The Center's Intelligence Project counted 751 group chapters in 2003, up 6 percent from the 708 that were active the year before, a gain partly accounted for by improved tallies of black separatist groups. Hate websites rose from 443 in 2002 to 497 last year, a 12 percent increase.

Key sectors of the hate movement were particularly dynamic in 2003. The number of racist Skinhead groups doubled over the prior year, and several new Klan groups appeared.

But there were also spectacular failures. The organization formerly known as the World Church of the Creator, for many years a leading neo-Nazi group, virtually disappeared following the jailing of its leader Matt Hale, who stands trial this spring for allegedly soliciting the murder of a federal judge. The National Alliance, once the most important hate group in America, was reduced to about half its former size.

"Patriot" groups — antigovernment groups like militias that are animated more by conspiracy theories than racial hatred — surged for the first time in years, jumping 20 percent from 143 groups in 2002 to 171 last year.

Patriot websites also rose, from 152 sites in 2002 to 162 last year. And Patriots have become more militant. At a heavily attended January Patriot event, speaker after speaker called for revolutionary violence.

Terrorist threats uncovered
Several frightening events served as a reminder that not all terrorists come from faraway places. In Texas, a man and his common-law wife were found with an arsenal including half a million rounds of ammunition, more than 60 pipe bombs, silencers, remote-control briefcase bombs and the parts needed to make a sodium cyanide bomb capable of killing hundreds.

In South Carolina, antigovernment extremists allegedly murdered two law enforcement officers in a massive shootout. A religious zealot and former Army Ranger was arrested after allegedly plotting to bomb abortion clinics, churches and gay bars. And an arsonist destroyed an Indiana Holocaust memorial museum.

Here are snapshots depicting 2003 trends on the radical right.

Racist Skinheads: The number of Skinhead groups more than doubled, from 18 chapters in 2002 to 39 chapters in 2003. In part, this growth resulted from Skinhead activity in New Jersey, where a third of the active chapters are located.

But it may also be related to the increasing challenge being posed to Hammerskin Nation, a confederation of Skinhead groups that had long been the dominant force on the scene. Toward the end of 2003, Hammerskin Nation was faced with several new upstart factions in Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Neo-Nazis: This category showed a staggering decrease of 32 percent. The drop was attributable to the demise of the World Church of the Creator, the largest such group in 2002 with 88 chapters. But after Hale's arrest that December, the group now called The Creativity Movement began to collapse. Just six chapters limped into 2003.

The National Alliance, a neo-Nazi organization headquartered in West Virginia, has lost about half its membership since the 2002 death of its leader, William Pierce. Though there are signs that the group is stabilizing, it is increasingly held in disrepute by almost every other neo-Nazi organization, and its current leader, Erich Gliebe, has seen no let-up in attacks on his character and management style.

The Alliance's white power music operation, Resistance Records, is in a bitter battle with other racist labels, including its chief competitor, Minnesota-based Panzerfaust Records.

Meanwhile, White Revolution, the creation of former National Alliance official Billy Roper, came on strong. Roper solidified alliances with groups including Resistance rival Panzerfaust and many Klan and Skinhead groups, and he organized a major rally at the Center's offices in January 2003.

The Aryan Nations showed a surprising resurgence in 2003, doubling its chapters from 11 to 22, even though leader Richard Butler has lived in a suburban home in northern Idaho since a suit brought by the Center cost him his rural headquarters compound in 2000. This expansion may have been driven by Butler's extensive travels, including to Roper's Center protest.

At the same time, a rival split-off group by the same name, headed by ex-Butler loyalists August Kreis and Charles Juba, fell from 12 chapters to two.

Ku Klux Klan: Klan groups, which had been relatively unimportant on the radical right, seemed to surge. There was a large number of Klan rallies, cross-burnings, and other events. Several new groups appeared on the scene.

The Orion (for "our race is our nation") Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, based in Alabama, was started in early 2003 and was highly successful in building up membership, particularly in Florida. In North Carolina, the Cleveland Knights of the Ku Klux Klan started operations last summer. And the Georgia-based Southern White Knights was restarted last November and grew rapidly.

Other: This category includes a hodgepodge of groups espousing hateful doctrines. The largest of these groups, the 15,000-member, white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, continued to drift further to the right, adding anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial items to its website.

Holocaust denial groups seemed to be doing well. The Institute for Historical Review, based in California, held two high-profile events last year and revamped its website.

SPLC Report
March 2004