Following last year’s shooting of nine black parishioners at a church in Charleston, S.C., Gov. Nikki Haley responded by pushing for the removal of a ceremonial Confederate flag from the Capitol grounds.
Quickly, Confederate symbols across the South came under fire, prompting a counter-reaction from Southern heritage defenders and more extreme groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nation and skinhead movements. In Georgia, Stone Mountain became the focus of rallies that became more extreme (and gradually smaller) over the past year.
But observers of extremist right wing activists say those racist organizations have moved on from Charleston and have a new motivator: Donald Trump.
“Over the last year we’ve seen hate come into the mainstream like we haven’t before. I think it’s being fueled by Mr. Trump’s candidacy,” said Richard Cohen of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based non-profit that monitors hate groups. “They have embraced Mr. Trump as they have not embraced a candidate before.”
“Charleston is already forgotten,” said Spencer Sunshine, a fellow with New York-based Political Research Associations, which also follows extremist politics. “What is important for the white nationalists is Trump. Trump has lit a fire under them.”
The presumptive Republican nominee’s promises to close the borders, freeze immigration for Muslims and build a wall between the United States and Mexico find a willing ear on white nationalist forums like Stormfront.org, which has hundreds of pages of posts dedicated to discussing his candidacy.
The discussion is not uniformly positive, with posters criticizing Trump’s pro-Israel statements, and more recently, his boast this week that he was “a real friend” to the gay community, following the massacre Sunday in a gay nightclub in Orlando.
But many posters see him as their best option.
“Now; the question is, will he continue to champion the rights and will of whites? The only thing we can do right now is wait and see,” one wrote. “For those of you hell bent on finding another Hitler, (I personally would love nothing less) it’s not going to happen. Trump is the best thing we’ve got, as flawed as he may be.”
Whether such groups could use the fractious debate over Trump’s controversial statements to boost the number of actual activists in unclear. Experts say organized white extremists groups remain small and disorganized, despite the a year of Confederate flag rallies.
About the Author
