FBI's annual report seriously flawed, shows a drop in hate crimes.

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You might as well throw out this year's FBI annual report on hate crimes. The agency is under heavy criticism for issuing a flawed report that reported a drop in hate crimes in 2021.

In its annual report, the FBI said there were 7,262 hate crime incidents in the United States in 2021. By comparison, 2020 saw 8,263 bias-motivated criminal acts.

“While the FBI’s annual Hate Crime report has been the nation’s best available snapshot of hate violence in America, this year’s data is woefully incomplete, inaccurate and simply cannot be trusted – certainly not to compare to previous years. Victims and communities affected by hate crimes deserve better," said Margaret Huang, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s President and CEO, said in a statement. 

"Although the hate crime statistics reported to us are lower in 2021, hate crime statistics overall are not decreasing, meaning of the agencies that are reporting to us, they are reporting an increase in hate crime," an FBI official said during a press call ahead of the report's release.

The latest numbers fail to capture the scope of the problem even more miserably than in previous years.

“Some jurisdictions fail to report hate crime statistics, while others claim there are no hate crimes in their community – a fact that would be welcome, if true,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said at a congressional hearing last month.

The voluntary nature of the program has resulted in reporting that has been consistently inconsistent. For example, about 3,500 agencies did not report any data to the FBI in the report – including 10 cities with populations over 100,000. And another 60 police departments in cities with populations over 100,000 affirmatively reported zero hate crimes.

The annual report on hate crime statistics is mandated under the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990 (HCSA) and compiled from the voluntary submissions of the 18,000 federal, state, university, city and tribal law enforcement authorities across the country.

The 2021 HCSA data is even more drastically incomplete than previous years’ data, to the extent that any comparisons between last year and previous years are almost meaningless.

The lack of compliance by law enforcement agencies is more significant than in past years because 2021 was the first year that the FBI required every agency to report all crime, including hate crimes, through its National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).

Aware of the FBI reports shortcomings, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta issued a statement."The FBI's 2021 Hate Crimes Statistics are a reminder of the need to continue our vigorous efforts to address this pervasive issue in America.

"The Justice Department continues to work with the nation's law enforcement agencies to increase the reporting of hate crime statistics to the FBI to ensure we have the data to help accurately identify and prevent hate crimes," she said.

Although the FBI provided a five-year transition period and technical assistance, many jurisdictions were either unable or unwilling to report through the new system. This noncompliance has resulted in dramatically incomplete reporting: There are 3,300 fewer participating agencies than in 2020, including agencies in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix and, essentially, the entire states of Florida and California. Ninety million fewer Americans than in 2020 are covered in the 2021 report.

With nearly one-third of law enforcement agencies not submitting any data last year, "This is the most incomplete reporting going back to the beginning of the hate crime data collection program decades ago," said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University San Bernardino and an expert on hate crimes.

For example, "The FBI counted only 73 hate crimes from California using 15 out of 740 agencies," said Levin.

Back in June, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a surge of 1,763 hate crimes in 2021 in his state.

Earlier this year, the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism published their own report that showed a 20% increase in hate crimes in 2021, with a 224% increase in anti-Asian crime.

“We were looking at a record year for anti-Asian hate crimes,” Levin said. “We counted more anti-Asian hate crimes in just 21 cities than the FBI counted nationwide.”

The FBI report's incomplete statistics could give the impression that hate crimes are down when data from other sources indicate a rise in hate crimes based on ethnicity. The misleading conclusion could hamper ongoing efforts to stem the incidents of hate by reducing funding and educational efforts by media, businesses and institutions.

“The failure of thousands of police agencies across the country to participate in this report is devastating for the individuals and communities harmed by these crimes and to our ability to understand and prevent them,” said SPLC's Huang.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow @DioknoEd on Twitter.

Congress: Stephen Miller, Trump's man for immigration, has got to go

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White House senior adviser Stephen Miller is credited for Donald Trump's immigration policy proposals.

In the run-up to the 2016 election, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller promoted white nationalist literature, pushed racist immigration stories and obsessed over the loss of Confederate symbols after the Charleston church massacre, according to leaked emails reviewed by Hatewatch.

More than 100 Democratic members of Congress are demanding the firing of senior White House aide Stephen Miller after e-mails that contain white nationalist sentiments he sent as a congressional staffer were leaked. Miller is credited for the racist policies proposed by Donald Trump including the wall with Mexico, the Muslim ban, the deportations of Southeast Asian refugees, the separation of refugee children from their families and doing away with family reunification as a priority.

"A documented white nationalist has no place in any presidential administration, and especially not in such an influential position," the representatives wrote recently in a letter to Donald Trump. "Miller's white supremacist influence on your immigration policy, and it seems like that his perfidious adherence to extremist ideology has shaped your administration in ways that are not yet public."

Last week the leaders of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC), Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC), and  issued a joint statement calling for Stephen Miller’s resignation, following a report released by the Southern Poverty Law Center documenting multiple instances in which Stephen Miller espoused white nationalist beliefs and vilified communities of color and immigrants in leaked emails to Breitbart.

“It’s clearer than ever that Stephen Miller is a far-right white nationalist with a racist and xenophobic worldview. His beliefs are appalling, indefensible, and completely at odds with public service,” said CPC Co-Chairs Mark Pocan (WI-02) and Pramila Jayapal, CBC Chair Karen Bass (CA-37), CHC Chair Joaquin Castro (TX-20), and CAPAC Chair Judy Chu (CA-27). 

"As documented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Steven Miller has embedded himself in white nationalist doctrine for years, including promoting racist propaganda from fringe sites like VDARE and InfoWars. And as the chief architect of the Muslim Ban and cruel family separation policies, Stephen Miller has spent the last three years turning his bigotry into policy — with President Trump’s blessing,” read the letter, which was sent Thursday (Nov. 21).

In their letter, the members of Congress link the white nationalist sentiments in the email with policy produced by the White House.

"Stephen Miller's nativism was cited as a major impetus behind your decision to reject a bipartisan compromise immigration bill that would have protected Dreamers due to his belief that the compromise would not reduce enough documented immigration," the authors wrote. "Appallingly, Mr. Miller referred to refugees as 'foreign-born terrorists' in his e-mails, a belief which clearly translated to the unprecedented low ceiling on refugee admissions and even lower actual entrants at a time of the worst refugee crisis in history."

The representatives concluded that they "refuse to tolerate white nationalism and xenophobia in the White House" and that Miller "must be fired immediately."

Common Dreams reported Wednesday that tens of thousands of people have signed petitions demanding Miller's resignation or firing since the Breitbart emails were made public. Civil rights organizations including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Never Again Action, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) have also said Miller must leave the Trump administration.

“We feel like it is up to us to point out the obvious — someone who writes, talks, and governs like a white nationalist is in fact a white nationalist. Stephen Miller is a white nationalist and he has no business serving in the White House,” the Congressmembers added. “As leaders in the Democratic Caucus, representing diverse constituencies who have been targeted by Stephen Miller’s hateful beliefs, we call for his resignation without delay.”

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Number of hate groups rise in Trump's first year

The number of U.S. hate groups expanded last year in Donald Trump's first year in office, fueled by his immigration stance and the perception that he sympathized with those espousing white supremacy, the Southern Poverty Law Center said on Wednesday (Feb. 26).

“President Trump in 2017 reflected what white supremacist groups want to see: a country where racism is sanctioned by the highest office, immigrants are given the boot and Muslims banned,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project. 

The report seems to indicate that it's not cool to be Klan anymore, but white supremacy is alive and well in the growing “alt-right” movement that embraces a khaki-and-memes aesthetic.

There were 954 hate groups in the country in 2017, marking a 4 percent increase over the previous year when the number rose 2.8 percent, the civil rights watchdog said in its annual census of such groups.

Since 2014, the number has jumped 20 percent, it said.

Among the more than 600 white supremacist groups, neo-Nazi organizations rose to 121 from 99. Anti-Muslim groups increased for a third year in a row, to 114 from 101 in 2016, the report said.

Last year brought “a substantial emboldening of the radical right, and that is largely due to the actions of President Trump, who’s tweeted out hate materials and made light of the threats to our society posed by hate groups,” Beirich told reporters.

It was a year that saw the “alt-right,” the latest incarnation of white supremacy, break through the firewall that for decades kept overt racists largely out of the political and media mainstream.

List of Anti-Immigrant, Anti-Muslim groups

Most of the increase in hate groups was driven in part by a backlash from the Nation of Islam and other fringe black nationalist groups that see Trump as the symbol of the rising white supremacist movement, a powerful reassertion of the same centuries-old racism that has always fueled their desire to break away from white America.

Typified by their anti-Semitic, anti-LGBT, anti-white rhetoric and conspiracy theories, these black nationalist groups should not be confused with activist groups such as Black Lives Matter and others that work for civil rights and to eliminate systemic racism.

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan blamed Trump for encouraging a “growing sentiment” to “put the Black, the Brown, the Red back in a place they have cut out for us.”

Not surprisingly, the ranks of black nationalist hate groups – groups that have always been a reaction to white racism – expanded to 233 chapters in 2017, from 193 the previous year.

Aside from hate groups, the SPLC identified 689 active antigovernment groups that comprised the “Patriot” movement in 2017, up from 623. Of these, 273 were armed militias.

Historically, these groups rise during Democratic presidencies out of fear of gun control measures and federal law enforcement action against them. They typically decline under GOP presidencies. This has not been the case under Trump, whose radical views and bigotry may be energizing them in the same way he has invigorated hate groups.

White supremacist groups openly rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.

Other highlights of the report include:

• Trump appointed key administration advisers with ties to the radical right, including Stephen Bannon, the head of Breitbart News who boasted of turning the website into “the platform for the alt-right.” The president thrilled white supremacists with his policy initiatives, such as revving up the country’s deportation machinery and curtailing civil rights enforcement.
• For the first time, the SPLC added two male supremacy groups to the hate group list: A Voice for Men, based in Houston, and Return of Kings, based in Washington, D.C. The vilification of women by these groups makes them no different than other groups that demean entire populations, such as the LGBT community, Muslims or Jews, based on their inherent characteristics.
• Reinvigorated white supremacists staged their largest rally in a decade – the demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left an anti-racist counterprotester dead and Trump equivocating over condemning racism. Former Klan boss David Duke called the rally a “turning point” and vowed that white supremacists would “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump” to “take our country back.”
• White supremacist groups ramped up their recruiting of college students. White nationalist leader Richard Spencer – who previously had prompted Nazi salutes from a post-election audience in Washington when he shouted “Hail Trump” – held a rally at the Lincoln Memorial and appeared on college campuses. The SPLC documented some 300 incidents of racist flyers being distributed on more than 200 campuses.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, founded in 1971, defines hate groups as organizations with beliefs or practices that demonize a class of people.

In the past, some groups have criticized the Alabama-based organization’s findings, with skeptics saying it has mislabeled legitimate organizations as “hate groups.”

“When you consider that only days into 2018, Trump called African countries ‘shitholes,’ it’s clear he’s not changing his tune. And that’s music to the ears of white supremacists,” said the SPLC's Beirich.
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Hate groups converging for anti-Muslim marches.

TAKING A CUE from the dozens of anti-Trump marches organized for women, the environment, immigrants, science, workers and the truth, hate groups will be staging marches in 25 U.S. cities this Saturday (June 10).

The anti-Islam rallies planned nationwide is being seen as further evidence of the growing cooperation between white supremacist, neo-Nazi, anti-government, and Islamophobic hate groups, says the Council on American Islamic Relations.

The leading sponsor of the rallies, Brigitte Gabriel’s ACT for America, has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The SPLC has named "Brigitte Gabriel" as a member of the nation's "Anti-Muslim Inner Circle."

Gabriel has argued that, “America is at stage two Islamic Cancer.” She believes “every practicing Muslim is a radical Muslim,” a Muslim “cannot be a loyal citizen of the United States,” and that Arabs “have no soul.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center describes ACT for America as the “largest grass roots anti-Muslim group in America,” claiming more than 525,000 members and 1,000 chapters.

“Act for America is a hate group. Period. Its rallies are hate marches. Full stop,” said Corey Saylor, director of CAIR’s Department to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia. “We encourage all Americans who value religious freedom and reject bigotry to take part in peaceful and lawful local activities challenging these hate rallies.”

What is alarming is the convergence of hate groups -- white nationalists, Nazis, the KKK and anti-government groups -- that seem to be working in coordination with each other.

While the ACT events are set to attract a number of white nationalists and others, their acceptance of neo-Nazi Billy Roper — an outspoken racist for years— is telling. ACT has come under fire already this year for the extremism of its members. Allowing Roper to organize one of the March Against Sharia events is yet another example of the figures ACT embraces.

Roper indicated that he was on a recent call for rally leaders, which was organized by ACT. He also divulged that a number of anti-government figures were also on the call. He called the conference call “productive.” Roper said he has been organizing his event for weeks, calling it a “stand against Muslim immigration.”

In previous marches organized by the hate groups, counter protestors have shown up and sometimes resulting in violence between the two groups. Police departments in several of the cities are bracing for the violence that might occur.

CAIR said it is assisting local communities in responding to the hate rallies with peaceful educational events and activities focused on promoting mutual understanding and challenging bigotry. 

[NOTE: To learn more about local responses to the hate rallies, contact the nearest CAIR chapter by going to: http://www.cair.com/cair-chapters.html]