White extremists lash out over election of nation's first black president
The Ku Klux Klan is emerging from decades of disorganization and obscurity, and the turnaround is acutely evident -- more than 200 hate-related incidents have been reported since the Nov. 4 election.
Reporting from Bogalusa, La. — Barely three weeks after Americans elected their first black president amid a wave of interracial good feeling, a spasm of noose hangings, racist graffiti, vandalism and death threats is convulsing dozens of towns across the country as white extremists lash out at the new political order.
More than 200 hate-related incidents, including cross burnings, assassination betting pools and effigies of President-elect Barack Obama, have been reported so far, according to law enforcement authorities and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups. Racist websites, meanwhile, have been boasting that their servers are crashing under the weight of an exponential increase in page views.
Even more ominously, America's most potent symbol of racial hatred, the Ku Klux Klan, has begun to reassert itself, emerging from decades of disorganization and obscurity in a spate of recent violence.
Nearly two weeks ago, the leader of a cell based in this backwoods town -- once known as the Klan capital of the nation -- was charged with second-degree murder for allegedly shooting to death an aspiring member who tried to back out of an initiation ceremony.
Late last month, two alleged skinheads with ties to a notoriously violent Klan chapter in Kentucky were charged in a bizarre plot to kill 88 black students and then decapitate an additional 14 students -- and then assassinate Obama by shooting him from a speeding car while wearing white tuxedos and top hats.
"We've seen everything from cross burnings on lawns of interracial couples to effigies of Obama hanging from nooses to unpleasant exchanges in schoolyards," said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Montgomery, Ala. "I think we're in a worrying situation right now, a perfect storm of conditions coming together that could easily favor the continued growth of these groups."
Among the factors experts say are contributing to white supremacist anxieties: the rapidly worsening economic crisis; demographic trends indicating that whites will cease to compose a majority of Americans within a generation; and the impending arrival of a black family in the White House.
The FBI is investigating the recent Klan-related incidents to determine the extent of any possible conspiracies. And the Secret Service is monitoring the apparent sudden surge in hate incidents "to try to stay ahead of any emerging threats," according to spokesman Darrin Blackford.
