The Southern Poverty Law Center works to dismantle white supremacy in public forums and online, exposes hate and anti-democracy extremism and counters disinformation and conspiracy theories with research and community resources. The Intelligence Project monitors and exposes white supremacy and its impact on communities.
Conspiracy theories
- Weather conspiracy theories have returned among the antigovernment movement. Veterans on Patrol, once focused on the southern border, has expanded to conspiracy theories involving chemtrails and weather manipulation. The group claims weather radar sites are actually manipulating the weather, and it has solicited help to surveil and eliminate them. Border vigilante and Proud Boys associate Anthony Aguero shared similar conspiracies in a mid-May tweet on X, stating, “El Paso, Texas is undergoing a soft kill depopulation experiment through Geo Engineering.” And on May 24, the New California State group held a “Stop the Chemtrails” event in Ripon, California.
- Sovereign citizens have been arrested for driving with fake license plates in two recent incidents. Earl Myers of Volusia County, Florida, was arrested twice in two weeks. In one arrest, officers were forced to break the vehicle window to remove Myers from the car. Myers, who claims to be an American State National, also refused to furnish his driver’s license and said he “was not contracted with any government to follow state laws,” according to a police report. On May 22, Devonte Arthur was arrested and charged in Richland County, South Carolina, with operating an unregistered vehicle and operating a vehicle with a counterfeit license plate.
Education-focused extremist activity
- After unsuccessful legislation that would have charged librarians with misdemeanors for failing to remove material if a community member deemed it “harmful to minors,” the Madison County, Alabama, chapter of Moms for Liberty has called on the Alabama Public Library Service (APLS) to fire librarians it deems noncompliant with state laws and directives. The letter sent to the APLS includes a complaint that a book, Our Skin: A First Conversation About Race, is an example of “continued efforts to push radical ideologies onto children.”
- Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters and the Oklahoma State Department of Education recently approved new social studies standards that require students to “identify the source of the COVID-19 pandemic from a Chinese lab and the economic and social effects of state and local lockdowns.” The standards also require students to “identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results by looking at graphs and other information, including the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, the security risks of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters, and the unprecedented contradiction of ‘bellwether county’ trends.” This is despite no evidence of any widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Anti-immigrant activity
- Anti-immigrant extremist and deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller advanced a white supremacist myth of immigrant invasion to argue the Donald Trump administration can suspend the constitutionally guaranteed principle of habeas corpus. “Well, the Constitution is clear — and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land — that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Miller said.
White nationalist and neo-Nazi movement activity
- The State Department recently updated its style guide to ban the use of “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism” — as well as the acronyms “REMVE” and “RMVE,” according to a recent report in The Guardian. Critics have warned that the move mirrors a trend throughout the Trump administration to shift resources away from countering white supremacist extremism and acts of racist terrorism.
- Active Clubs, one of the largest networks of white power groups in the country, place an emphasis on strength and masculinity, using sparring and other physical activities to recruit men into their white supremacist belief system. They appear to have recently ramped up their efforts to recruit young men and boys, launching a series of “youth clubs” around the country. The group’s Telegram channels show members have been posting racist propaganda flyers.
- Several white nationalist groups, including local Active Clubs and the National Organization for Vital Action, as well as the neo-Nazi group Firm 22 and the neo-Völkisch group Asatru Folk Assembly, attended Dixie Fest at the Dixie Republic store in Travelers Rest, South Carolina, on May 10.
Confederate monuments
- MONUMENTS, an exhibit in Los Angeles by the Museum of Contemporary Art and The Brick, marks the recent wave of Confederate monument removals and reflects on the histories and legacies of post-Civil War America. It brings together a selection of decommissioned Confederate statues with contemporary artworks borrowed and commissioned for the exhibit. In response to the exhibit, American Thinker, a right-wing online outlet known for publishing content from anti-Muslim activists and a complimentary interview of the white nationalist Jared Taylor, has offered a critique defending the monuments.
Prevention of extremism
- Efforts by the U.S. federal government to address and prevent extremist violence have largely ended, at least in part because it has diverted funds previously allocated for this purpose to programs aimed at the deportation of migrants, according to a recent ProPublica story. This has left state governments scrambling to fill the void and created a dangerous lack of coordination.
Male supremacy
- Abolitionists Rising gathered in Chicago on May 2 and 3 alongside the Abolitionist Society of Chicago to demonstrate their opposition to abortion. On May 3, affiliated individuals held a small protest outside a Planned Parenthood facility and then gathered at The Moody Church for a debate on the best strategy for the movement to abolish abortion.
- On May 28, U.K. prosecutors confirmed the complete list of 21 charges, including rape and human trafficking, against Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate. The pair will be extradited to the United Kingdom to face these charges following the conclusion of their ongoing criminal trial in Romania.
Anti-LGBTQ+ movement
- Meg Kilgannon, a senior fellow at the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Family Research Council, joined the Trump administration as director of strategic partnerships within the Department of Education in May.
- Jody Hice, president of FRC Action, joked with Rep. Randy Weber about pushing immigrants from airplanes on the May 9 episode of “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.” “Fly over their country, open the door, [and tell them] they can either have $1,000 or a parachute,” Webber said to Hice during the interview.
Militia and antigovernment movement activity
- On May 13, Jake Lang livestreamed himself on X ranting in support of a federal pardon for Derek Chauvin outside the Big Spring federal prison in Howard County, Texas. Chauvin, a former police officer, was convicted of murdering George Floyd. The website Lang created for the event claims Chauvin is a political prisoner who should be pardoned. This is the latest protest organized by Lang, who has become heavily focused on conspiracies about Black-on-white violence.
- President Trump announced in May that he might pardon the militia members convicted of plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Trump said he watched the legal proceedings and thought they seemed like a “railroad job.” He chalked up the plot to people who had been drinking and “said stupid things.”
- The U.S. Department of Justice is defending dominionist Doug Wilson’s effort to plant a church in Troy, Idaho. The DOJ is suing the city for allegedly discriminating against the church due to its beliefs. This followed the city denying the church a conditional-use permit to meet in a former bank, saying a church “did not enhance the commercial district.”
- Eric Metaxas, appointed to President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, says that Democrats are demonic. The commission works with the White House Faith Office, run by Christian supremacist Paula White-Cain. Metaxas has previously said that Democrats, though not necessarily demons themselves, are controlled by the demonic.
- The lobbying effort led by the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association for a presidential pardon of constitutional sheriff Scott Jenkins was successful. Jenkins, formerly the sheriff of Culpeper County, Virginia, was convicted for giving official auxiliary deputy sheriff badges and credentials to individuals in exchange for bribes and campaign contributions worth almost $75,000. Trump shared his decision to pardon Jenkins in a Truth Social post on May 26, claiming Jenkins was “persecuted by the Radical Left ‘monsters,’ and ‘left for dead.’”
Technology and extremism
- A remote luxury lodge in Wyoming owned by Paul McNiel, has emerged as a gathering spot for prominent “dissident right” figures in the U.S., according to a report from The Guardian. The report notes that founding documents for The Wagon Box lodge indicate using decentralized technologies like blockchains and smart contracts. The “dissident right” is a loosely defined faction within the broader American right-wing movement. This movement tends to reject mainstream conservatism, embraces more radical critiques of liberal democracy, and is critical of political concessions on issues of race, feminism and LGBTQ+ rights. The lodge has hosted a range of influential guests, including politicians, media personalities and venture capitalists. Among them is Peter Thiel, a billionaire tech investor and cofounder of PayPal known for his support of nationalism and rejection of diversity efforts in higher education.