It's everywhere in the news. The dominating story of the week. So I looked into it a bit yesterday.
Here is what I found:
- The "Alt Right" is kind of like the Tea Party, in so far as, it started as one thing, and then some other folks liked the bones of the idea, and then jumped on and made it mean something else. The Breitbart "Alt right" is not the Aryan Nation's "alt right". The term seems to have been co-opted by hate groups. This is convenient for those folks with an agenda, because you can use this development to really get things stirred up around guys like Bannon.
- I looked up every hate group I could find on Wikipedia. There are about 22± "official" hate groups recognized there. As you would expect, the KKK is the largest (by far) with between 3K - 5K members nationally. The rest of the "hate groups" each seem to average membership in the 300 member area (estimating high). So doing the math: if there is no double coverage (like a member of the KKK is not also in Aryan Nation) there are a total of less than 10K members of all these groups combined. This is .002857% of the United States population.
- Some other group sizes for comparison:
1. NRA - 5 million members (1.4%)
2. NAACP - 300K paid members (.0857%)
3. NAMBLA - 1100 paid members (.0003%)
4. Snake handler churches - 12 total, in 8 states - unknown membership.
5. My Facebook friends - 1213. As of this morning, I am bigger than the National Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), and 95% of National hate groups.
So what can we take from all this?
Well, I'm personally wondering why I'm not dominating the news? I mean, with that many friends (more than 95% of hate groups) - aren't I considered dangerous? Shouldn't the major media put news crews out front of my house to see what I might post on Facebook next?!
MY POINT: let's all settle down. Look at the real numbers. Don't let the Mainstream (or is it fake...I get confused) media lead you around and make you crazy. Hate groups make up an INCREDIBLY SMALL percentage of Americans. And that's saying something, as most of us join new groups almost daily.
Also, if you really want to feel better about life, use this link I found while doing research on hate groups, to check out this list of weird Associations. All with more members than the hate groups:
* Association of Dressings and sauces?
* Association for Pet Loss and Bereavement?
* Association for Renaissance Martial Arts?
Let's demand that the media look for actual American trends, versus, looking for statistical outliers, and then driving up ad revenues by creating false hysteria and division.
MY CONCLUSION: Most Americans are lovers (sometimes young boys), gun owners, and snake handlers... not haters.
Use this link to go to the BuzzFeed "Weird Associations" article.