Last week, the Southern Poverty
The SPLC found 939 hate groups were active in America, and it defined these groups as those that aren't necessarily violent but have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people. SPLC made the list using hate group publications and websites, citizen and police reports, field sources, and news reports.
Mark Potok, the author of the report and senior fellow at the SPLC, told Business Insider that the number of hate groups in each state more or less correlates with the state's population.
"Another thing to consider when analyzing this data is that certain hate groups reside in particular areas. The Klan will almost always be in rural areas whereas, the Black Separatists are mostly in the cities," Potok said.
There are two hate groups to watch in 2014, Potak says - the white supremacists in the American Freedom Party and the small but violent racist skinhead gang called Crew 41.
Racist Southern California skinheads initially founded the American Freedom political party in 2009 with the goal of deporting immigrants. The group's political platform represents "the interests of White Americans" and includes a stance on taxes, drones, environmental pollution and ironically, calls for a free society where "people live their day to day lives as they wish, without being molded like guinea pigs."
"They have for years, been running in political elections and haven't done all that well. They have however, recently gathered the top influential white supremacists to run their board and are becoming more aggressive about winning elections," Potok said.
Crew 41 - aka "Die Auserwählten" meaning "the chosen" in German - was created and organized online by a pop-up gang last summer. Multiple crimes have since occurred and members have expressed the desire to kill sex offenders. In South Carolina, members of Crew 41 reportedly shot and stabbed a middle-aged couple because the husband was on a registered sex offender list.