Hate Groups

Though 2021 started with a deadly siege on the United States Capitol by hundreds of far-right rioters trying to overturn the presidential election results, the number of hate and anti-government groups in the U.S. declined last year for the third year in a row, according to a report released this week by the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama. The SPLC counted a total of 733 hate groups last year, significantly lower than the 2018 peak of 1,021. It found that the number of anti-government groups also fell, from 566 in 2020 to 488 in 2021. But SPLC says that doesn't necessarily mean there's less hate out there. "Rather than demonstrating a decline in the power of the far right, the dropping numbers of organized hate and anti-government groups suggest that the extremist ideas that mobilize them now operate more openly in the political mainstream...