The number of anti-Muslim hate groups in the United States has nearly tripled in the last year. According to a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, that number went from 34 groups in 2015 to 101 groups in 2016. The organisation, which tracks domestic extremism, credits the staggering growth to President Trump's incendiary rhetoric about Muslims, the refugee crisis, a growing amount of anti-Muslim propaganda, and recent attacks like the one in Orlando by a shooter who claimed allegiance to ISIS after murdering 49 people at a gay nightclub.
"I think the most important factor driving the growth of these groups is Donald Trump and his campaign—his vilification of Muslims, his description of them as so dangerous that we need to keep them out of the country, his idea that we have to form a Nazi-esque registry with the names of all Muslim Americans, his proposal to survey mosques and on and on," SPLC senior fellow Mark Potok said on a press call Wednesday. "Trump's election has been absolutely electrifying to the radical right. People on the radical right are thrilled by the Muslim ban."
The most recent FBI numbers show hate crimes against Muslims grew by about 67 percent in 2015, the year Trump launched his campaign. (FBI numbers from 2016 aren't available yet, but SPLC expects them to be even higher than those of 2015.)
The NYPD has already reported a rise in hate crimes in New York City in 2017. There were 56 reported as of this week, up from 31 incidents over the same time period last year, according to Politico. New York City mayor Bill de Blasio linked a jump in 2016 hate crimes to Trump's rhetoric, as well.
SPLC reports there were 1,094 hate crimes in first 34 days after the election and that, while a minority were committed by those with anti-Trump motivations, the vast majority were pro-Trump, with 37 percent of the perpetrators specifically naming Trump, his "Make America Great Again" slogan, or grabbing women by the genitals, apparently referencing the infamous Access Hollywood tape.
The overall number of hate groups in the U.S. has grown for the second year in a row, from 892 to 917. (Many of the groups SPLC indentified in this rise reject the label of "hate group.") The record for the most hate groups was set in 2011 with 1,018. Last year also saw four major hate groups that "were born or grew very rapidly entirely on the strength of singing Trump's praises, of being his cheerleaders," according to Potok.
The most notable sprouted from the popular Neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer, which has created real-life "clubs" which meet in person. The other three organizations—American Vangaurd, Identity Evropa and Right Stuff—are aimed at university and college students.
Though the statistics are disturbing, Potok doesn't believe the numbers fully represent the state of the hate in the United States.
"We've seen a very clear phenomenon of people on the radical right not engaging—many more lurking on the Internet until the day they decide that action is needed. Action, more often than not, means murder," Potok said, pointing to Dylann Roof, who had no known official affiliation with a hate group before killing nine African Americans at a Charleston church after becoming "self-radicalised" online. "We think there are a lot of Dylann Roofs out there—people who are not visible but who are out there forming the swelling radical right."
In his just-released report, The Year in Hate and Extremism, Potok concludes: "2016 was an unprecedented year for hate. The country saw a resurgence of white nationalism that imperils the racial progress we've made, along with the rise of a president whose policies reflect the values of white nationalists."
