In the end, it came down in line with prior precedent. The Supreme Court, ruling in late June on the Arizona law that set off a tsunami of ugly legislation aimed at undocumented immigrants, affirmed decades of settled law, saying the federal government 鈥� not states or cities 鈥� has the right to control immigration policy.
The National Alliance was once the most important hate group in America. Now, 10 years after the death of its founder William Pierce, the once-pow- erful Alliance has been reduced to nearly complete irrelevance, although that hasn鈥檛 stopped its recent recruits from engaging in at least a dozen mur- ders and a range of other crimes.
For years, an extreme-right online 鈥渘ews company鈥� called WorldNetDaily has been pumping out staggering vol- umes of baseless conspiracy theories, end-of-the-world predictions, and 鈥渂irther鈥� attacks on President Obama. But its truly defining moment may have come with the fairy-tale claim that soy- beans cause homosexuality.
The case of Paul Pantone, an Oklahoman who says he鈥檚 invented a contraption that will run on virtually any liquid, illustrates the link between defiers of conventional scientific wisdom and radical rightists who violently distrust the government. In fact, Pantone鈥檚 alleged ties to radicals have both neighbors and law enforcement worried.
Detectives Kory Flowers and Rob Finch of the Greensboro, N.C., Police Intelligence Squad were both involved in tracking white supremacists when, a couple of years ago, a new threat started to show up on their radar.
After years defending itself from allegations that it pays academic racists for their writings, the National Review in early April fired two prominent contributors.
Editor鈥檚 Note: The following statement may be attributed to Mark Potok, Senior Fellow of the Southern Poverty Law Center and editor of its Intelligence Report and Hatewatch blog.
The last decade has seen major changes in the American radical right. What was once a world largely dominated by a few relatively well-organized groups has become a scene populated by large numbers of smaller, weaker groups, with only a handful led by the kind of charismatic chieftains that characterized the 1990s.
On June 13, 1992, President George H.W. Bush joined the leaders of 177 other nations in adopting the United Nations鈥� Agenda 21, a non-binding plan for sustainable 鈥渟mart growth鈥� in the face of an ever-more populous world.
Training seminars put on by a former FBI agent in February have spotlighted what many see as a growing effort by Islamophobes to influence law enforcement and cast all Muslims as a threat to America.
