Far-right group the Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio interacts with supporters during the 'Latinos for Trump' demonstration in Miami, Florida, on October 18, 2020 [File: Mario Cruz/EPA-EFE]
Atlanta, February 3 (RHC)-- The Southern Poverty Law Center has announced a decrease in hate groups across the United States, although warned the threat – and increasing cooperation – of far-right activists is rising. SPLC noted in its annual Year in Hate and Extremism report there were 838 active hate groups in the United States, ranging from white supremacists to far-right anti-government militias.
The report noted that this was 102 fewer than 2019, but researchers said during a news conference this reflects a lack of need for hierarchal groups and a move to a widespread social movement invigorated by former President Donald Trump. Trump’s refusal to condemn the January 6th insurrection that aimed to keep him in power and was based on refuted claims about election fraud alarmed the researchers. He “even praised the rioters, calling them ‘patriots,’ saying ‘we love you’ and ‘you are very special'”, the report noted.
Michael Edison Hayden, an investigative reporter and spokesperson for SPLC, said during the news conference the Capitol insurrection appeared as a “collapse of these soft barriers that once existed in the Republican Party, or around the Republican Party sort of kept violent, far-right extremists.”
The shift to a social movement featuring mainstream politicians and people of color may present challenges to the public perception of the far right movement, shaped by the white nationalist rallies of 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia and elsewhere. Images of people of color involved in the insurrection point to the increased cooperation between groups that espouse racial supremacy and far-right movements that are not explicitly racist, including the QAnon conspiracy theory and militia movements.
Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, leader of the mostly white, pro-Trump Proud Boys, a far-right group that bills itself as “Western Chauvinist”, is of Afro-Cuban descent. He was ordered to leave DC before the riot after an arrest on felony and misdemeanour charges. Cassie Miller, a researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center who focuses on the far right and accelerationists within the movement, told Al Jazeera in an interview the presence of people of color in far-right movements is not new.
“The far right is not simply a movement premised on upholding white supremacy, but authoritarian ultranationalism that promotes multiple, reinforcing forms of hierarchy,” Miller said. “A group like the Proud Boys, where misogyny is a core tenet, might appeal to some men primarily because want to shore up the privileged status that patriarchy affords them.”
