Hate Groups on Rise in the U.S.

A part of an e-mail report received from the Southern Poverty Law Center along with the link to their report on the rise of the cults of Hate:

Hate Group Numbers Up By 54% Since 2000.
From the e-mail report:
Fueled by immigration fears, the recession and the election of a black president, hate groups in America increased their numbers again in 2008. The count now stands at a staggering 926 — a more than 50% increase since 2000.

I'm now deeply worried about the way hate group leaders are exploiting the election of Barack Obama and the economic crisis to swell their ranks and how their anti-Semitic, white supremacist propaganda is promoting violence.

* A neo-Nazi leader was quoted in USA Today saying "When the economy suffers, people are looking for answers. … We are the answer for white people."

* The day after President Obama was inaugurated, a white man in Massachusetts killed two black people and raped and gravely wounded another. His arrest derailed his plan to also invade a synagogue and kill as many Jews as possible. He'd spent six months reading racist websites and concluded they "spoke the truth about the demise of the white race."

As you know, we not only track and expose the activities of racist extremists — we use innovative legal strategies to put them out of business. We recently won a $2.5 million verdict against the leader of the Imperial Klans of America for the brutal beating of a teenage boy of Latino descent in Kentucky.

Southern Poverty Law Center
400 Washington Ave.
Montgomery, AL 36104

With this troubling report out of the Stars and Stripes

GI returned from Iraq in gang

A soldier charged in the 2005 gang initiation beating death of Sgt. Juwan Johnson returned from an Iraq deployment as a member of the Gangster Disciples, Army prosecutors said during Pvt. Bobby Morrissette’s court-martial Tuesday.

"After the guys came back from deployment ... that’s when they started calling it the ‘Gangster Disciples,’ " he said.

The gang became more violent, he said.

"We called the gang members who came back from Iraq the ‘Young ‘Uns’. Their behavior was rowdy. They would act without thinking. The entire organization just went more negative. Drugs were used frequently. Fights would start from people looking at each other wrong or flashing gang signs," he said.