Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By simmons on August 15, 2017

Pennsylvania is home to more than three dozen hate groups ranging from local chapters of the Ku Klux Klan and a violent skinhead group to anti-LGBT and anti-Muslim organizations, according to a national watchdog group that tracks extremist organizations.

In its annual Intelligence Report, released in February, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported the number of hate groups had surged nationally to 917 in 2016, within 100 of the all-time high recorded in 2011.

Forty of the groups were in Pennsylvania, making it the fifth most active state behind California (79), Florida (63), Texas (55) and New York (47), according to SPLC.

Theres no question about it that theres a decent white supremacist presence all throughout the state, said a senior investigative researcher for the Anti-Defamation League in Philadelphia, who asked that his name not be published because of the nature of his work.

But, he cautioned, white supremacist and other hate groups are difficult to quantify because they exist in shadows and are often little more than clusters of like-minded people who ascribe to the ideology of a larger group. Such pockets of hate group activity exist throughout the state, in urban areas including Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and rural places like Potter County, in north-central Pennsylvania, where one of the nations largest neo-Nazi groups has a regional headquarters.

Much of the activity is private or anonymous, such as distributing leaflets in neighborhoods or on college campuses, but in the last year Pennsylvania white supremacist groups have staged public events.

In November, about 50 members of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement held an anti-diversity rally on the Pennsylvania Capitol steps, drawing about 200 counter-protesters and dozens of police in riot gear, according to published reports. And in May, the East Coast Knights of the Ku Klux Klan drew attention and protests after their announcement they would burn a cross in rural Lancaster County, although the event happened on private property, according to news reports.

The presence of hate groups in the Lehigh Valley has been visible this year with the arrest of several men following an April raid by federal agents on the home of a known skinhead leader in Phillipsburg, N.J. Federal authorities charged Joshua Steever, 37; Henry Lambert Baird, 49, of Allentown; and Jacob Mark Robards, 40, of Bethlehem and three other men from Maryland and Virginia with drug and weapons trafficking conspiracy.

They were members, prosecutors allege, of Aryan Strikeforce, a skinhead white supremacist organization active throughout Pennsylvania. Steever, Baird and Robards have been convicted of violent felonies, according to court records. Prosecutors allege they transported and sold what they believed was methamphetamine and parts of automatic weapons to earn money for the group.

That was a substantial blow to that organization, but it hasnt made Aryan Strikeforce dissolve altogether, the Anti-Defamation League researcher said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the following hate groups active in Pennsylvania:

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See original here:
Pennsylvania fifth in nation for hate groups - Allentown Morning Call

Category: Anti-Defamation League
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