spreading HIN1 virus (“swine flu“) across the border, despite the fact that several reports have indicated that U.S. swine flu patients had recently traveled to Mexico.

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Gun Show Nation: Inside Anti-Obama Extremist Gun Culture

By Max Blumenthal

   [Max Blumenthal]
On April 18 and 19, I attended gun shows in Antioch, Calif., and Reno, Nev., to probe the culture of gun enthusiasts at the onset of the Barack Obama era.

I came away from these events with a portrait of a heavily armed, tightly organized movement incited by right-wing radio to a fever-pitched resentment of Obama and his allies in Congress.

Even as the economy suffers, gun dealers and their Washington lobbyists are leveraging renewed anti-government sentiment into unprecedented sales figures and fattened membership rolls.

“We’ve been swamped today,” an NRA representative from Antioch boasted. “We’ve practically ran out of our materials that we give away at sign-up.”

Fueled by the screeds of radio hosts Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, and the lesser-known, but increasingly influential, online conspiracist Alex Jones, many gun-show attendees I spoke to were convinced Obama planned to usher in a Marxist dictatorship.

They warned that the president’s power grab would only begin with mass gun seizures. “If Obama takes away our guns,” a young, .45-caliber-pistol-toting man from Reno told me, “it’s just a step into trying to take away everything else.”

Indeed, in their minds, average Americans opposed to the Obama agenda would be herded into FEMA-run concentration camps by a volunteer army of glassy-eyed liberal college graduates.

“When they start imprisoning Americans, and people start seeing that we’re the enemy, then that’ll make it hot,” predicted one young man from Antioch sporting a button for former Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. “People talk about a revolution,” the young man continued, “an armed revolution. I think police crackdowns on individuals will tip the scales.”

More than a few gun dealers and attendees echoed the young man’s seeming enthusiasm for armed revolt. One Contra Costa, Calif., gun dealer named Rich predicted, during an otherwise casual off-camera conversation, that “some nut” would assassinate Obama within one year of any Democratic attempt at gun-control legislation.

While the prospect of organized right-wing violence against the federal government seems far-fetched at this point, the paranoid rhetoric I documented suggests the militia movement that organized against President Bill Clinton’s policies during the 1990s could experience a dramatic resurgence by mobilizing resentment against Obama.

If a new militia movement coalesces, its members will have no shortage of sophisticated assault weapons to choose from. At the gun show in Reno, I witnessed the sale of rocket-propelled grenade launchers and bazooka guns; I watched a California dealer demonstrate how rapidly he could field strip his .308-caliber sniper rifle, then stash it in a deliberately innocuous-looking backpack and a briefcase that “looks just like a camera case.”

Nearby, I interviewed another dealer retailing a brand of .50-caliber assault rifle that was banned in California because it could supposedly down an airplane. He told me by slightly altering the bullets his gun fired, and by converting the gun from semiautomatic to bolt action, he was able to sell it in California once again.

(Weapons like these are useful to Mexican narco-cartels, too. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Phoenix field division claimed that “many gun shows attracted large numbers of gang members from Mexico and California. They often bought large quantities of assault weapons and smuggled them into Mexico or transported them to California.”)

Though big guns were the main attraction, a handful of retailers in Reno appealed to some visitors’ apparent enthusiasm for Nazi memorabilia. Swastika-emblazoned flags, photographs of Hitler and his henchmen, and anything related to the Third Reich were available at several booths.

There was obviously no way to gauge the percentage of show attendees who adhered to the racist fringe, but the prominence of so much Nazi regalia suggested they maintained a significant presence. In fact, I learned about the gun shows I attended from a Web site that features a prominent banner ad for the Council of Conservative Citizens, America’s largest white-supremacist group.

On April 4, a neo-Nazi wannabe named Richard Poplawski killed three Pittsburgh police officers with a high-powered assault rifle. By all accounts, Poplawski was an avid follower of right-wing talkers, including Alex Jones and Glenn Beck, who “grew angry recently over fears Obama would outlaw guns.”

In the wake of Poplawski’s massacre, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report warning of the mounting threat of right-wing extremism.

“Heightened interest in legislation for tighter firearms control,” the DHS asserted, “may be invigorating right-wing extremist activity, specifically the white-supremacist and militia movements.”

With its focus on right-wing gun culture, the report compounded the already-palpable paranoia of gun-show enthusiasts. An organizer of the Antioch show told me the heightened specter of government scrutiny prompted numerous dealers to demand a total ban on cameras inside the show.

Even with the restriction in place at both shows I attended, I managed to record enough footage to provide what I think is a vivid journalistic report on gun culture mentality during the first 100 days of the Obama era.

Was the DHS report on right-wing extremism credible? See my video report, “Gun Show Nation,” and judge for yourself.

[Enlarge] About The Author: Max Blumenthal — is an award-winning journalist and blogger whose articles and video documentaries have appeared in The Daily Beast, The Nation, The Huffington Post, Salon.com, Al Jazeera English and many other publications. He is a correspondent for The Daily Beast, a research fellow for Media Matters for America and a writing fellow for the Nation Institute. His book, “Republican Gomorrah,” was published by Basic Books in March, 2009.

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