Trump 'fear-mongering' fuels rise of U.S. hate groups to record

February 21, 2019  07H:02  GMT/ZULU

by Rochelle van Amber and Biodun Iginla, BBC News and Reuters, WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON  - The number of hate groups operating in the United States rose 7 percent to an all-time high last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center said on Wednesday, attributing the increase largely to anti-immigrant rhetoric from President Donald Trump.

FILE PHOTO: A sign reading "Hate Has No Home Here" hangs by the statue of Civil War Confederate General Robert E. Lee, ahead of the one year anniversary of 2017 Charlottesville "Unite the Right" protests, in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S., August 10, 2018. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

The SPLC, which has tracked hate groups since 1971, found there were 1,020 operating in the United States in 2018, breaking the 1,018 record set in 2011. It marked the fourth consecutive year of growth.

The group blamed Trump, whose administration has focused on reducing illegal and legal immigration into the United States.

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“The words and imagery coming out of the Trump administration and from Trump himself are heightening these fears,” Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, told reporters on a conference call. “These images of foreign scary invaders threatening diseases, massive refugee caravans coming from the south. This is fear-mongering.”

The White House has repeatedly rejected charges of bias leveled at Trump, often citing the effects that a strong economy have had on minority communities. It did not respond to a request for comment on the report on Wednesday.

The SPLC defines hate groups as organizations with beliefs or practices that demonize a class of people. The number of groups has risen 30 percent since 2015 when Trump declared his presidential candidacy.

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The last surge in new hate groups came in the early years of Barack Obama’s presidency, a reaction to the first black U.S. president, the group said. The number rose 9 percent during the first three years of Obama’s administration to reach the prior record then dropped until 2015.

The group also cited online incitement for the rise. Despite efforts to regulate content on mainstream websites including Facebook, the internet still provides the most fertile ground for hate groups to recruit new members, SPLC said.

The non-profit said the growth of hate groups appeared to spur some who share their ideologies to take violent action. It cited Robert Bowers, who is accused of killing 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue in October while shouting “All Jews must die.”

As part of SPLC’s count of hate groups, black nationalist groups rose 13 percent to 264 in 2018, an increase SPLC attributed to a backlash against Trump’s policies.

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Some of the SPLC’s targets have criticized the Montgomery, Alabama-based organization’s findings, saying it mislabeled legitimate organizations.

Earlier this month the founder of the Proud Boys, a self-described men-only club of “Western chauvinists,” sued the center for defamation. He contended the Proud Boys oppose racism, while the SPLC said it stood by its research.

Finland knife attack: Moroccan asylum seeker 'targeted women'

AUGUST 20, 2017 /  05H:24 GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME

by Isabelle Roussel and Biodun Iginla, BBC News and Reuters, HELSINKI/TURKU, Finland 

HELSINKI/TURKU, Finland - A Moroccan man who was arrested for killing two women in a knife rampage was an asylum seeker who appeared to have targeted women in Finland's first terrorism-related attack, police and a Red Cross official said on Saturday.

The 18-year-old suspect, arrested in the city of Turku following Friday's attack in which eight other people - six of them women - were wounded, arrived in Finland last year, police said. Police shot the suspect in the leg before his arrest.

Police also arrested four other Moroccan men over possible links to him and issued an international arrest warrant for a sixth Moroccan, they said.

Finnish broadcaster MTV, citing an unnamed source, said the main suspect had been denied asylum in Finland, although police said only he had been "part of the asylum process".

The manager of the Red Cross reception center in Turku, where flags flew at half-mast on Saturday, told us at Reuters that the suspect was an asylum seeker. "I cannot comment on the application's outcome," Heimo Nurmi said.

He said police visited the center on Friday and had detained several people. "The arrests were non-violent," he added.

It was not clear if the attack was in any way linked to the suspect's asylum application.

The case marks the first suspected terror attack in Finland, where violent crime is relatively rare. Police said they were investigating possible links to Thursday's deadly van attack in the Spanish city of Barcelona.

"The suspect's profile is similar to that of several other recent radical Islamist terror attacks that have taken place in Europe," Director Antti Pelttari from the Finnish Security Intelligence Service told a news conference.

Both of those killed in the Turku attack, and six of the eight who were wounded, were women, the police said. The two who died were Finns, and an Italian and two Swedish citizens were among the injured.

"It seems that the suspect chose women as his targets, because the men who were wounded were injured when they tried to help, or prevent the attacks," said Crista Granroth from the National Bureau of Investigation.

"The act was cowardly ... we have been afraid of this and we have prepared for this. We are not an island anymore, the whole of Europe is affected," Prime Minister Juha Sipila said.

SCREAMING

A woman plays a traditional Finnish string instrument, kantele, at the Market Square where several people were stabbed, in Turku, Finland August 18, 2017.Tuomas Forsell

The stabbing spree occurred on Friday afternoon in the main market place in Turku, on the southwest coast of the country, 160 kilometers from Helsinki.

"First thing we heard was a young woman, screaming like crazy. I thought it's just kids having fun ... but then people started to move around and I saw a man with a knife in his hand, stabbing a woman," said Laura Laine, who was sitting in a cafe.

"Then a person ran toward us shouting 'He has a knife', and everybody from the terrace ran inside. Next, a woman came in to the cafe. She was crying hysterically, down on her knees, saying someone's neck has been slashed open."

Four of the wounded were still in hospital, three of them in intensive care, while the other injured persons would be sent home on Saturday, the hospital said.

Turku's Iraqi, Syrian and Islamic community condemned the attacks and organized a rally of solidarity in the city's main square, but decided to cancel it due to security concerns.

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"Finns and immigrants, and people from different religions, have had very good relations in Turku... We are shocked, but I don't see this changing that," said Abdirahman Mohamed, Chairman of the Islamic community of Turku.

He said the Moroccan suspects were not familiar to him or to the Islamic community in town, which has around 2,000 members.

TENSIONS

An Anti-immigration mood has been on the rise in Finland since it received some 32,500 asylum seekers during the migration crisis in 2015.

Tensions simmered on Saturday Turku as the anti-immigration "Finland First" movement held a rally but it was met by counter-demonstrators brandishing signs saying "No room for racism".

In Helsinki, about 200 people gathered in the rain to protest against the construction of a mosque and Muslim immigration to Finland in a rally planned by the Finnish far-right group the Finnish Defence League (FDL) before the attack.

Some members of the nationalist Finns party, which was kicked out of the government in June for their new hard-line anti-immigration leadership, blamed the government for what they said was too loose an immigration policy.

"The asylum system is the primary road for illegal immigration, used also by the terrorists. Harmful immigration can be controlled only by reducing Finland's attractiveness, or by border controls," said Finns party lawmaker Ville Tavio.

The government has already tightened immigration policies in the past few years, along with other Nordic states.