SPLC Hatewatch

A young research engineer at the U.S. Army’s elite chemical and biological research laboratory in Maryland has close ties to two racist groups espousing white nationalist views, one of which has called for a homeland for white people. John Stortstrom, a mechanical engineer who works for the Army at its Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC), was [...]

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is the daughter of Indian immigrants and just the third person of color to be elected governor of a Southern state. So, one might think she would want nothing to do with racists and anti-immigrant extremists. Not so, apparently. In anticipation of her 2014 re-election campaign, the Tea Party darling has put [...]

Some skinhead organizers, well, it seems, just can’t stop organizing the next generation of racist clubs, claiming they’ve now found the right formula. Take the case of Brien James, a tattoo shop owner from Indiana. A household name in some racist circles, James has been organizing or attempting to organize neo-Nazi skinhead gangs since his teens. [...]

Yet another organization with a white supremacist agenda — this one packaged as a “white nationalist think tank” — has moved its operations to northwestern Montana, leaving Georgia to join a rag-tag collection of some of the country’s leading racists and extremists. The National Policy Institute (NPI), which enjoys tax-exempt status, now lists a post office [...]

Opponents of immigration reform legislation have been trying to steer clear of white nationalists lately, hoping to keep their opposition to citizenship for undocumented Latino immigrants free from the taint of racism. But they just can’t seem to run fast enough. Last week, a major Heritage Foundation report about the supposed costs of illegal immigration was pilloried [...]

Last spring, I wrote an article for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) Intelligence Report that ran online under the headline, “Leader’s Suicide Brings Attention to Men’s Rights Movement.” One year later, following an unremitting series of attacks on what I wrote by defensive men’s right activists (MRAs), another suicide has shed new light on [...]

Authorities in Ohio say they aren’t sure what motivated a 42-year-old man to jump out of his car during a traffic stop in March and suddenly fire 37 rounds at two police officers. What seems clear, however, is the case is yet another example of the danger posed to unsuspecting officers who confront individuals steeped [...]

Editor’s Note: On Friday, May 10, the Heritage Foundation, which earlier distanced itself from the controversial views of its senior policy analyst Jason Richwine, said Richwine had resigned from the foundation, according to Politico. Jason Richwine, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, is attracting attention because of a recently released anti-immigration study that is garnering [...]

A 24-year-old Minnesota man with ties to an antigovernment militia group is under arrest for what now appears to be a plot to bomb a local police department. Buford “Bucky” Rogers, of Montevideo, Minn., only has been charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm, but other federal charges – and possibly other arrests [...]

We live in frightening times. In Boston, a college student who appears to have been radicalized online may face lethal injection for his alleged role in a terrorist attack that left four people dead and more than 260 wounded. Just a few months ago, in Connecticut, a young man killed 20 young children and six [...]

Jeffrey Earnhardt, a young prince of one of NASCAR’s royal families, and the Oath Keepers, a conspiracy-spinning “Constitutionalist” group, are joining forces for an upcoming race that “could help make Oath Keepers a household name.” At least that’s the pitch – and the hope – of the Oath Keepers founder, Stewart Rhodes, as he tries to [...]

They just can’t stop lying. They claim to represent Christianity and the celestial love for mankind that Christ embodied, but when it comes to whomever they regard as their enemies here on planet Earth, the crudest of libels will do. The latest example of the religious right’s endless series of falsifications, slanders and baseless demonizations came [...]

Ron Paul, the libertarian former Texas congressman whose hard-line views are widely admired on the radical right but who claims to reject racism, has started a new organization stacked with a hodgepodge of far-right extremists. As The Daily Beast reported yesterday, the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity is ostensibly designed to promote a discourse [...]

“The curse of Ham,” an old-time Biblical (mis)interpretation used to vilify black people and justify slavery and laws against racial intermarriage, is still alive and spreading bigotry in the United States. The Appleby Baptist Church in Nacogdoches, Texas, is among this country’s scattered, independent fundamentalist churches still openly promoting the idea that the Biblical Noah pronounced [...]

Howard Phillips, one of the main architects of the Moral Majority and, more generally, the American religious right, died Saturday at the age of 72. According to the Christian News Network, he had been suffering from dementia. Phillips had a long history in conservative and right-wing movements, including three runs as a third-party presidential candidate. He [...]

With the news that the Boston Marathon bombers may have Chechnyan roots, attention is turning to the threat of “self-radicalized” Muslims in the United States. In the fall of 2011, the Intelligence Report ran a cover story and several sidebars on that phenomenon that may be useful to readers. Our lead story explored the changing nature [...]

Editor’s Note: We’ve corrected the attribution of a quote below suggesting that if the attackers were antigovernment they would have attacked a government target, rather than random Americans. The quote actually came from Mike Lackomar of the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia. Hatewatch regrets the error, which was the result of an editing mistake. Who was responsible [...]

The “American psyche” was damaged when an armed arsonist set fire to a Toledo mosque, much like the impact of Monday’s bombings in Boston, a federal judge said in sentencing an Indiana man to 20 years in prison. Randolph Linn, 52, of St. Joe, Ind., was also ordered to pay restitution of more than $1.4 million. [...]

Two white supremacists are in custody and two more are being sought in the beating death in Tennessee of a volunteer firefighter who authorities say was affiliated with the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations. At least one of the four suspects is reportedly a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, a prison-based, “whites-only” gang that is known as one [...]

Over 150 white nationalists gathered yesterday at Montgomery Bell State Park outside Nashville, Tenn., for the American Renaissance conference. This year’s event featured new speakers and a noticeably younger audience, with half the crowd raising their hands after Jared Taylor, emcee of the event, opened it by asking, “How many of you are first time [...]