Southern Poverty Law Center updates its Hate Map

SPLC map; click on the image to enlarge it, or click here to view the interactive version.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has updated its Hate Map, an interactive map of hate groups in the United States, along with an analysis of hate group activity in 2017. SPLC identified 954 hate groups in the U.S. targeting one or several of the following populations: immigrants, minorities, Caucasians, the LGBTQ community, Muslims, Jews, women, and more.

In an accompanying story, the SPLC says 2017 "was a year that saw the “alt-right,” the latest incarnation of white supremacy, break through the firewall that for decades kept overt racists largely out of the political and media mainstream." These groups usually rise during Democratic presidencies because of fears about gun control and federal action against them, but the total number of hate groups in the U.S. rose 4 percent from 2016.

White supremacists felt emboldened because Trump appointed Steve Bannon as an adviser, SPLC says. Bannon boasted that his website, Breitbart News, was the platform of the alt-right movement. After the white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke said the rally was a "turning point" and promised that white supremacists would "fulfill the promises of Donald Trump" to "take our country back," SPLC writes.

KKK groups fell from 130 to 72, but other white supremacist groups grew, which SPLC writes is a "clear indication that the new generation of white suprem­acists is rejecting the Klan’s hoods and robes for the hipper image of the more loosely organized alt-right movement."

Black nationalist groups grew from 193 in 2016 to 233 in 2017, but lag far behind the more than 600 white supremacist groups and have far less mainstream political influence.

Anti-Muslim groups grew for the third straight year in a row, and the anti-government movement is surging, with 689 active groups in 2017 compared to 623 in 2016. Of those, 273 were armed militias, SPLC says.