The Feb. 26 shooting death of Trayvon Martin inflamed extremists of many stripes, as groups on both sides of the racial divide threatened armed protests and radical black separatist leaders suggested vigilante justice for the neighborhood watch volunteer who shot the unarmed 17-year-old in Sanford, Fla.
The high-profile federal case against Michigan鈥檚 Hutaree Militia came to an abrupt end in March when a federal judge dismissed most charges against seven members charged with plotting to murder police officers in an effort to ignite a revolution against the federal government.
Rejecting Schaeffer Cox鈥檚 claim that he was merely exercising freedom of speech when he spoke of killing a judge and law enforcement officials, a federal jury this summer convicted the boyish Alaska militia leader of heading a murderous conspiracy against the government.
Lunchtime diners at a normally sedate restaurant in a Chicago suburb were treated to a rude shock on May 19 when 18 intruders, dressed in black and wearing masks, stormed in and began swinging steel batons, hammers and chairs. Their targets: white nationalists who were holding a strategy session.
It鈥檚 no secret that Michael Hill, president of the neo-Confederate hate group League of the South (LOS), is a racist with a deep-seated contempt for black people and a more-than-rosy view of his 鈥淎nglo-Celtic鈥� landsmen.
The growing influence of far-right conspiracy theorists on mainstream politics has come into sharp focus this year with a spate of laws, ordinances and resolutions opposing Agenda 21, a non-binding plan for global sustainability seen by many antigovernment hardliners as a Trojan Horse for socialist global government.
It鈥檚 been a rocky year so far for the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the nation鈥檚 leading opponent of same-sex marriage.
For seven years, Robert Killian posed as a neo-Nazi biker named 鈥淒oc,鈥� working his way slowly into the inner sanctum of violent white supremacists as part of a wide-ranging undercover investigation in central Florida.
Elements of the anti-gay right have searched long and hard for logic to make condemnation of homosexuality resonate: Gay men are pedophiles, homosexuality causes God to send hurricanes to Florida and kill off blackbirds in Arkansas, and, perhaps most silly, the theory that an intricate LGBT plot 鈥� the so-called 鈥渞adical homosexual agenda鈥� 鈥� is on the verge of gutting Western civilization.
