The number of hate groups across the country grew in 2017 for the third year in a row, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported last week, and the legal advocacy group counted 19 in Maryland, up from 18 the year before.
The SPLC, based in Montgomery, Ala., counted 954 active hate groups nationwide, a 4 percent increase from 2016.
Most of the growth occurred in neo-Nazi, anti-Muslim and black-nationalist groups, the center said. It attributed the increase to white supremacists energized by the presidency of Donald Trump and black-nationalist groups rising in response.
“The world allows you to spread propaganda like never before, and Trump has heightened the hate,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project and overseer of its yearly count of hate groups.
The SPLC defines a hate group as “an organization that — based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities — has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.”
It tracks groups through their publications, citizen and law enforcement reports, field sources, news media and its own investigations.
The group identified eight hate groups in Baltimore. It classified four as black-nationalist groups: Great Millstone, Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ, Israelite School of Universal Practical Knowledge and the Nation of Islam.
