GENESIS AND LIFE LINE OF HATE GROUPS IN AMERICA

One of the outstanding cultural characteristics of the past fifty years or so is the proliferation of hate groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists literally hundreds of them. For 2018, these include 54 chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, 112 neo Nazi groups, 148 white nationalist organizations, 63 racist skinheads affiliations and a smattering of other wannabees, some of which come and go. According to an annual FBI report, hate crimes against persons (as opposed to property) reached a 16 year high nationally in 2018, with notable increases in attacks against Latinos and transgender people. Hate groups, by definition, are social groups that advocate and practice hatred, hostility, or violence toward members of a race, ethnicity, nation, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation or any other designated sector of society. According to the FBI, a hate group’s primary purpose is to promote animosity, hostility and malice against persons belonging to any of these categories. These groups don’t develop in a vacuum. They tend to crop up during times of social an economic upheaval. Its organizing principles tend to include elements of fear, insecurity and ignorance. Their propaganda leans heavily on the fear that what we have taken for granted historically no longer applies. The rules are changing. The predominance of straight, white, Protestants can no longer be taken for granted. The extend of any transformation and the speed with which cultural changes are taking place usually determines how unsettled people feel. Many won’t see themselves operating in such an unstable social structure with dramatically changing social norms. Strong organizational skills of ideologues, facilitated by extensive social media manipulation can do the rest. As cultures transitioned, hate groups have been around for centuries. French sociologist Emile Durkheim, writing during the late 19th century, a time of revolutionary technological and demographic change, coined the term “anomie,” meaning social instability due to the breakdown of social norms. He grew up right after the nominal end of the Industrial Revolution, a time of rapid change, during which agricultural societies became more industrialized, when the economic center shifted from a cottage industry to mechanization in factories, and the invention of electricity, the transcontinental railroad, the cotton gin, et. al., changed society permanently. Monarchies became democracies and people were entirely disconnected from their past. While these seismic changes did not seem to have generated the kinds of hate groups we are familiar with today, multiple vigilante groups did develop. One of these, the Luddites, became a violent force against the textile industry. Fast forward to all the changes wrought during the 2nd half of the 19th century The end of the Civil War, the end of slavery, which gave rise to substantial economic change, especially in the south, becoming the impetus for the Ku Klux Klan, pushback through Jim Crow laws, World War I, the Russian Revolution, a global depression, World War II and, more recently, the rapidly developing technological revolution, forcing people out of familiar sources of income, demographic shifts changing society’s make up, seemingly at warp speed and the consequent alienation of entire segments of our population, which no longer recognize their place in the new society. While some parts of society struggled to be included, traditional, mostly white men, resisted the change for fear of losing all they had become used to . A situation ripe for the growth of hate groups, fueled by populist politicians. Dr. Randy Blazak, a former professor of sociology at Portland State University, studied the phenomenon from the inside and has continued to monitor the activities of racist skinheads, neo-Nazis and Klansmen, as well as newer far-right groups like the Proud Boys and Patriotic Prayer. While doing research for his master’s and doctoral degrees in sociology at Emery University in Atlanta, he went under cover to study these hate groups and learn what motivated their hatred. (See: Randy Blazak, “Blind Hate, why White Supremacy Persists,” The Sun, March, 2020.) He agrees that what connects all these groups is the core belief that straight white males are under threat, and that their country is being taken away from them. What has changed over time is who they identify as the main threats. In 1988, nobody talked about transgender people. Hardly anyone talked about Muslims and even Latinos were way down the list of enemies. Recruitment changed as well. In the past you needed to be handed a flyer, or know somebody who knew somebody. There was a certain risk to hanging out with skin heads or going to a Klan meeting. You used to have to be physically present to belong to a group, but now you can join on line. It’s like a 24 hour a day rally happening on line. Groups can present a more mainstream message and on message boards call for violence and civil war on a daily basis. Blazak suggests that, with assistance of sophisticated usage of social media, proliferation and intensification of these hate groups will continue for some time to come. When asked about his opinion about our upcoming election, he says: “It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Either Trump gets reelected and we have more of this happening, or he doesn’t get reelected, and a small group of his supporters refuse to accept it and we see a spike in violence.” Theo Wierdsma