The violent neo-Nazi and white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA over the weekend that left one dead and around 20 injured made it clear that hate groups and their membership are surging in the U.S.
According to The Southern Poverty Law Center, the U.S. has seen an “explosive rise” in hate groups since 2000, largely in response to immigration, the election of President Barack Obama and now due to the campaign and administration of President Donald Trump, which have espoused extremist ideologies. Trump’s electoral victory was celebrated by public racists and neo-Nazis, including Richard Spencer, David Duke and Andrew Anglin of neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer.
So far, there has been a 197 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate groups since 2015, and there were 130 active Ku Klux Klan groups as of 2016, the SPLC said. There are also 663 “antigovernment ‘patriot’” groups operating as of last year.
The SPLC has tracked hate group data using “hate group publications and websites, citizen and law enforcement reports, field sources and news reports.” It classifies hate group activity has including criminal acts, marches, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting or publishing.”
Below are still images taken from the interactive hate group tracker which show the location of various hate groups, as well as the total number of hate groups operating within a state. (Click the images to enlarge.)
Based on the SPLC’s data, hate groups have a higher density in the Eastern and Southeastern U.S. and stretching about as far west as Texas. There are also clusters around Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area in California. On the SPLC map, groups that appear in the center of states indicate groups that are operating statewide.
The SPLC hate group tracker currently lists 917 active hate groups in the U.S. California, Florida and Texas lead the states with the most active hate groups, with 79, 63 and 55, respectively.
View the full interactive hate map, which provides details on the specific hate groups and allows you to filter by state, on the SPLC website.
According to a recent study published in PLOS ONE and analyzed by the Washington Post, Google search data can also tell us where the most racist people in the U.S. live. The data reveals that the answer using the study’s metrics is the “rural Northeast and South,” roughly following the Appalachians, though the Gulf Coast, Ohio and the upper peninsula of Michigan are also hotspots.
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