The FBI arrest of nine militia members over the weekend who were preparing for armed conflict with law enforcement highlights the recent growth in homegrown militia groups. The Hutaree militia members were planning to kill a local law enforcement official and then attack the officers who attend the funeral.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) keeps track of hate groups, including these anti-federal government patriot groups. They often espouse anti-government conspiracy theories and first caught the attention of America in the mid 1990s when they reacted angrily to the Clinton administration.
In a recent report, Rage on the Right, SPLC reports that the patriot movement grew with 363 new groups in 2009. According to SPLC that brings the total to 512 patriot groups, 127 of those groups are militias.
Mark Potok, author of Rage on the Right, said while speaking with National Public Radio that the militia movement of the 1990s “produced an extraordinary amount of criminal violence,” including the Oklahoma city bombing that killed 168 people.
His report states that anger on the political right about demographic, economic, and political changes in the nation is growing in recent years.
“The number of hate groups in America has been going up for years,” he writes. He writes that between 2000 and 2008 hate groups went up 54 percent, mostly in response to nonwhite immigration. He says that the recent economic downturn and the election of an African-American president have also led to a rise in groups on the extreme right.
The report includes numbers on what the SPLC calls “nativist extremists,” groups that don’t just advocate restricted immigration, but even harass suspected immigrants. Nearly all of such nativist groups appeared since 2005 and their numbers nearly doubled between 2008 and 2009, with 173 in 2008 and 309 in 2009.
What Potok says most concerns him are mainstream figures taking on ideas or positions of such groups and giving them credibility. Speaking with Terry Gross on National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air” he spoke of Fox News’ Glenn Beck. In April 2009 Beck did a story about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) concentration camps. Potok says that ever since back in the 1990s, or even earlier, the patriot groups have held onto this idea that FEMA built secret concentration camps and that one day the patriot groups would be rounded up and sent there.
Over a number of shows Beck explored the idea, eventually concluding it was false. Potok expressed his frustration that a mainstream news personality such as Beck even gave the idea any attention.
“This is really a far-out idea that has not a scrap of basis in reality but which is plugged again and again—where probably literally millions of Americans, certainly hundreds of thousands, either believe this is true or suspect it may be true,” said Potok.
A Harris Poll released last March 24 gives some picture of what Americans are thinking these days, about their president and country. According to the poll 40 percent of Americans think Obama is a socialist, and 67 percent of Republicans think so. Twenty percent of Americans say Obama is “doing many of the things that Hitler did,” with 38 percent of Republicans agreeing. Twenty-five percent of Americans agree that Obama was “not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president,” and so do 45 percent of Republicans.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) keeps track of hate groups, including these anti-federal government patriot groups. They often espouse anti-government conspiracy theories and first caught the attention of America in the mid 1990s when they reacted angrily to the Clinton administration.
In a recent report, Rage on the Right, SPLC reports that the patriot movement grew with 363 new groups in 2009. According to SPLC that brings the total to 512 patriot groups, 127 of those groups are militias.
Mark Potok, author of Rage on the Right, said while speaking with National Public Radio that the militia movement of the 1990s “produced an extraordinary amount of criminal violence,” including the Oklahoma city bombing that killed 168 people.
His report states that anger on the political right about demographic, economic, and political changes in the nation is growing in recent years.
“The number of hate groups in America has been going up for years,” he writes. He writes that between 2000 and 2008 hate groups went up 54 percent, mostly in response to nonwhite immigration. He says that the recent economic downturn and the election of an African-American president have also led to a rise in groups on the extreme right.
The report includes numbers on what the SPLC calls “nativist extremists,” groups that don’t just advocate restricted immigration, but even harass suspected immigrants. Nearly all of such nativist groups appeared since 2005 and their numbers nearly doubled between 2008 and 2009, with 173 in 2008 and 309 in 2009.
What Potok says most concerns him are mainstream figures taking on ideas or positions of such groups and giving them credibility. Speaking with Terry Gross on National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air” he spoke of Fox News’ Glenn Beck. In April 2009 Beck did a story about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) concentration camps. Potok says that ever since back in the 1990s, or even earlier, the patriot groups have held onto this idea that FEMA built secret concentration camps and that one day the patriot groups would be rounded up and sent there.
Over a number of shows Beck explored the idea, eventually concluding it was false. Potok expressed his frustration that a mainstream news personality such as Beck even gave the idea any attention.
“This is really a far-out idea that has not a scrap of basis in reality but which is plugged again and again—where probably literally millions of Americans, certainly hundreds of thousands, either believe this is true or suspect it may be true,” said Potok.
A Harris Poll released last March 24 gives some picture of what Americans are thinking these days, about their president and country. According to the poll 40 percent of Americans think Obama is a socialist, and 67 percent of Republicans think so. Twenty percent of Americans say Obama is “doing many of the things that Hitler did,” with 38 percent of Republicans agreeing. Twenty-five percent of Americans agree that Obama was “not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president,” and so do 45 percent of Republicans.
