(Reuters) – The Southern Poverty Law Center recorded 838 active chapters of about 320 organizations it deems to be “hate groups” across the United States in the annual census published by the civil rights group on Monday, down from the 940 chapters reported the year before.
The center attributed the decline in part to the continued collapse of the Ku Klux Klan, with only 25 active chapters observed last year, and a decrease in distinct white-nationalist groups as the ideology moved increasingly online. In-person organizing was also curtailed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the report https://www.splcenter.org/news/2021/02/01/year-hate-2020 said, although the group does not report or estimate the number of members each chapter represents.
The group also criticized former U.S. President Donald Trump, a Republican who lost the November election, for mobilizing some of the groups.
“Throughout his presidency, Trump and his allies denied and minimized the reality of bigotry in this country, and legitimized white supremacy through policies like the Muslim ban and the child separation,” the group wrote.
Trump faces a U.S. Senate trial after being impeached for a second time, in this instance for “incitement of insurrection” after he encouraged his supporters to march on the Capitol as lawmakers formalized the victory of President Joe Biden, a Democrat. Lawmakers hid for their safety during the deadly siege which lasted hours.
The SPLC, based in Alabama, defines a hate group as one that has “beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics” such as race or sexuality.
A group or chapter does not need to have followed through on its beliefs with criminal conduct to be included on its list. Some groups listed by SPLC have complained that they have been wrongly included for merely espousing conservative beliefs, and noted that some of its senior leaders were fired or resigned in 2019 after employees complained of a racist and sexist workplace.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Richard Chang)
