Hate groups increase for second consecutive year as Trump electrifies radical right

  The number of hate groups in the United States rose for a second year in a row in 2016 as the radical right was energized by the candidacy of Donald Trump, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) annual census of hate groups and other extremist organizations, released yesterday.

  The most dramatic growth was the near-tripling of anti-Muslim hate groups – from 34 in 2015 to 101 last year.

  The growth has been accompanied by a rash of crimes targeting Muslims, including an arson that destroyed a mosque in Victoria, Texas, just hours after the Trump administration announced an  executive order suspending travel from some predominantly Muslim countries. The latest FBI statistics show that hate crimes against Muslims grew by 67 percent in 2015, the year in which Trump launched his campaign.

President Trump: Don't ignore terror from the radical right

  Last week PBS premiered Oklahoma City, an illuminating documentary that revisits the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and the broader climate of far-right extremism that spawned the homegrown terrorist Timothy McVeigh.

  The documentary couldn’t have come at a better time.

  We should all hope that President Trump and his advisers are paying close attention, because by focusing their attention exclusively on terrorism inspired by overseas groups like ISIS, they could be missing the next McVeigh.

Charleston shooting anniversary: More work remains to end extremist violence

  A year ago last week, a young white supremacist gunned down nine black parishioners at a historic church in Charleston, South Carolina, marking the violent start to a lethal year of extremist violence in the United States.

  In San Bernardino, California, in the coming months, Islamist radicals would kill 14 people.

  In Colorado Springs, Colorado, an anti-abortion extremist would shoot three people to death at a Planned Parenthood clinic.