Extreme-Right Groups Declining, but ‘Leaner and Meaner,’ SPLC Says
Welcome, albeit slow progress. SPLC keeps a wary eye out.
The number of far-right militias, extremist patriot groups and hate organizations in the U.S. dropped last year for the first time since 1999, but the organizations are becoming “leaner and meaner,” the Southern Poverty Law Center reported Tuesday.
The center attributed the drop to, among other factors, an improving economy and a gridlocked Congress that made little progress on flash point issues like gun control and immigration.
The absorption of some radical-right ideas into mainstream legislative proposals also helped cut down on the number of far-right groups operating in the U.S. to about 2,035 in 2013, the civil-rights advocacy group said. That’s down 14% from 2,367 in 2012.
Though the drop appears “to have taken some of the wind out of the sails of the radical right,” the center warned in its latest report that violence and terrorism had not “dampened” among extremist groups.
More: Extreme-Right Groups Declining, but ‘Leaner and Meaner,’ Watchdog Says