Five Years Later: Progress slow but steady against violent extremism
since deadly 'Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville
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Michael Lieberman, Senior Policy Counsel, Hate & Extremism | Read
the full piece here
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Friend,
Five years have passed since white supremacists from across the
country converged in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest the
city's decision to remove a statue
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of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
The vision of an estimated 1,000 white nationalists marching at night
with tiki torches chanting "Jews will not replace us!"
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is seared into our memories from the first day. On the second day,
the "Unite the Right" rally turned violent and deadly, as
extremists fought in the streets with counterprotesters. A car driven
by a neo-Nazi sympathizer
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plowed into a group of peaceful counterprotesters, killing Heather
Heyer
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and injuring dozens more.
Now - five years after Charlottesville, 19 months after the
deadly Jan. 6 insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol and three
months before pivotal 2022 midterm elections - the danger posed
by the mainstreaming of extremist beliefs and the threat of political
violence is clear and present. It is a good time to chart the progress
that's been made, as well as the setbacks.
Setbacks since Charlottesville
* Far-right extremism has been mainstreamed
The attempt to bring white nationalist ideas into the mainstream that
manifested in Charlottesville has continued unabated - and has
perhaps accelerated. An alarming number of leading elected officials
now embrace the movement's false conspiracy theories and promote
former President Donald Trump's lie that he lost the 2020
election only because of massive voter fraud engineered by Democrats.
Though the mainstreaming of far-right extremism certainly did not
begin with Trump's presidency, there is no doubt that his
racist, antisemitic and xenophobic words and actions helped create a
permissive climate for hate. For example, we saw a dramatic spike in
violence against the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI)
community following Trump's vilifying language at rallies and at
news conferences about the spread of COVID-19, calling it "Wuhan
flu" and "Chinese virus." Earlier, soon after the
2016 election, the Southern Poverty Law Center documented what we
called the "Trump Effect"
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The Trump Effect.pdf
across the country - a surge of incidents involving racial
slurs and symbols, bigotry and the harassment of Black and Brown
children in the nation's schools during and after Trump's
campaign.
* Increased threat of political violence
The SPLC's annual Year in Hate and Extremism report
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, released in March, documented a third straight year of declines in
the number of hate and antigovernment extremist groups operating
across the U.S. We concluded, however, that the threat from these
groups was not actually diminishing; rather, extremist ideas were now
embraced more openly in the mainstream, increasing the threat of
politically motivated violence.
We saw this play out starkly on Jan. 6, 2021. Dozens of members of
hate groups have been arrested in association with the Capitol attack.
The vast majority of people who took part in the insurrectionist
violence, however, were not associated with a specific extremist
group, demonstrating just how deeply hate and antigovernment
narratives have penetrated the political right.
A recent poll
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jointly conducted by the SPLC and Tulchin Research provided more
evidence. We found that the white nationalist "great
replacement"
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narrative, which apparently motivated the alleged white supremacist
who murdered 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York -
as well as numerous other domestic terrorists - has become
thoroughly absorbed into mainstream politics. In fact, two-thirds of
Republican respondents in our survey agreed with the statement that
the country's demographic changes are being orchestrated by
"liberal leaders actively trying to leverage political power by
replacing more conservative white voters."
In addition, more than a third of respondents said the country's
changing demographics are a threat to white Americans and their
culture and values. Twenty percent think threatening a politician is
acceptable, and nearly a quarter of respondents approve of
assassinating "a politician who is harming our country or
democracy."
READ MORE
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In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
The SPLC is a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond,
working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy,
strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of
all people.
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