20 April 25 • 2019
jn
Surging Hate
Program shows the proliferation
of hate groups in the U.S.
H
ate groups are proliferat-
ing in the United States,
said Cassie Miller, senior
research analyst for the Alabama-
based Southern Poverty Law Center
(SPLC), reinforcing what many
Americans feel in their gut.
Miller was the keynote speaker at
the symposium “Beyond Fear and
Hate,
” April 14 at Temple Beth El,
sponsored by Wayne State University’
s
Cohn-Haddow Center for Judaic
Students and Center for Peace and
Conflict Studies.
In 2018, the SPLC documented
1,020 hate groups, a 7 percent increase
over the prior year.
A major factor in the surge is a fear
of changing demographics among
white men, said Miller, who holds a
Ph.D. in history from Carnegie Mellon
University.
Compared to all other minorities
together, whites will soon be a minori-
ty in the United States, she said. Some
see that as an “existential threat.
”
Other factors in the increase are
online radicalization, which has
allowed expression of hate to become
mainstream, and the “Trump effect”
— the erosion of norms for public
discourse — which has given license to
attack those who are different or per-
ceived as threatening.
“There was a surge of hate activity
after the 2016 election, and the name
of the president or the election were
often cited,
” she said. There was a 200
percent increase in hate speech in
counties that voted for Trump.
WHITE NATIONALISM
Miller divided white nationalists
into two groups: mainstream and
neo-Nazis.
Mainstream hate groups appeal to
average Trump voters with a clean-cut
persona, she said. They avoid swas-
tikas and similar symbols but claim
the supposedly endangered white race
should have the right to self-determi-
nation by segregating themselves from
others.
These were the people behind
the white nationalist march in
Charlottesville, Va., where they pro-
claimed, “Jews will not replace us.”
The lead organization in this arm
recently changed its name from
Identity Europa to the American
Identity Movement. One of its main
tactics is encouraging members to
join the Republican Party and run for
local office, Miller said.
The neo-Nazis are “accelerationists,”
she said, whose goal is to tear down
existing structures and replace them
with fascist models. They focus on
and fetishize violence, she added, and
use cell-type organizing rather than
a national structure; each member
knows only a few others, making it
difficult for law enforcement person-
nel to infiltrate.
Professor Howard Lupovitch,
director of the Cohn-Haddow Center,
also spoke at the program. He noted
that there has been remarkably little
anti-Semitic or anti-Israel activity at
Wayne State, despite its large Muslim
population, and said one reason was
because Jews and Muslims have lived
together in southeastern Michigan for
more than a century.
A central component of anti-Sem-
itism is fear of Jews, which is akin to
Islamophobia, fear of Muslims, he
said. Current efforts to keep Muslims
from immigrating to the United States
echo the atmosphere in the early part
of the 20th century. Then, Jewish
immigrants were accused of bringing
disease and crime to the country and
of being Communists, which was
equivalent to accusing Muslims today
of being terrorists. Earlier xenopho-
bic sentiments culminated with the
Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, which
severely curtailed immigration from
Eastern Europe. The legislation effec-
tively put an end to large-scale Jewish
immigration.
“
As Jews,” Lupovitch said, “we have
no choice but to have empathy for
immigrants today.”
The symposium, underwritten by
Dr. Stanley Levy of Bloomfield Hills,
also tied the shooting at Tree of Life
Synagogue in Pittsburgh to the grow-
ing tide of group-based hatred. ■
jews d
in
the
BARBARA LEWIS CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Cassie Miller, senior research
analyst for the Alabama-based
Southern Poverty Law Center
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