The Current State of White Supremacist Groups in the U.S.
News emerged this week that Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) gave a speech in 2002 to a group of white supremacists. Scalise confirmed Monday that he appeared before a convention of the group, but said that he did not know about its affiliation with racists and neo-Nazi activists. (He also issued a statement Tuesday apologizing for this “mistake.”)
Most of the attention surrounding this story has focused on Scalise, the third-highest ranking Republican in the House of Representatives. But this story has also brought new attention to the white supremacist movement in the United States, which remains out of most mainstream news coverage and is an unknown, amorphous quantity to many readers. So with such groups in the news again, we called up Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center for a guide to how things stand as 2014 winds down.
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