The Year in Hate and Extremism 2019 | Recommended Read

pittadmin

In 2019, the third year of the Trump presidency, data gathered by the Intelligence Project of the SPLC documents a continued and rising threat to inclusive democracy: a surging white nationalist movement that has been linked to a series of racist and antisemitic terror attacks and has coincided with an increase in hate crime. The number of white nationalist groups identified by the SPLC rose for the second straight year, a 55 percent increase since 2017, when Donald Trump’s campaign energized white nationalists who saw him as an avatar of their grievances and their anxiety over the country’s demographic changes. White nationalism poses a serious threat to national security and pluralistic democracy. It’s a virulent and profoundly authoritarian ideology that infects our political system with hate, fear and resentment. As this report demonstrates, the threat of increased violence is very real. A growing sector of white supremacists, who call themselves “accelerationists,” believe mass violence is necessary to bring about the collapse of our pluralistic society. Like the year before, domestic terror attacks by white nationalists and other extremists, at home and abroad, delivered blow after blow in 2019. A synagogue in Poway, California. A rabbi’s home in a New York City suburb. A Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Beneath those headlines, underreported hate crimes added to the death toll and reinforced the climate of violence that threatens lives as well as the functioning of inclusive democracy.