Democracy & Civics

Not Your Father's Hate Groups

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A national survey has found the number of active hate groups in the United States has increased by 48 percent since 2000.

But the study by Alabama’s Southern Poverty Law Center doesn’t count just the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazi groups and other usual suspects; it also counts anti-immigration groups and the black nationalist Nation of Islam.

“You might be surprised at which group in Greenville is listed as among the 888 hate groups in America,” reads the headline on a story from the Delta Democrat Times in Greenville, Miss.

The only listed group that is active in the area is the Nation of Islam.

Elsewhere, the report listed an anti-immigration group in Framingham, Mass., that has lashed out against immigrants from Brazil.

Joe Rizoli, of Concerned Friends for Illegal Immigration Law Enforcement, denied that his organization he co-founded is a hate group.

The Boston Globe quoted Rizoli as saying, “What makes a hate group. We hate illegal immigration and people who break the law. The Brazilians are upset because we’ve exposed their crooked ways.”

The Denver Post reported that Colorado Bureau of Investigation figures showing a rise in hate crimes against Latinos.

The article also referred to a racist attack last month against a Latino man in Louisville, Col.

But the newspaper also quoted a police chief as saying most crime “remains still white-on-white crime and Hispanic-on-Hispanic. Regardless of anyone’s feelings over the immigration issue, it hasn’t translated into crime.”

–Will Crain/Newsdesk.org

Sources:

“HATE: You might be surprised at which group in Greenville is listed as among the 888 hate groups in America”
Delta Democrat Times (Greenville, Miss.), April 13, 2008

“Antihate report lists Framingham group” Boston Globe, April 13, 2008

“Reports of hate crime climbing”
Denver Post, April 11, 2008

“Intelligence Report: The Year in Hate”
Southern Poverty Law Center, 2008

One thought on “Not Your Father's Hate Groups”

  1. I once had occasion to ask a Newspaper reporter where they got their information on hate groups and he told me from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

    I then called the SPLC and asked them where they got their information on hate groups and I was told they received it from the newpapers?

    Is there logic there somewhere?