With the events in Charlottesville with various hate groups, It makes you wonder how prevalent is hate in our country?  We don’t have hate groups around us, do we?  I would have seen their work by now, right?

Wrong.  Huffington Post did a story about a report the Southern Poverty Law Center did on hate groups in the United States.  Their findings show there are 917 hate groups operating in the US; not 917 chapters of the KKK, but 917 different hate groups.  That’s kind of scary to realize, isn’t it?

So how many of those 917 groups have ties to Michigan or more exclusively, West Michigan?

Here in Michigan, there are 28 hate groups.  While the majority of the groups are around the Detroit area, West Michigan is home to 3 different groups.

There are an Anti-Muslim group, a Neo-Nazi Group and a Black Separatist/Nation of Islam group, which either are headquartered or have chapters in Grand Rapids.

According to the Huffington Post story, the Southern Poverty Law Center report says the number of groups has increased since the start of our latest presidential election:

SPLC found that the number of hate groups (defined as people harboring “beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics”) had been declining since 2011 but spiked in the last couple years during the presidential election.

 

″[President Donald] Trump’s run for office electrified the radical right, which saw in him a champion of the idea that America is fundamentally a white man’s country,” the report stated.

The full map with the different groups and what they "stand" for, can be found HERE.
 

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