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An alt-right rally in Charlottesville that left one anti-racist counter protester dead. At least five school shootings in the first two months of 2018. One emerged out of disturbing, wide-scale organizing; the others, from individual motivation. But all testify to the way in which hate has bled into the mainstream under the Donald Trump administration.
In its annual assessment of hate and extremism in the United States, the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center tracked an unfortunate rise in hate groups in 2017 compared to 2016–a year in which, due to the Trump campaign, hate activity also reached a new peak.
The organization's annual report, Year in Hate and Extremism, identified 954 active hate groups in America–a 4% jump from last year.
The majority of these groups originated in the alt-right–the polo-shirt-wearing white supremacist new wave that congregates around Breitbart News–neo-Nazi, and white supremacist movements. Ku Klux Klan groups, in contrast, fell from 130 to 72, indicating that the former categories of white supremacy are holding more sway.
Black nationalist groups like the Nation of Islam also grew in response to Trump’s racist rhetoric, which has refueled a desire among these groups to break away from the rest of America.
Read more about how President Trump and hate by Eillie Anzilotti at Fast Company