Advocates violence Essay

A hate group is â€Å"a group or movement that advocates violence against or unreasonable hate or hostility toward those persons or organizations identified by their religion, race, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, or disability† (Wikipedia, 2004). The ideology of hate groups is based on the inaccurate information using for disparagement. The members of hate groups prejudge each individual in the target group as â€Å"low† or â€Å"contemptible†. They believe in the supremacy of their race, religion and use the violence and intimidation as the tools of the infuence on the target groups. How they do it? Usual tactics of the hate group includes four main elements: dehumanizing or demonizing the target; use of the conspiracy, theories, possibly not well backed up or referenced; claiming for manifesting interests of majority, support of thef pseudo-scientific theories using as the background for their grudge against target groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project reckoned up that 751 hate groups were active in the United States in 2003 (http://www. tolerance. org/maps/hate/state. jsp? T=12&m=2). The most infamous and oldest American hate group is the Ku Klux Klan. This movement joined more than 150 various hate groups. The target of the attacks of the Ku Klux Klan is blacks, Jews, immigrants and gays. Today the most active Ku Klux Klan organization in the USA is the Church of the American Knights of the KKK. This radical wing of the Ku Klux Klun is led by Jeff Berry and had strong prositions among other hate groups of the state of Indiana. While other KKK groups are trying to represent themselves as a civic organization for whites, the American Knights actively propagate strong measures against minorities. The credo of the American Knights is expressed in Jeff Berry’s speech: â€Å"We hate Jews, We hate niggers†¦. I’m a Yankee and I have never heard the word thank you in the nigger vocabulary†¦. We don’t like you niggers†¦ Tell me one thing your race has accomplished. † (ADL audio tape of Jasper rally, October, 1998 rally in Jasper, TX cited by http://www. adl. org/backgrounders/american_knights_kkk. asp). The same ideas we see in the Platform of the American Knights: â€Å"Enemies from within are destroying the United States of America. An unholy coalition of anti-White, anti-Christian liberals, socialists, feminists, homosexuals, jews [sic] and militant blacks have managed to seize control of our government and mass media. This gang of criminals and degenerates has declared war on the hard working, tax paying, White citizens †¦ The American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan plan to change things for the better. We shall liberate our nation from these savage criminals and restore law and order to America. † (cited by ADL backgrounder, 1999) But the hate groups do not only tell terrible words. They also do the terrible things. Every hour in the USA someone commits a hate crime. Every day at least eight blacks, three whites, three gays, three Jews and one Latino become hate crime victims. Every week a cross is burned. Three crosses were burned in the yard of a mixed-race family in the March of 2003 (Ladoga, IN). Swastikas and offensive messages were burned into the lawns of four residences (St. John, IN). The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan distribute their flyers throughout a neighborhood. According to FBI statistic â€Å"the greatest growth in hate crimes in recent years is against Asian Americans and gays and lesbians† (http://www. tolerance. org/pdf/ten_ways. pdf). But the noble Knights of KKK do their business only with hidden faces: â€Å"It is essential to the organization to allow members to preserve their anonymity since, if members are not allowed to appear in public without being able to maintain their anonymity, they will not participate in public events† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_group