Richard Belzer is known to millions of Americans as television's John Munch, an acerbic detective in almost a dozen different shows over 20 years. But the popular actor is also an increasingly florid conspiracy theorist and author who recently has come to describe the United States as a "fascist" country ruled by "sociopaths."

The National Alliance, which once dominated the U.S. neo-Nazi scene, has fallen on increasingly hard times in the last decade. Now, with the announcement that it is no longer a membership organization, it could be sounding its death rattle. The move may also have been an attempt to short-circuit litigation over a Canadian bequest. 

Volksfront, once a powerhouse neo-Nazi skinhead group, appears to have collapsed. So have most of the other once-important groups on the radical right. Still, hate groups continue to present a serious threat and their numbers remain at record levels.