A new report from the Anti-Defamation League says 2020 saw the highest level in more than a decade of white supremacist propaganda spread -- 5,125 cases of racist, anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ, and other hateful messages were spread through flyers, stickers, banners, and posters.
The number of hate messages nearly doubled from 2019, although the ADL says it's much harder to quantify online messages.
The report comes as federal authorities are in the process of investigating and prosecuting those who stormed the U.S. Capitol in January, many of whom are allegedly members of hate groups or anti-government militias.
“As we try to understand and put in perspective the past four years, we will always have these bookends of Charlottesville and Capitol Hill,” group CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tells NBC 4, Los Angeles.
“The reality is there’s a lot of things that happened in between those moments that set the stage,” he said
One bit of hopeful news is that there’s a steep decline in the number of white supremacist propaganda found on college campuses, as the pandemic meant most students were not there.
“They use the uncertainty and fear caused by crisis to win over new recruits to their ‘us vs. them’ narrative, painting the ‘other’ as the cause of their pain, grievances or loss,” Christian Picciolini, a former far-right extremist who founded the deradicalization group Free Radicals Project tells Associated Press.
"The current uncertainty caused by the pandemic, job loss, a heated election, protest over extrajudicial police killings of Black Americans, and a national reckoning sparked by our country’s long tradition of racism has created a perfect storm in which to recruit Americans who are fearful of change and progress."