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GUEST: Mark Potok, Director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center

A new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center has found that hate groups in the US continued to proliferate, and that most of them are fueled by anti-immigrant hatred. The Center has counted 888 hate groups in 2007, up 48% since the year 2000. This rise has been marked by a 35% increase in hate crimes documented by the FBI, against Latinos between 2003 and 2006. The report, called The Year in Hate, concludes that there is a link between the anti-immigrant hate groups and hate crimes against Latinos. The hate groups fall into several broad categories including neo-Nazi, white nationalist, racist skinhead and those with links to the Ku Klux Klan. One group calling itself the Emigration Party of Nevada, wants to send government “sniper teams” to the border and forcibly sterilize Mexican women after a first child. These groups also actively perpetuate conspiracy theories about a secret plan to merge Mexico, Canada and United States into a single country called the North American Union.

For more information, visit www.intelligencereport.org.

Download the report by the Southern Poverty Law Center here: http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=886

Rough Transcript:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Can you start off by telling our listeners what the trend has been in hate crimes against immigrants over the years and what you’ve seen in the latest report?

Mark Potok: Well, first of all, what we’ve found is that the number of hate groups has gone up very significantly over the last six or seven years. In fact, looking back to the year 2000, there has been a 48% rise in the number of these groups, from 602 groups to 888 during calendar year 2007. That, all by itself, is worrying and our analysis on that is that what is driving the growth of these groups almost entirely is the debate on immigration.

Sonali: How do you come up with that conclusion?

Mark: Well, in a number of different ways. For one, some of it is certainly anecdotal. But I will tell you that virtually every Klan group and neo-Nazi group out there has just about dropped all their propaganda about, you know, what’s wrong with Black people, what’s wrong with gay people, what’s wrong with the Jews and so on and it’s all about illegal immigration. Almost every couple of weeks we have another Klan or neo-Nazi demonstration about illegal immigration and, of course, what is wrong with people with brown skin. That’s one piece of the evidence that propaganda has completely turned to that issue. You know, another interesting finding was in the last year, the largest numerical growth of hate groups of all 50 states came in three of the four southern border states – in California, Arizona and Texas – which also I think backs up the idea that immigration has been so central to this growth. You know, another thing worth saying is that at the same time as these groups are multiplying, we’re seeing an increase, or at least FBI statistics are suggesting very strongly that there’s an increase in hate crimes against Latinos, which I think are essentially equal. You know, almost all of these attacks are attacks against people that the perpetrators think are undocumented immigrants. So, you know, what the FBI stats show is a rise of 35% in anti-Latino hate crimes between 2003 and 2006 and, you know, as I say, those statistics are very, very sketchy and I don’t mean to put them forward as authoritative because they really aren’t, but they certainly suggest what I think seems to be going on. One can see them any other ways as well.

Sonali: Mark, how do you exactly define a hate group? I mean are all of these groups pretty easy to identify or do they have sort of varying degrees of anti-immigrant and anti-Latino sentiment?

Mark: Very much, you know, a very wide range. Some of the groups are, you know, perfectly easy, you know, sort of Klan groups and neo-Nazi groups. And others try very hard to kind of masquerade as mainstream groups. You know, one group in particular, the very large one, the Council of Conservative Citizens comes to mind. This is the group that’s directly descended from the old white Citizens Councils that were formed to resist desegregation in the South in the 50s and 60s. But, the Council for years tried to present itself and was rather successful as a mainstream group. They had people like Senate Majority Leader at the time Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican, endorsing the group saying they’re a wonderful bunch of people and so on. You know, come to find out, actually what happened was we did a major investigation of the group and they’re absolutely, explicitly racist. Since we’ve done that expose, you know, they have things up on their website saying, for instance, saying that Black people are a retrograde species of humanity, that kind of thing. So, there are many groups that are much more difficult to identify and they tend to be the ones that, you know, want very much to be accepted as mainstream groups.

Sonali: Another organization is Federation for American Immigration Reform or FAIR which I understand was newly added to your list of groups you identify as hate groups. Why did you add this organization and what has their response been?

Mark: Well, we have watched them for years. What we’ve said about FAIR in the past is that they pushed very, very hard on the limits of what, you know, being a hate group was. In other words, they came extremely close. Last February, February of ’07, something happened that caused us to take another look at FAIR and what that was was that FAIR’s officials invited the leaders of a party called Flam’s Bellan, a racist party that was actually banned under a previous name by the Supreme Court in Belgium. The astounding thing, at least to us, was that their leader, Dan Stein, their president, told National Public Radio that in fact they were meeting with these people because they wanted to seek their advice. You know, I think that kind of flabbergasted all of us here and we decided, you know, let’s look again at FAIR and see if we’ve made the right decision. And what we found ultimately was that many things were well-known and others less well-known and some new things as well but the group has trafficked in white supremacist ideas for years. And connections – some of its officials have been involved in white supremacist groups. To try and answer the rest of your question, I mean, their response has been fury I would say. I mean, they’ve called us McCarthyites, they’ve said that it’s all a scam to raise money. And, you know, gone on from there. I mean essentially their response has been lies, lies, all lies. They have not bothered to get down into the actual weeds of what we’re saying by and large. They prefer simply to call us liars.

Sonali: Dan Stein has accused you of, instead of your slogan “stop the hate”, it really should be “stop the debate”. So, he’s basically saying that you guys want to stifle debate about the immigration issue?

Mark: Yeah, that is what he’s saying. I don’t know quite where he got the thing about our slogan being “stop the hate”, I don’t know where that came from but, in any case, yes, that’s what he said – we are the evil people trying to crush free speech in an open debate. Of course, that is really not our position at all. You know, let me say I think without question, that this country needs a debate on immigration. It’s you know, obvious, I think, to most Americans that the immigration situation is in chaos, the federal policy is no policy at all. So, you know, all along, our role in this has not been to say we ought to have open borders or we ought to shut our borders down or thus and such is the correct level of immigration. Our role has been to say, look, it is a good thing and a necessary thing for people in a democracy to debate an important national issue like immigration, to try and find a solution that is, you know, best for all concerned. But that debate ought to be about precisely that and not about what is wrong with people with brown skin. Or, you know, in the case of FAIR, for instance, the kinds of things that FAIR puts out are conspiracy theories, really racist conspiracy theories. They’ve pushed the idea, for instance, that Mexico’s engaged in a secret plot to reconquer the American Southwest – the so-called reconquista, the “Plan de Aslan”. They have also at FAIR, you know, this great mainstream organization, have pushed the idea that there is a secret plan by the leaders of the United States, Mexico and Canada to merge into a nation to be called the “North America Union”. And, you know, we won’t be spending dollars anymore, we’ll be spending something called “ameros” and it goes on from there. I think it goes without saying that this is really demonization. You know, it’s saying those people from down south are coming here to destroy our culture, to take over our country and, you know, I think it’s obviously fear-mongering and I don’t think that the distance is very far from that kind of propaganda to hate crimes against people perceived to be immigrants.

Sonali: The issue, Mark, you were just talking about these conspiracy theories regarding the North American Union. We just recently this week had an interview with Laura Carlson about an article she wrote about the North American Union conspiracy theories and I want to focus just for a moment on that. These are theories that are very, very popular on the Internet and, unfortunately, increasingly so in mainstream America. Even some people on the Left seem to find them attractive.

Mark: Oh, you are right about that! Believe me, I’ve gotten furious emails from people on the Left, people that I might think of as allies in other circumstances, you know, calling us every name in the book because we don’t understand that, you know, this is a massive corporate plan to sort of destroy the working man. So, yes, I know what you’re saying.

Sonali: And so how mainstream do you think anti-immigrant and anti-Latino sentiment has become in the United States? Do you see this rise in hate crimes as an unfortunate measure of mainstream sentiment?

Mark: I think it’s become pretty bad. I mean, let’s continue on NAU for a moment. The North American Union, this propaganda, which basically originated in the John Birch Society but has been pushed by many other people since then, about the NAU. This has reached the point where 18 state Houses of Representatives in this country have passed resolutions opposing the NAU, right? An entity that does not exist and has never been planned. That’s pretty scary, I’d say. You know, beyond that, look, the mainstream demonization has been quite amazing. When one thinks of some of the things that are said by Congressmen, by pundits who are on national television every night, like Lou Dobbs. They’re quite astounding. Just to give listeners a sense, you know, they say things like – Lou Dobbs has said on national t.v., on CNN – one-third of America’s prison cells are filled with “criminal illegal aliens”. Utterly false. I mean, not even remotely close to the truth. Dobbs, of course, famously said and then maintained in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, that immigrants were at least partly responsible for bringing 7,000 cases of leprosy in a recent three-year period. Again, totally and completely false. The real number happened to be 398 and no one knows that it has anything to do with immigration. You know, it goes on from there. Congressman Steve King, a Republican from Iowa, has for two years now been pushing the completely and utterly bogus allegation that as he says “criminal illegal aliens” murder 12 Americans a day; drunken “criminal illegal aliens” run over and kill another 13 Americans a day. So, in other words, according to this Congressman, 25 Americans a day are unlawfully killed. You know, this is by essentially brown-skinned invaders from the south. You know, when you look at the real stats, they’re ludicrous. When you work out what he has said and some other people in the movement have said, in order for it to be true, undocumented workers in this country who make up about 4% of the population according to the best estimates, would be responsible for 53% of the murders. So, you know, I think it’s obviously just hogwash on its face. You know, so it’s, yes, very much, this is what the mainstream debate has become like. I think there is one hopeful sign in all of this which is that I think that this sort of immigrant bashing has essentially disappeared from the presidential race. It’s been quite interesting to see that. You know, it’s worth remembering Tom Tancredo, the most vociferous anti-immigrant Congressman of them all, you know, ran on a strictly anti-immigration ticket and was wiped out, I mean, quit right before the Iowa primaries when polls showed him at less than 2%. So, I think that’s some encouraging news. Maybe this will begin to calm down in the coming years.

Sonali: Mark, what response has the federal government had to this rise in hate crimes? You mention you’re using FBI statistics but is there some kind of task force, someone in the FBI to investigate hate crimes particularly targeting Latinos?

Mark: No. There’s nothing like that that I know of at all. Let me say, to be fair, that, you know, the numbers that the FBI reports are rather small. In 2003, they count 426 incidents. In 2006, that’s risen to 576.

Sonali: But Mark imagine if these were numbers relating to any other racial group…

Mark: Oh, I think you’re entirely right. It might well have been different. Actually the point that I was going to make was that the FBI stats, without doubt, vastly understate the number of hate crimes out there and that’s not because the FBI is doing something wrong, it’s a voluntary system with real problems. But, in fact, a very serious Justice Dept. report came out in late ’05 showed that the real level of hate crime is not what the FBI tables had been showing, which is between about 6,000 and 10,000 a year but, in fact, is closer to 190,000 a year. So, the numbers I just read off have to do with anti-Latino assaults and so on, you know, are just the merest indication – the numbers are perhaps 20, 30, 40 times that and, of course, the under-reporting is going to be, I think without question, highest in the undocumented immigrant community for the obvious reason: if you’re undocumented, you’re far less likely to go to a police officer to report a crime against you when you fear you might be deported.

Special Thanks to Julie Svendsen for transcribing this interview