White supremacist incidents are rising across the United States

Neo-Nazi, alt-right and white supremacist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 11, 2017. Photo / Getty Images

A neo-Nazi group scattered flyers across lawns and doorsteps in three Waterloo, Iowa, neighbourhoods just before Veterans Day. The handouts offered a chilling assessment of the group’s proximity, in capital letters: “We are your neighbours! We are the random stranger holding the door open for you!” it read. “We are everywhere.”

About a week later, about a dozen people marched through a part of Columbus, Ohio, that is known for arts and culture, carrying Nazi flags and using a bullhorn to shout racial slurs against Jews and people of colour. A similar scene unfolded in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, over the summer.

Flash displays of hate and white power are happening more frequently in the United States, a trend that experts say is a reaction to changing demographics, political turmoil and social catalysts. More than 750 such incidents have taken place since 2020, according to the Anti-Defamation League, with more than half of them occurring in the past 18 months.

National experts describe a familiar pattern: small groups of mostly masked men chant and wave swastika or white power flags in public and yell racial slurs at targets as varied as immigrants, Black people, Jews and LGBTQ+ people. They unfurl offensive banners over highways or post racist flyers in communities. The demonstrations are typically captured on video and ricochet across social media to large audiences.

The league’s Center on Extremism counted 282 events organised or attended by white supremacists in 2023, a 63% increase from the 173 recorded in 2022. And in 2024, from about Memorial Day to Labor Day, there were 64 white supremacist activities in 25 states, the centre said. Those included “fight nights” and mixed-martial-arts-style events held for supporters to socialise, recruit members and raise money, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

‘Desperate for attention’

Almost every week, small white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups have been descending on downtowns, gathering in public parks or rallying on the grounds of state houses and courthouses across the country.

“It’s just that common,” said Oren Segal, vice president of the Center on Extremism. “Flash demonstrations, whether there are six people or 12 or 40, are designed to create fear and anxiety in a community, and they happen almost every single week.”

In 2023, for the second consecutive year, the centre recorded a new high in white supremacist propaganda incidents – which include distribution of racist, antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ flyers, banners, graffiti and posters – with a total of 7567 cases. That figure represents a 12% increase from the 6746 incidents in 2022. Hate groups have a long history in the US. In recent years, small groups have made their views more visible with public demonstrations, rallies and marches that are amplified by social media.

The number of hate groups, as identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is resurging after a period of decline during the height of the pandemic. The figure jumped about 14% in 2023 from the year before, including some spinoffs from larger organisations.

“What happened in Ohio is a microcosm of what is going on across the United States,” said Jeff Tischauser, a senior research analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups. “These neo-Nazi groups, these white supremacist groups are desperate for attention.”

Segal said the growth in flash demonstrations can be attributed to smaller groups opting to mount individual actions instead of coordinating with larger organisations. “The normalisation of hate in our public and political discourse creates an environment that fuels the groups,” he said.

Politics and extremism

Flash rallies are held in order to generate video clips for social media as a recruitment tool, Tischauser said, but also as a way to stake out a position even farther to the right than some Republicans who have adopted a so-called anti-woke agenda amplified by President-elect Donald Trump.

For years, critics have said that Trump’s language, at times racist and defiant, has encouraged and emboldened far-right organisations. Trump has dismissed the criticism.

“President Trump is backed by Latinos, Black voters, union workers, angel moms, law enforcement officers, Border Patrol agents and Americans of all faiths,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s campaign spokesperson and the incoming White House press secretary, has said. “President Trump will be a president for all Americans.”

Segal said the march in the Short North neighbourhood of Columbus last Saturday was the work of a new white supremacist group based in St. Louis.

Two groups, the Patriot Front and the Goyim Defense League, made repeated appearances in Nashville over the summer. One group’s members stepped out of a U-Haul truck and carried inverted American flags. A week later, the other group carried black and red swastika flags along a popular downtown strip of honky-tonks and bars. They also disrupted a City Council meeting and, on a separate occasion, yelled racial slurs at a group of young Black boys downtown.

Stunned by the back-to-back appearances, the council that governs Nashville and the surrounding county passed a series of ordinance changes afterward that were intended to help law enforcement agencies confront the groups without infringing on First Amendment protections.

In Waterloo, the neo-Nazi flyers were distributed by a Texas-based group that the Anti-Defamation League described as small but growing. The ADL said the group promotes “hard-line white supremacist views” and “white unity”.

The flyers “were in plastic bags with rocks in them, so we are assuming they were thrown from cars onto people’s lawns”, said Captain Jason Feaker of the Waterloo Police Department, adding that the police were asking the public for any videos they may have that would help make identifications.

At least 20 flyers were found in three neighbourhoods. “People were upset that there was this kind of hate in their neighbourhood,” Feaker said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Audra D.S. Burch

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