More gun shows, men toting loaded weapons at Obama rallies, anti-tax tea parties staged by hard line conservatives, birthers claiming Obama is illegally occupying the office of the president, protestors deliberately disrupting public meetings on health care, and anti-immigration Minutemen patrolling the southwest border and espousing conspiracy theories about the secret Mexican “Plan de Aztlan” to re-conquer the American Southwest, and the secretly arranged merger of the United States, Mexico and Canada into a “North American Union”.

According to a report released last week by the non-profit Southern Poverty Law Center, these are all signs that after a decade of largely disappearing from public view, right-wing militias and white hate groups are again on the rise.

The SPLC report attributes the current resurgence to the depressed economy and to societal stresses such as the rise of multiculturalism, changing demographics, and a liberal administration headed by an African-American. While these factors may be the driving force behind the dramatic increase of race-based hate groups from 602 in 2000 to 926 in 2008, right-wing politicians and radio and television hosts have greatly contributed to the rise of hate speech and the sudden growth of fringe groups who believe that anything the government does is evil.

Whether it’s Governor Rick Perry of Texas talking openly of secession, Lou Dobbs inflaming the immigration debate, Michelle Bachman, Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh continually stoking the fires of racial hatred with bogus accounts of U.S. reeducation and concentration camps and claims that Obama is a socialist, a fascist, or a Nazi in the mold of Hitler, and newly formed groups such as the Oath Keepers, a military and police organization whose members vow not to obey immoral orders and who claim their oath is to the Constitution, not to the politicians, the U.S. is looking more like a circus with each passing day.

Last June, Stephen Tyrone Johns, a six-year veteran of the Holocaust museum’s security staff, was shot and killed by James W. von Brunn, an 88-year-old white supremacist and Holocaust denier from Maryland. One wonders how much longer it will be before another wing-nut, egged on by politicians and media who should know better, commits the next public execution.

You can read the full report at: http://www.splcenter.org/