The number of anti-government groups in the United States is at an all-time high and has increased 800 percent since President Barack Obama took office, according to a Southern Poverty Law Center report.
The SPLC identified 1,360 so-called patriot groups on the “radical right” in 2012, compared with only 149 in 2008. Much of the growth came in Obama’s first term, but there was a 7 percent jump from 2011 to 2012. The group, in its report on Tuesday, said it expects numbers to spike again in the wake of the Obama administration’s gun control proposals, noting a similar spike after the passage of the assault weapons ban in 1994.
The SPLC wrote a letter to the departments of Justice and Homeland Security asking for the creation of a task force to examine the resources devoted to battling domestic terrorism.
“On October 25, 1994, six months before the Oklahoma City bombing, we wrote Attorney General Janet Reno about the growing threat of domestic terrorism,” SPLC President Richard Cohen wrote in the letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. “Today, we write to express similar concerns. In the last four years, we have seen a tremendous increase in the number of conspiracy-minded, antigovernment groups as well as in the number of domestic terrorist plots. As in the period before the Oklahoma City bombing, we now also are seeing ominous threats from those who believe that the government is poised to take their guns.”
In 2009, conservative lawmakers criticized DHS for a report arguing the election of the first black president could cause a resurgence in right-wing extremism. Napolitano eventually apologized for issuing the report.
The center counts many militia and white black separatist groups in its total, along with secessionist groups in Texas and elsewhere.
There has been a decline in one category of hate group, according to the SPLC. The number of groups that harass immigrants has declined by 90 percent since 2010, with only 38 groups still operating.