Nothing helps hate groups more than more hate. The election of Barack Obama seems to be giving groups like the KKK a boost.
By Howard Witt
Chicago Tribune correspondent
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 Web sites are boasting that their servers are crashing under the weight of exponential increases 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.
Read ticklethewire.com report on hate groups and the Obama Factor
