On Thursday, the Southern Poverty Law Center released its 2024 Year in Hate and Extremism Report which follows trends in far-right and antigovernment extremist activity across the South and the rest of the U.S.
“The new report documents 1,371 hate and antigovernment extremist groups in the United States in 2024 and traces their growing influence on local, state and national government. As these groups tighten their grip on the U.S. political system, the report tracks how their actions are dividing and demoralizing people across the country while dismantling democracy from within,” the SPLC’s official press release reads.
In the report, SPLC tracks a growing wave of white Christian nationalism that stokes anti-immigrant hate through false claims of “Christian persecution” and “white genocide.” According to the report’s authors, “This movement seeks to dominate social, cultural and political life in the United States and craft a Christian, fascist state in its own image.”
“We really saw this idea [of white genocide] grow in popularity across the far right as they use this conspiracy to target immigrants, black people, and other people of color, and LGBTQ folks,” said Rachel Carroll Rivas, interim director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, during SPLC’s press briefing introducing the report.
“They have believed that there is this threat, that what it means to be a real American is one that is only Christian, white, patriarchal, and sustained through reproduction. They use racist assumptions about criminality and immorality to inform anti-immigrant and anti-black extremist ideas,” she continued. “Particularly, anti-LGBTQ groups helped manufacture racist fears of white genocide, and they amplified that ‘great replacement’ style rhetoric, painting immigrants as invaders, falsely, and LGBTQ people as threats to Christian culture, also falsely. This movement focused on the stoking of those fears, [as] part of that broader trend to demonize immigrant communities that is really part of the American right right now.”
Although the report finds a near 5 percent decline in the number of hate and antigovernment groups operating from 2023 to 2024, SPLC argues that this trend is actually the result of far-right extremism becoming more mainstream.
“Though the overall number of groups decreased by nearly 5 percent, SPLC experts attribute this shift to previous existing hate and anti-government organizations seeing their agendas and policies reflected in the government itself, leaving no need for them to pursue external agendas,” the report reads.
“After years of courting politicians and chasing power, hard-right groups are now fully infiltrating our politics and enacting their dangerous ideology into law,” added Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the SPLC. “Extremists at all levels of government are using cruelty, chaos and constant attacks on communities and our democracy to make us feel powerless. We cannot surrender to fear. It is up to all of us to organize against the forces of hate and tyranny. This report offers data that is essential to understanding the landscape of hate and helping communities fight for the multiracial, inclusive democracy we deserve.”
In Alabama, 25 hate and antigovernment groups were identified by the SPLC in 2024 — a 25 percent increase from the 20 groups identified in last year’s report. These groups include several Moms for Liberty chapters, neo-Confederate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, League of the South and the Southern Cultural Center, and neo-Nazi organizations including the 2119 Blood and Soil Crew, Aryan Freedom Network and the North ‘Bama Brigade.
The report highlights how these hate groups co-opt state legislatures and school boards “to ban books, protest drag story times, roll back DEI initiatives and restrict immigrants and marginalized communities’ access to resources.”
Alabama is a prime example of these policies, as the state legislature has pioneered the dissolution of DEI programs through SB129, and the Alabama Public Library Service board has relentlessly pursued book bans across the state. Additionally, the 2025 legislative session saw Republican lawmakers push for several pieces of anti-immigrant legislation, some of which became state law.
The report specifically argues that SB129 and other efforts to dismantle DEI programs are actually attempts to roll back civil rights protections writ-large.
“These attacks mask a broader agenda: weakening civil rights protections, ending anti-discrimination enforcement, and limiting opportunities for millions — including women, Black and Brown people, LGBTQ+ individuals, Americans with disabilities, and veterans,” reads the report.
Additionally, SPLC’s report notes a rise in male supremacy and patriarchal sentiment driven by online “manosphere” influencers who stoke the type of anti-feminist and transphobic rhetoric reflected in Alabama’s “What is a Woman Act” and Alabama U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s calls to ban transgender athletes from sports.
SPLC also made several recommendations for how leaders and communities can combat the growing incorporation of hateful, far-right extremist ideology into mainstream political rhetoric and policy.
The organization’s first recommendation comes in response to the Trump administration’s efforts to suppress free speech and subvert the rule of law by arresting and attempting to forcibly deport legal U.S. residents, many of whom have been students involved in peaceful protests against Israel’s military actions in Gaza.
The report calls on Congress to “reject legislative efforts and prohibit funding for any federal agency initiative designed to weaponize Executive Order 14188 Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism to restrict campus free speech, to threaten punitive funding cuts at universities, or to disregard due process and constitutional protections to impose lower standards for deportation or visa cancellation for protesting legal permanent residents or foreign students exercising lawful First Amendment rights.”
Additionally, SPLC recommends that Congress and state officials “fund coordinated and holistic initiatives designed to prevent and respond to all forms of discrimination, hate, and extremism, and provide support services for those directly targeted and impacted by bias-motivated harms.”
The report also highlights how law enforcement agencies across the country often underreport, or inaccurately report, hate crime statistics. In response, SPLC calls for Congress to “enact bipartisan legislation to condition federal funding for large state and federal law enforcement agencies on their accurate reporting of credible hate crime data to the FBI” in addition to greater funding for hate crime prevention and training initiatives at the local, state and federal levels.
Other recommendations made in the report include: restrictions on private militias and paramilitary groups, opposition to dismantling DEI programs, protection of free speech in education, and regulation of social media to combat discrimination and hate speech.
“Now is not the time to remain silent or compromise our shared values. It is imperative to call on organizations, institutions, and businesses to stay firm in their commitment to justice, equity and inclusion and use their resources to hold the line against hate and discrimination,” said Huang.
“While 2024 has been a tough year for our democracy and for communities targeted by hate and conspiracies, we didn’t get here by accident. We know that these groups build their power by threatening violence, capturing political parties and government, and infesting the mainstream discourse with conspiracy theories,” Carroll Rivas added. “By exposing the players, tactics and code words of the hard right, we hope to dismantle their mythology and inspire people to fight back.”
