Alabama Ranks No. 4 With Most Hate Groups In US, Analysis Shows

White supremacists and nationalist groups thrived in President Trump’s first year in office, according to a new report that showed a 4 percent increase in the number of hate groups nationwide. An analysis of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s report showed Idaho, an overwhelmingly white state where only 5.8 percent of the population is the most hateful state in the country, with 12 active hate groups.

Alabama ranked No. 4 on the list with 23 hate groups (4.7 per million people), according to a report by 24/7 Wall Street. Despite the high ranking, the number of active hate groups in Alabama fell from 27 in 2016 to 23 last year. Still, the state ranked in the top 10 among the greatest number and concentration of hate groups in the country.

Of the 23 active hate groups identified in the state, 21 are preoccupied by racial identity. Such groups include five KKK chapters, five neo-Confederate chapters, and six black nationalist groups, the 24/7 Wall Street report said.

In its 2018 Intelligence Project report, the civil rights advocacy group Southern Poverty Law Center said the number of active hate groups in the United States has risen from 784 in 2014 to 954 in 2017 as “alt-right” white supremacy groups broke through a firewall that for decades kept overt racists underground.

“President Trump in 2017 reflected what white supremacist groups want to see: a country where racism is sanctioned by the highest office, immigrants are given the boot and Muslims banned,” Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, said in a statement. “When you consider that only days into 2018, Trump called African countries ‘s---holes,’ it’s clear he’s not changing his tune. And that’s music to the ears of white supremacists.”

In its analysis of the hate map, 24/7 Wall Street reported the 10 most hateful states are Idaho, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Indiana, Virginia, Oregon, Arkansas, Georgia and Colorado.

The online financial news and opinion site looked at the number of hate groups per 1 million state residents, immigrant populations, and a range of socio-economic data, including the percentage of adults 25 years and old who hold at least a bachelor’ degree, the percentage of each state’s population that is white, poverty rates and median household income. The data came from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2016 American Community Survey and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Click here for more on the methodology

In Idaho, a fourth of hate groups are overtly anti-Muslim, including ACT for America, the Committee to End the CSI Refugee Center and Pig Blood Bullets. They have backed a spate of anti-Sharia law legislation whose intent is in inflame passions rather than serve any useful purpose, as the U.S. Constitution already denies authority to any foreign law. Idaho also has Ku Klux Klan chapters and Neo-Nazi groups.

In its 2018 Spring Intelligence Report, the SPLC said that within the white supremacist movement, the greatest growth was in neo-Nazi groups, to 121 in 2017 from 99 the year prior. The number of anti-Muslim groups increased for a third straight year, to 114 chapters in 2017, up from 101 in 2016. Those groups had tripled in growth in 2015, according to the report.

The number of Ku Klux Klan groups decreased to 72 nationwide in 2017, down from 130 a year earlier. The SPLC said the decline “is a clear indication that the new generation of white suprem­acists is rejecting the Klan’s hoods and robes for the hipper image of the more loosely organized alt-right movement.”

Click here to read the report from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Photo: In this Dec. 6, 2016 file photo, Richard Spencer, who leads a movement that mixes racism, white nationalism and populism, speaks at the Texas A&M University campus in College Station, Texas. GuideStar, a website that touts itself as the world’s largest source of information about charities has added a new feature: a warning label on tax-exempt nonprofits accused of spreading hate. GuideStar, a self-described “neutral” repository for data on more than 2 million charities, recently flagged 46 nonprofits, including Spencer's Virginia-based National Policy Institute, for being labeled as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)