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from the keep-your-friends-close-and-your-enemies-closer? dept.
An article at vice.com reports The Number of U.S. Hate Groups Keeps Surging, Largely Thanks to Young, White men:
The number of hate groups nationwide reached a record high in 2018, driven partly by the persistent growth of white nationalist groups catering to young, college-aged men.
There are currently 1,020 active hate groups in America — up from 954 in 2017, and 917 the previous year, according to an annual tally by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The new, young face of hate emerged from the shadows during the 2016 election and organized through a shared language of memes and under the banner of the “alt-right.” Many hailed then-candidate Donald Trump, with his hard-line views on immigration, as a hero. In celebration of his election, the alt-right’s one-time de facto leader Richard Spencer led a room full of young men in suits to give Nazi salutes.
Since then, Spencer and other prominent actors, entangled in costly lawsuits and tired of being heckled by anti-fascist protesters, have faded into relative obscurity.
At the same time, groups like Identity Evropa — whose khaki-clad members were a formidable presence at the violent “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017— have proliferated and expanded their reach by setting up new chapters across the country. Patriot Front also grew significantly in 2018 after splintering from Vanguard America, the group linked to the 19-year-old neo-Nazi who rammed his car into a crowd of protesters during the Charlottesville rally and killed Heather Heyer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday February 22 2019, @03:04PM (2 children)
We should not trust any numbers reported by the SPLC. About six months ago there was a similar story from them about how anti-Semitism was on the rise. The implication was that white supremacists were attacking Jews in greater numbers. I thought to myself, huh, I live in NYC were most of America's Jews live, and surely I would have read about that in the local papers or heard about it from our innumerable Jewish friends and neighbors, so I went and read the raw police reports that the SPLC based their report on.
So, in the raw list there would be an entry like, "Orthodox Jewish man mugged." To my eye, it's inevitable that Jews would also get mugged when they constitute 1/3 of the people in your town. The SPLC, though, marked that one down as "anti-Semitic attack." On and on the raw police reports went like that, with anything of any magnitude that happened to Jews from "got cut off in traffic" to "punched in an altercation in the subway" being imputed by the SPLC to be anti-Semitism.
In the handful of incidents that could be construed as "anti-Semitism," the alleged perpetrators were Muslims. But the SPLC glossed over that little fact to claim it was really Aryans who did it.
In other words, the SPLC cooks numbers to support their existence and fund-raising. It's really sick and cynical that they would exploit Jewish trauma from the holocaust to suck money out of that community in a country where actual anti-Semitism is virtually non-existent and actively suppressed by every quadrant of society from kindergarten classrooms to corporate sensitivity trainings.
In short, I really, really doubt everything that the SPLC has to say about anything.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @06:02PM (1 child)
Wrong. The figures were set against the overall crime figures. So, if, say, 30% of pre-Trump muggings were against Jews and post-Trump rose to 40%, that's an increase in crimes targeting Jews. Even if the total crimes went up or down. Even if the Jews are a 1/3 of the city's pop, unless New York Jews happened to double in number post-Trump election, it's still an increase in antisemitic attacks.
And btw, there separate studies noting increase in attacks against Blacks, Hispanics, gays and women too. Basically every single minority group has a relative increase in hate crimes directed against them. Except, of course, white males. Even gay white males for that matter... Passing I guess.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @06:50PM
How many of these are better known as "non-crimes"? Do you have that data or are you completely full of shit?