Pick yer poison folks!

Dear Readers:

For anyone who is a bit of a bigot or racist, they sure have enough groups to chose from down in the States! (Ya I know, Canada has them too, but not nearly as many!)

At last count there are 892 groups and militias in the U.S. of A. that just don't like some other group else very much!

Pick yer poison poison folks. If there is a group that upsets you, there is probably a cure [sic] for it in your very own neighbourhood!

Report: Hate groups, domestic extremists grew significantly in 2015

By Caitlin Dickson

(Notice that most of these groups are in what used to be Confederate territory!)

While neo-Nazis, white nationalists, skinheads and other factions of the white supremacy movement actually saw a slight decline last year, the SPLC found that anti-government "patriot" groups, black separatist organizations and Ku Klux Klan chapters all multiplied in conjunction with some of the years biggest news stories.

Between 2014 and 2015, the number of active Klan chapters in the U.S. grew from 72 to 190, a movement that, Potok writes in the report, was “invigorated by the 364 pro-Confederate battle flag rallies that took place after South Carolina took down the battle flag from its Capitol grounds following the June massacre of nine black churchgoers by a white supremacist flag enthusiast in Charleston, S.C.”

Anti-government “patriot” groups also grew over the last year, from 874 to 998. Potok credits the 2014 armed standoff at Cliven Bundy’s Nevada ranch, in which federal agents were sent to seize Bundy’s cattle over his failure to pay grazing fees, and were met by an armed militia of Bundy supporters before retreating at gunpoint.

 These numbers likely underestimate the actual number of people in the U.S. who identify with the radical right, as participation in these movements largely takes place online. “The major hate forum Stormfront now has more than 300,000 members, and the site has been adding about 25,000 registered users annually for several years — the size of a small city.”

Not only was 2015 a banner year for "patriots" and hate groups, according to the SPLC report, the U.S. also experienced a significant amount of “domestic political violence from both the American radical right and American jihadists."

“According to a year-end report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), ‘domestic extremist killers’ slew more people in 2015 than in any year since 1995, when the Oklahoma City bombing left 168 men, women and children dead,” reads the SPLC report. “Counting both political and other violence from extremists, the ADL said ‘a minimum of 52 people in the United States were killed by adherents of domestic extremist movement[s] in the past 12 months.’”

Another statistic, from the New American Foundation — which does not include nonpolitical violence — “found that by year’s end, 45 people in America had been killed in ‘violent jihadist attacks’ since the Al Qaeda massacre of Sept. 11, 2001, just short of the 48 people killed in the same 14-year period in ‘far right wing attacks.’"

The report concludes that hate, violence and fear are clearly on the rise and tries to explain why, exactly, Americans are so angry.

“The bulk of that anger is coming from beleaguered working-class and, to a lesser extent, middle-class white people, especially the less educated — the very same groups that most vociferously support Trump,” Potok writes. “They are angry over the coming loss of a white majority (predicted for 2043 by the Census Bureau), the falling fortunes of the white working class, worsening income inequality, the rise of left-wing movements like Black Lives Matter, major advances for LGBT people, growing numbers of refugees and undocumented workers, terrorism, and more.”

“Their anger, above all, is directed at the government,” he adds, referencing a November poll by the Pew Research Center, which found that public trust in the federal government has plummeted since the late 1950s, when 77 percent of Americans said they almost always trusted the government. By contrast, 17 percent of Americans reported that level of trust in the November poll.

A number of the Republican presidential candidates have further fanned the flames of this frustration.

“Trump, of course, has attacked Muslims, Mexicans and black people (he retweeted a neo-Nazi’s statistics falsely claiming that blacks are overwhelmingly responsible for the murder of whites)” — but he’s not the only one.

“Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush and others have made inflammatory comments about Muslims, Carly Fiorina has told false stories that demonize abortion providers, and Ben Carson and others have attacked LGBT activists and the Supreme Court over legalizing same-sex marriage,” Potok writes. “The U.S. House of Representatives took up a bill to end the resettlement of refugees, riding a wave of fear after the San Bernardino attacks.”

Potok warned that such boiling frustrations and distrust are not to be taken lightly, especially as the next 30 years marks the period in which Americans are poised to lose their majority for the first time in U.S. history.

“We’re going through a transition that is really unparalleled in world history,” Potok said. “We face a very real and serious problem of increasing social distrust that accompanies increasing diversity.”

Still, there is hope. In the report, Potok references Harvard scholar Robert Putnam, who argues that while a rise in diversity is accompanied by a decrease in trust between ethnic groups, “that does not mean that multiculturalism is a failure but rather that inter-communal bridge building is important as diversity increases.”

“In other words,” Potok explains, “the road ahead will not be an easy one, and Americans of all races and creeds will need to work to rebuild a true national community.”

 https://news.yahoo.com/report--hate-groups--domestic-extremists-grew-significantly-in-2015-163016396.html