White Supremacy on the Rise?

Before 6 a.m., I grab my coffee and sit down to think about what I am going to write about today.  Immediately I know, because I just woke up from a horrible dream about 15 minutes prior to sitting down.  My dream was about the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, and how I had to examine why Dylann Roof did what he did.  I am not sure why I had this dream or what during the day crept into my subconscious to create this dream, but it immediately inspired me to write this morning.

I want to know if white supremacy is on the rise, or if we are just seeing more instances of its reporting because we life in a digitized world that is able to freely share everything instantaneously.

I normally start with a Google search to start down the rabbit hole of research.  The image here is precisely what I saw when I started typing the subject.  I was looking for something more closely related to the topic I'm writing on, but instead, I see this.

What we see here is either one of two things.  Either I have previously searched this topic and looked for what we see in the results (I am refraining from retyping them for several reasons), or these are frequent searches that people have made of the query so many times, this is what Google thinks I am looking for.  I can assure you, the results seen here are nothing similar to what I was looking for.  In fact, I was going to type "white supremacy on the rise," but the results shocked me so much that I was immediately compelled to do a screen shot and share it.

This almost answers my questions without going further.  If Google's instinct is to try to point me towards what appears to be a book or clothing (I know Supreme is a brand and is not necessarily related), then yes, it is on the rise.

But why?

What factors have, or are affecting the rise in white supremacy?

The Harvard Gazette reports what I at least, in part suspected: the decline of unifying institutions, the backlash against a black president, and the depth of anti-immigrant rhetoric all refuel an old idea.  This is a global rise, not just an American issue.  The same report opens with mentions of the "two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand; 11 killed at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh; six murdered at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City; one run over in Charlottesville, Va.; nine gunned down at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston," which was published March 18, 2019.  This does not include what has happened since then.  More shootings, white nationalist protests at a Holocaust Remembrance event, and the list goes on.

If I were to draw up a simple hypothesis for research, where I identify what factors have given an unseen permission for white supremacists to come out of the woodwork in droves, it would be very similar to what was reported above.

I will not flesh out this hypothesis in great detail because the answer is empirical.  We have seen the rise slowly build after Obama was elected, because simply put, many did not like the idea of having a black president.  Trump has done very little to denounce white nationalists, and the anti-immigrant sentiment across the globe is on the rise as war, political unrest, and poverty have forced people out of their country to seek refuge in a safer environment.  These are all well established facts.

On March 28, 2019, Pew Research Center reported the following, as shown above: 

In a new survey, a 56% majority says Trump has done too little to distance himself from white nationalist groups; 29% say he has done about the right amount to distance himself from such groups, while 7% say he has done too much. These views are virtually unchanged since December 2016, shortly before Trump took office.

The fact that numbers have not changed since Trump took office is probably linked to his base support, which hovers between 35-39%.  However, the interesting numbers are those who say he has done too much to distance himself from white nationalists.  Is this 7% the population which makes up the same percentage of white supremacists or white nationalists in America?

The Pew Research article has a lot of information that is worth reading on the overall feel for where we are on many topics.  If you have time, please at least take a look at the graphics showing the data, which is quite relevant to understanding the current political feel in America.   

When Trump was asked if he believed white supremacy was on the rise, which was a question posed to him after the Christchurch massacre, his response was, "I don't really, I think it’s a small group of people."

If that is true, then riddle me this: why would I get the Google search result I did this morning when I started this article?  If it is a small group of people, why would I see a suggested result that would lead me to places that could aid me if I were a white supremacist, rather than alternative results that would indicate something less foreboding?

For all the platforms that have shut down hate groups and limited hate speech as much as they can, there is always the dark underbelly of the internet to supply people with the associations they are looking for to reinforce their radical beliefs.  There is no way to shut it all down, and we do have our Freedom of Speech, even for hate speech.

We need to ask ourselves, in our democracy, should hate speech be protected?  Can we limit Freedom of Speech under the First Amendment, and still be free?  

To answer that question, I would need to write a 20+ page position piece, and I'm sure most of you don't have the time for that.

I do want you to think about it.

 “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent
we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” 
― George Washington