Speakers Criticize ‘Patriot’ Movement

Although the numbers of traditional white supremacist and other hate groups have decreased in the 1990s, a more insidious type of terror group--the so-called patriot movement--is on the rise, according to one speaker Monday at a symposium at the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Mark Potok, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, told 250 invited guests from law enforcement and human rights organizations that much of the patriot movement is nothing more than savvy hate groups in disguise.

The newer organizations, he said, were conceived by the same people who just a few years ago were leading the Ku Klux Klan, the neo-Nazis and other groups that are open about their racist and anti-Semitic views.

“A decision was made to strip away the explicit racism,” Potok said as part of a panel on hate groups, “to rebuild the movement with a different face.”

Harvard professor Raphael Ezekiel told the audience that in researching his book “The Racist Mind,” he noticed several themes in the lives of the young neo-Nazis he studied.

“The white racist movement is about resentment, it’s about fear and it’s about spiritual isolation,” Ezekiel said. “These young people were afraid they would disappear.”

People protesting the hate rallies at least acknowledged that the teens existed, Ezekiel said. To solve the problem, he said, the community must offer an alternative ideology and a source of support.