After four years of stunning growth, the number of groups on the American radical right dropped significantly for the first time in 2013. The decline in hate groups and, especially, antigovernment “Patriot” groups was driven by a legal crackdown, the failure of various nightmarish radical predictions to materialize, the co-opting by politicians of the extreme right’s issues, and the re-election of President Obama.
Larry Klayman is known for an endless barrage of lawsuits targeting his political enemies. But his attempt last fall to oust President Obama fell seriously flat.
The number of far-right extremist groups fell significantly in 2013 for the first time in a decade, the SPLC found in its annual count, released today. But with a total of more than 2,000 groups, the radical right remains at historically high levels.
Since 9/11, researchers have produced a large number of studies of terrorism – analyses that help provide a basis for understanding the nature of the threat.
As investigators continued to seek insight into the radicalization of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the apparent perpetrators of the April 15 Boston Marathon bombing, it emerged that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had consumed a smorgasbord of very American white supremacist and conspiracist publications popular on the domestic far right.
Though Volksfront (VF) may have met its end, the leadership of the group, which at one point had a significant presence on at least three continents, will probably live on in some form in the white supremacist world. Many of the group’s most important members come from the hardest-core sectors of the neo-Nazi skinhead world and have extensive criminal histories. Even so, the top personnel in the VF worldwide network, most hand-chosen by now-retired VF President Randal Krager, are not much known by the outside world. Here, presented in alphabetical order according to last name, we profile 12 key members of VF in the United States and abroad.
