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.
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 man who allegedly murdered six people at a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee yesterday, identified in media reports as Wade Michael Page, was a frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white-power band.
Five years ago today, we kicked off the Hatewatch blog with a post marking the fifth anniversary of the July 23, 2002, death of William Luther Pierce, the founder and leader of what for three decades was the most important hate group in America.
Ten years ago today, William Luther Pierce, the founder and leader of what for three decades was the most important hate group in America, died unexpectedly. Now, a decade after Pierce鈥檚 death, the National Alliance, which was once revered on the international radical right as a serious and effective organization, is a shadow of its former self 鈥 a joke on the larger neo-Nazi scene that is led by a man who has lost the respect of his former followers.
For the better part of seven years now, Kansas attorney Kris Kobach has been urging municipalities and states to pass the draconian laws he writes that are aimed at so badly punishing undocumented immigrants that they will 鈥渟elf-deport.鈥 Even as governments went into debt to pay his fees and the cost of defending his dubious statutes, Kobach insisted that if they hung tough, they would win in the end.
Now, more than ever, we must work together to protect the values that ensure a fair and inclusive future for all.