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
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the

BARBARA LEWIS CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Cassie Miller, senior research 
analyst for the Alabama-based 
Southern Poverty Law Center

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