The numbers of hate groups and deadly hate crimes both rose in 2018, according to an annual report released Wednesday by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which cited as its prime example Pittsburgh’s deadly Oct. 27 synagogue rampage, fueled by a toxic cocktail of anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant hatred.
The center released its annual report on hate groups, saying they rose to a record 1,020 in its annual tracking of such organizations. That’s a 30 percent increase over the past four years, which the center said directly tracked the rise of candidate and then President Donald Trump, whom it accused of “mainstreaming hate.”
The SPLC’s annual report has faced criticism from those who say that it unjustly stigmatizes legitimate political differences as hate speech. Critics say the SPLC lumps some conservative advocacy groups, which call for limits on such things as immigration and gay rights, together with obvious hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
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Here is the Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual report on hate groups and hate crimes:
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The center defends its listings, saying that those it lists give sweeping denunciations of entire groups, such as linking immigrants or LGBT persons with crime. It defines hate groups as those with “beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.”
And it said there’s an increase not only in hate groups but hate crimes, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation figures.
There is an “enlivened American hate movement,” lamented Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, in a conference call with reporters.
Robert Bowers has pleaded not guilty to 63 federal charges in relation to the Oct. 27 gun massacre of 11 worshipers from three congregations meeting at the Tree of Life / Or L’Simcha synagogue in Squirrel Hill. Within that same week, a gunman killed two African-American shoppers at a Louisville, Ky., grocery store after finding the door locked to a nearby, historically black church, while another man was arrested for allegedly sending package bombs to popular targets of right-wing contempt, including financier George Soros, CNN and top Democrats.
Authorities say Mr. Bowers spouted conspiracy theories about a “white genocide.” He had poured out his hatred of Jews, and for the immigrants being aided by a Jewish-affiliated social service agency HIAS, into the Gab.com social media website. The SPLC said Gab has become “home to countless neo-Nazis and other extremists” at a time when they’re being “deplatformed” by other social-media sites.
The Gab site defends itself as championing “free speech, individual liberty and the free flow of information online. All are welcome.” The Pennsylvania attorney general’s office recently subpoenaed documents from the site’s new domain registrar, Epik.com, seeking information that included complaints regarding Gab.
The SPLC said Mr. Bowers is among the anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic extremists who are emboldened by President Trump and yet also disillusioned with him. Mr. Bowers said before the shootings he believed President Trump was controlled by Jews. The SPLC said there is the danger that “more angry lone wolves like Bowers may see violence as a solution.”
The report blasted President Trump for pushing what it called “noxious anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim ideas.”
His defenders dispute such claims. President Trump came to Pittsburgh with his son-in-law and daughter, both observant Jews, to pay respects to the Tree of Life victims. In his State of the Union address this month, he called for opposing the “poison of anti-Semitism ... anywhere and everywhere.”
“The assertion that the president is in any way to blame for this is absolutely ridiculous,” said Jason Gottesman, director of communications for the Republican Party of Pennsylvania. “Donald Trump has done more for Americans of every variety than any president in recent memory,” he said, citing “record-low unemployment” benefitting minority groups and the administration’s support such things as criminal-justice reform for non-violent offenders and the decriminalization of homosexuality in foreign countries.
The SPLC said the bulk of hate groups have a white-supremacist bent, though it also cited black-nationalist groups as being active.
The report had multiple Western Pennsylvania connections. It cited the charges of ethnic intimidation against six alleged white supremacists in a July attack on an African-American man at an Avalon bar.
It cited an unprecedented level of the distribution of hateful flyers in public places. Such distribution in Lawrenceville drew the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which said last month it is investigating whether such activity crossed the line from free speech to criminal threats.
The SPLC also cited groups that advocate stricter immigration controls, some of which are funded by foundations linked to the Scaife family. They include the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), both based in Washington, D.C. The SPLC said these groups are gaining influence in government, including the White House.
The SPLC has said it began listing the Center for Immigration Studies in 2016 for such things as its “repeated circulation of white nationalist and antisemitic writers” and its publishing reports that “hype the criminality of immigrants.”
But the Center for Immigration Studies has pushed back. In January, it filed a federal lawsuit under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, against SPLC President Richard Cohen and Ms. Beirich (but not the SPLC itself).
It accuses the pair of weaponizing the hate-group designation over a disagreement over the Center for Immigration Studies’ low-immigration advocacy in an effort to “wreck and destroy CIS by ruining it financially,” stigmatizing it among potential donors. It also claimed that immigrants don’t meet SPLC’s own definition of a group with an “immutable” trait because migration is a choice.
“We stand by our hate-group listings,” Ms. Beirich said.
Over many years, foundations affiliated with the wealthy Scaife family, including the Colcom and Sarah Scaife foundations, have contributed millions to CIS and FAIR.
The late Richard Mellon Scaife, of Ligonier and Shadyside, who published the Tribune-Review newspapers until his 2014 death, funded many conservative nonprofit organizations through the Sarah Scaife Foundation. The Colcom Foundation was established by his sister, Cordelia Scaife May, in 1996. She died in 2005.
John Rohe, vice president for philanthropy at the Colcom Foundation, disagreed with the SPLC’s assessment of such organizations as hate groups.
“The Foundation would have no tolerance for that type of misconduct,” he said. “The Foundation has an interest in advancing public education on the level of immigration that is sustainable, that is pro-immigrant, that is not racially-biased in any way,” he said. “There should be an informed conversation among people of goodwill to discuss the level of immigration. Should it stay at the unprecedented high level that it is now? Should it go to zero? The answer will likely be somewhere between the extremes. We should have a conversation on the level of immigration that is commensurate with jobs, commensurate with the environment, and commensurate with securing the American dream for immigrants.”
In December, signs with Colcom’s name were removed from the Pittsburgh Downtown Holiday Market after some protested over its funding of the groups calling for stricter immigration rules. The foundation also funds local civic causes.
Peter Smith: petersmith@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416; Twitter @PG_PeterSmith.
First Published: February 20, 2019, 4:30 p.m.
