Internet Promotes a Surge in Hate Groups, Study Finds

Aided by the Internet and alarmed about the coming millennium, the number of anti-government and racist hate groups has risen sharply over the last year, according to a study released Tuesday by two of the premier agencies that keep an eye on such groups.

Experts from Klanwatch and the Militia Task Force documented an all-time high of 474 hate groups in the United States last year, a 20% increase over 1996. The growth of such groups could trigger a wave of bombings and other domestic violence as this century comes to a close, the watchdog agencies warn.

While the traditional white supremacist movement continues to grow, a new breed of far-right fanatics is being recruited by Biblical doomsayers, an underground culture featuring violent rock ‘n’ roll, and the Internet, which allows hate groups to reach teenagers at home, the study said.

“Mainstream America is being targeted in a way that this country hasn’t seen in decades,” said Joe Roy, director of the study.

Florida--often the scene of antiabortion violence and other hate crimes--was the state with the largest number of groups, 48, followed by California, with 35.

The monitors used a new methodology for counting the number of hate groups across the country, making it impossible to determine exactly how many there were in the past. But they said that, if their old monitoring system was used, the new figures would show a 20% increase in hate groups.

Although the traditional Ku Klux Klan continued to be the largest hate group, growing in popularity were Neo-Nazis, Skinheads, white Christian fundamentalists and black separatist organizations, the study said.

The number of people who have some affiliation to these groups is uncertain. But the monitors believe that about 50,000 people practice the Christian Identity religion, a racist movement that has been embraced by, among others, Eric Robert Rudolph, the man wanted in the fatal January bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., abortion clinic.

The experts said there is also an unknown number of small, individual extremist cells that operate independently, making them difficult to track. They can be the most dangerous, the experts said, because the members often flit in and out of the movement and tend to act on their own.

Timothy J. McVeigh, now on death row for the Oklahoma City bombing, is typical of that trend in that he never joined a militia or other organized group, yet he often moved freely among other anti-government organizations.

Of equal concern, the experts said, is the rise of a new subculture. In three years’ time, 163 Web sites have popped up on the Internet to preach hatred and about 50,000 music CDs have been sold by hard-rock groups urging violence, the report said.

And with the year 2000 approaching, many hate preachers are warning that 1998 marks “the start of the end times,” the study says.

“It’s not a Southern phenomenon anymore,” Roy said of racial and government hatred.