Monitor of ‘hate groups’ sees nearly 50 percent increase since 2000

The number of organizations characterized as “hate groups” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has increased nearly 50 percent since 2000, an increase it attributes partly to the debate over immigration.

That’s one of the latest findings by the Birmingham, Ala.-based SPLC, an international nonprofit legal organization devoted to civil rights. Its annual Hatewatch map includes 888 groups in the United States for 2007, up from 844 groups in 2006. Michigan has 26 groups on the list, up from 25 last year.

Among the groups listed is, once again, Michigan State University’s chapter of Younger Americans for Freedom (YAF), a conservative youth organization. The MSU chapter is the only university-recognized and -supported “hate group” in Hatewatch history.

“I think it [Michigan's groups] is virtually stable,” said Mark Potok, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project. “One can argue over what the numbers mean. It is only a rough estimate of what is happening.”

Continued -Potok said many are surprised to discover a wide swath of states from the Midwest into the Deep South with active “hate groups,” but he said Michigan and other Midwest states have had such groups since the auto industry migration of the 1920s.

The SPLC is widely viewed as an expert in the field of racist and radical-right movements, and its quarterly magazine Intelligence Report is sent to over 50,000 law enforcement personnel worldwide. The organization said it has seen a 48 percent increase in the number of reported “hate groups” since 2000 — from 602 in 2000, to 888 for 2006. The largest numerical increases were found in California, Arizona and Texas, Potok wrote on the group’s blog (http://www.splcenter…).

Potok said the increase in groups is due in large part to the debate about immigration.

“You have the groups glomming onto an issue which works extremely well for them,” Potok said of white nationalist groups and the national debate on immigration. “[The current debate] is about people with brown skin. If the propaganda was the only staying in their groups, the problem would not be terribly worrying. The sad fact is much of the propaganda originates in ‘hate groups.’ It has found its way into the mainstream … that is the real shame of this.”

Potok used the example of the white nationalist concern about an alleged plot to create a North American Union. Under the theory, Potok said, leaders in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico are secretly working to create this alliance. The theory came out of white nationalist writings, but it has become so pervasive in modern America that 18 statehouses have passed resolutions condemning the nonexistent NAU.

“They are condemning something that does not exist and has never been planned,” Potok said of the statehouses.

“Our concern is really two-fold. On the one hand, ‘hate groups’ are using the immigration issue to grow and grow fairly explosively,” he said. “The racist propaganda of hate groups is not limited and has leaked out to the mainstream and effectively poisoned the debate on the issue. We are not saying it is not an important debate; we are saying it ought not be about how evil people with brown skin are.”