Some research about hate groups in the United States

Dear Editor,

Anyone watching the network news lately or following the mainstream media would think that Adolph Hitler, the entire Nazi army, and a legion of Civil War Reconstruction Klansmen had risen from the dead and invaded the United States. I have never seen so much outlandish hysteria perpetrated by the media in my entire life.

In trying to gain some semblance of perspective in all this madness, I was compelled to do some research on the subject of hate groups in the United States. This is what I found.

There may be 200-1,200 neo-Nazi members in 32 different states. The largest neo-Nazi group in the U.S. is the National Socialist Movement, which is estimated to have 400 members. Regarding the Ku Klux Klan, the Wikipedia entry states the KKK has “between 5,000 and 8,000 members nationwide.” In the 1920s, the KKK included about 15% of the nation’s population, or about 4–5 million men.

Today the U.S. is a nation of 323.1 million people. In our republic, if the experts are to be trusted, there exists an estimated 9,200 philosophically committed militant racists. This is 0.000028% of our population.

In the last century the hearts and minds of an overwhelming majority of Americans have undergone a massive, positive paradigm shift in how we view one another. This is the good news. The bad news is how sad it is to see so many good citizens buying into the media narrative that anyone who has an opposing view on political or economic issues is somehow a Nazi, a bigot, a racist, or a white supremacist.

I have my own solution to put out the raging fire that the media continues to pour gas on. I am shutting off my television and turning off the computer. I am going to call my black friends, my white friends, my Indian friends, my conservative friends, and my liberal friends, and tell them how much I love them – not because of their color or political views, but for simply being good friends. It is a small act. One has to start somewhere.

Sincerely,

Stuart Lindberg

Cavendish, Vt.

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