The Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual Year in Hate and Extremism report this year is a warning bell. And, in an op-ed published this week on Daily Kos, SPLC President and CEO Margaret Huang lays out the dangers that we face as the forces of hate, bigotry and extremism ooze their way into the mainstream.
“Since President Donald Trump took office, we’ve seen a larger pattern of retreat from diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in sectors from education to health care to the corporate world,” Huang writes. “The cultural headwinds facing DEI did not blow in overnight.”
She goes on to define the battle that those who oppose hate are facing in this new environment.
“This shift is part of a long and coordinated strategy by hard-right extremists to reshape American life and infiltrate politics and governance,” she writes.
In her piece, Huang points to the changes that extremist thoughts and concepts have brought in recent years. DEI programs have not only come under fire and been rolled back at major corporations like Walmart, Ford, Boeing, John Deere and Lowe’s, but in our education system, both public and private. In right-leaning states, legislators have removed these programs in their entirety.
Huang also illustrates how these steps have emboldened the far right to push for a more authoritarian America.
“With the election of Trump, this extremism now has an ally in the highest office in the nation,” Huang writes. “What was once considered a fringe agenda in the modern era is the blueprint from which the country’s president — and the MAGA movement — is operating.”
You can read Huang’s full op-ed here.
Illustration by Deena So’Oteh.