Report ties rise in hate to Trump

President Trump is making America hate again, a new report claims.

The number of hate groups in the U.S. surged by 30% over the past four years, reaching an all-time high.

There were 1,020 hate groups in the U.S. in 2018, which marked the fourth straight year of growth, according to a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The report states that “President Trump has opened the White House doors to extremism, not only consulting with hate groups on policies that erode our country’s civil rights protections, but also enabling the infiltration of extremist ideas into the administration’s rhetoric and agenda.”

“Once relegated to the fringes, the radical right now has a toehold in the White House,” the report adds.

The four years of growth in the number of hate groups, coinciding with Trump’s campaign and presidency, follows three consecutive years of decline.

Racist and anti-Semitic violence are also on the rise. Citing FBI stats, the report states that hate crimes increased by 30% in the three-year period ending in 2017. FBI figures for 2018 were not available yet.

“The numbers tell a striking story — that this President is not simply a polarizing figure but a radicalizing one,” Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, said in a statement. “Rather than trying to tamp down hate, as presidents of both parties have done, President Trump elevates it — with both his rhetoric and his policies. In doing so, he’s given people across America the go-ahead to act on their worst instincts.”

The number of white nationalist groups grew by almost 50%, from 100 groups to 148 in 2018.

Black nationalist groups — which are typically anti-semitic, anti-LGBT and anti-white — also grew, going from 233 chapters in 2017 to 264 in 2018.

The Montgomery, Alabama-based SPLC is a nonprofit founded in 1971 that monitors the activities of American hate groups and other extremists.