A left-leaning advocacy group is blaming President Trump for the growing number of U.S.-based hate groups.
“Trump’s run for office electrified the radical right, which saw in him a champion of the idea that America is fundamentally a white man’s country,” Mark Potok argued in his Southern Poverty Law Center report that said there was a boom in white nationalist and anti-Muslim groups in 2016.
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That report said white nationalist and anti-Muslim groups increased from 34 to more than 100 in 2016.
“By far, the most dramatic change was the enormous leap in anti-Muslim hate groups,” Potok said.
The report found that there are now more than 900 active hate groups nationwide, an increase of nearly 3 percent since 2015. The nation saw an all-time high of 1,018 hate groups in 2011.
The report also found that there were 1,094 hate crimes and bias incidents in the first 34 days following Election Day, and more than a third directly referenced either Trump’s Make America Great Again” slogan, or his infamous remarks about grabbing women by the genitals.
Potok argued that some independent extremists were turned away from creating their own events, and chose to attend a Trump rally “filled with just as much anti-establishment vitriol as any extremist rally.”
The president was asked this week about a rise in violent rhetoric, specifically anti-Semitic language. “We are going to do everything within our power to stop long-simmering racism and every other thing that’s going on,” he replied.
“I think one of the reasons that I won the election is because we have a very, very divided nation,” Trump added at a news conference Wednesday. “Very divided, and hopefully, I’ll be able to do something about that.”
Some of the groups new to the SLPC list include Identity Evropa in California, and a new neo-Nazi website called the Daily Stormer, which boasts 31 clubs.
Potok cited online hate groups are among the most worrying, and cited Dylann Roof, who “had no real-world contact with hate groups before deciding, based on propaganda he read on the Internet, that it was time to start a race war.”
