CLASHES BETWEEN WHITE supremacist groups and those protesting against them have taken place during a rise in the number of US hate groups in the past two years.
At the weekend, groups including the Ku Klux Klan neo-Nazis marched through a Virginia college campus chanting “we will not be replaced” and holding flags bearing swastikas.
During counter protests on Saturday, a car ran into the crowd and killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer. Although President Donald Trump criticised the violence, he made no mention of racism until this evening.
According to figures from the Southern Poverty Law Center, there were 917 active hate groups in the US in 2016, compared to 892 in 2015 and 784 in 2014.
The rise comes after a dramatic drop in their number between 2011 and 2014.
Barack Obama’s presidency ran from 2009 to January 2017; it was during his presidency that unfair treatment by the police towards the black community was highlighted.
The past few years have brought the rise of Isis, or the so-called Islamic State, due to the vacuum left behind after the withdrawal of western troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Isis has claimed responsibility for a series of terrorist attacks across Europe and the Middle East in those years, leading to a rise in hate crimes against Muslims.
During his campaign for the 2016 election, Donald Trump promised to build a wall along the US border with Mexico and put a Muslim ban in place, which gave him a bump in the polls.
Trump’s win based on anti-immigration policies, among others which he campaigned on, is often used as proof of deep-rooted divisions that exist in the US.
The same figures from the Southern Poverty Law Center show the divide between those active hate groups.
According to the figures, over 190 of the 917 hate groups in the US last year were black separatist groups, which seek separate economic and societal institutions for African-Americans, and usually oppose interracial couples.
The second most common hate group was the Ku Klux Klan at 130 groups.
Four groups are around the third most common hate group in the US: anti-Muslim, general hate, white nationalist and neo-Nazi, with around 100 groups of each of them across the US in 2016.
Today, Donald Trump publicly condemned hatred, “evil” racism and bigotry in all its forms in a scripted speech which responded to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
We condemn in the strongest possible terms, this egregious display of hatred and bigotry… Violence has no place in America.
“No matter the colour of our skin we all salute the same great flag and we are made by the same Almighty god,” he said.
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