It’s been years since rioters from various hate groups stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but images from that day are still fresh in the minds of many. Since that day, similar scenes have been increasing in regularity.
With just months to go until the next presidential election, the Southern Poverty Law Center recently released its annual “Year in Hate” report.
Researchers documented “the highest number of active anti-LGBTQ+ and white nationalist groups we have ever recorded.”
Overall, the SPLC documented 1,430 hate and antigovernment extremist groups it said comprises an organizational infrastructure that upholds white supremacy in the U.S. Furthermore, the center said that the years since the riot have served as a time for hard right extremists to prepare leading up to “one of the most significant elections in U.S. history.”
Earlier this year, Audacy reported that hate crimes in schools spiked in 2021 and 2022, citing data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. FBI Director Christopher Wray also said late last year that antisemitic threats were reaching record levels in the U.S.
Rioters at the Capitol were attempting to block the certification of votes for current President Joe Biden when they stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. Many of them were supporters of former President Donald Trump, who has been indicted on charges related to the event.
“During the heyday of the ‘alt-right’ – a term that members of the movement, researchers and journalists used to describe a big tent approach to white supremacist organizing during the early years of the Trump presidency -- the SPLC documented a historic increase in the number of white power street demonstrations,” said the organization. Today, there are almost twice as many street demonstrations as there were in 2017, the second year Trump was in office.
Now, Trump and Biden are poised to face off in November.
A record 86 active anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups were also documented last year. That’s an increase of about 33% compared to 2022, and the highest amount ever recorded by the SPLC.
“The increase is primarily the result of anti-trans organizing motivated by the hard right’s renewed focus on false conspiracy theories that paint LGBTQ+ people, notably trans people and drag artists, and their allies as sexual predators,” said the center.
According to the SPLC, the record numbers from 2023 came “alongside direct actions against minoritized groups, including hate crimes and other tactics such as anti-Black and antisemitic flyering, protests, and intimidation campaigns targeting LGBTQ+ people, libraries, schools and hospitals.”
Demographics targeted by hate groups covered in the report include Black people, women, immigrants, Jews, Muslims, and Latinx, low-income, and Indigenous communities in addition to LGBTQ+ communities. These hate groups also have overarching “holy war” and “race war” rhetoric, per the SPLC.
“The environment of fear and disruption they foster foreshadow an attempt to exploit American democratic and electoral processes in 2024 to finally accomplish the goals of the insurrection – the suppression of multiracial, pluralistic democracy,” the SPLC warned. It also offered guidance for pushing back against the efforts of hate groups in the U.S.