Southern Poverty Law Center: THE YEAR IN HATE & EXTREMISM 2023

In 2023, the SPLC documented 1,430 hate and antigovernment extremist groups that comprise the organizational infrastructure upholding white supremacy in the U.S. The years since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection have been a time for the hard right to prepare. In 2023, those opposing inclusive democracy worked to legitimize insurrection, paint hate as virtuous and transform false conspiracy theories into truth – all in preparation for one of the most significant elections in U.S. history. The report chronicles trends in hard-right activity, not simply as a reality check, but as a tool to act alongside those working to prevent radicalization and counter white supremacy, disinformation and false conspiracies in 2024.

A section of the report addresses the "CONSPIRATORIAL RHETORIC OF MIGRANT ‘INVASION’ REACHES HIGH LEVELS IN 2023."  It begins:

"Aug. 3, 2023, marked the four-year anniversary of the racially motivated shooting in El Paso, Texas, where 23 people were killed and 22 wounded at a Walmart. The shooter left behind a manifesto blaming a `Hispanic invasion of Texas' as the basis for the attack. The shooter was sentenced to 90 consecutive life sentences on July 7, 2023. But the dangerous `invasion' rhetoric the shooter pushed is still widely used — not only by fringe white nationalist or anti-immigrant hate figures, but also by prominent and powerful elected officials.

A concerningly high rate of Republican members of Congress and other elected officials using the term `invasion' to describe migrants from mostly Central and South America fleeing violence and seeking asylum — a human right recognized under international law — at the U.S. southern border. The idea of an invasion by migrants and asylum seekers feeds into the `great replacement' theory, a racist conspiracy theory that claims white people in Western nations are being displaced and replaced by immigrants and people of color. It conjures dehumanizing images of migrants, many of whom are people of color, as being a marauding, militaristic force charging the southern border. Extreme Republican elected officials also claim this is a concerted effort by the Biden administration and Democrats to import a loyal voting bloc to replace American voters, another widely used anti-immigrant trope and central theme to replacement thinking."

KJ