Map Reveals 25 Statewide Hate Groups In Arizona

Arizona is home to 25 statewide hate groups, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which pioneered the use of lawsuits to take down America’s most notorious hate groups, including the Klan.

SPLC investigative researchers are identifying white supremacists who have infiltrated our governing bodies, like the U.S. State Department official we exposed a few months ago who led a white nationalist chapter and called for creating ‘a country founded for white people with a nuclear deterrent. “

“But we are not just tracking the spread of white supremacists, we are leading the fight against them,” said Cherry Z. Gamble of the SPLC.

The Washington Post calls the Southern Poverty Law Center “one of the best sources of empirical data and information about extremist political activity in the United States.”

Last year, the SPLC chalked up a major victory by winning a $14 million judgment against Andrew Anglin, the notorious founder of a neo-Nazi website called the Daily Stormer.

Anglin had launched a vicious “troll storm” to terrorize a Jewish family in Montana with a flood of more than 700 vile messages.

To hold him accountable, the SPLC filed suit on the family’s behalf and, after more than two years of hard-fought legal battles, won its case and drove him into the shadows.

Second, the racial justice group is pulling the plug on their fundraising and recruitment. Far-right extremists like Anglin use the internet to raise money, recruit supporters, amplify and mainstream their toxic propaganda, and indoctrinate children into their movement.

But more often, they are hitting a new obstacle: the SPLC’s campaign to pressure Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, PayPal, and other Silicon Valley firms to kick hate groups off their digital platforms.

The notorious white supremacist Richard Spencer, who used to be one of the loudest voices of online hate complains that his organization, which appears now to be in disarray, has “been de-platformed from all major payment systems …. We can’t use them. “

Defending the Right to Vote

In Mississippi, the SPLC legal team is waging an important battle to overturn that state’s lifetime voting ban for people who have been convicted of certain felonies – a rule that has roots in slavery and disproportionately harms Black communities today.

In Florida, the SPLC fought hard to ensure hundreds of thousands of voters could cast ballots after the state legislature when against the will of the people and enforced a modern-day poll
tax. This case makes clear the lengths some people will go to prevent ballot access.

The SPLC filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the US Supreme Court against two Arizona laws that ban ballot assistance and throw out a voter’s entire ballot if they mistakenly voted in the wrong precinct. The Court upheld the laws last June.

“The Arizona laws the Supreme Court upheld today are the kind of unnecessary and discriminatory laws the ‘monumental’ Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) was designed to block,” said Nancy Abudu of the strategic litigation for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Militias confront immigrants

Veterans on Patrol (VOP), an anti-government militia group, has,  in at least 15 instances, where border militia groups “intercepted” migrants in Pima County

In messages posted to VOP’s telegram channel, vigilante “operations” show how VOP, along with other groups such as AZ Desert Guardians and United People of America, have stopped, interrogated, and siphoned migrants into the hands of Border Patrol agents. Facebook images of the group’s activities make it clear agents have been aware of the militia presence in the region since at least 2019.

VOP founder Michael “Lewis Arthur” Meyer, has been arrested numerous times for trespassing on private property while searching for the ever-elusive child sex ring networks he claims exist in the Arizona desert. VOP’s theories about “child sex camps” have been debunked by the Tucson police, the sheriff’s office, and the Pima County medical examiner.

Attorneys for immigrants

The last four years have seen children separated from their parents and thrown into cages. Immigrants are packed into overcrowded for-profit prisons without access to basic needs like proper hygiene and nutrition.

“These are not American values,” said Cherry Z. Gamble of the SPLC. “And while we fight for a much more compassionate immigration system from the Biden administration, our ambitious Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative will continue pro bono legal representation to immigrants.”

Click to find out more information about the SPLC’s work against hate.

Statewide Hate Groups In Arizona

Act For America

Anti-Muslim, Tucson

Alliance Defending Freedom

Anti-LGBTQ, Scottsdale

American Border Patrol

Anti-Immigrant, Sierra Vista

Aryan Nations – Church of the Jesus Christ Christian

Neo-Nazi, Statewide

Atomwaffen Division

Neo-Nazi, Statewide

AZ Patriots

Anti-Immigrant, Statewide

Black Metal Cult Records

Hate Music, Phoenix

Bomb Islam

Anti-Muslim, Phoenix

Faithful Word Baptist Church

Anti-LGBTQ, Chapters in Tempe, Tucson

Family Watch International

Anti-LGBTQ, Gilbert

Firm 22

Racist Skinhead, Statewide

Folks Front/Folkish Resistance Movement

Neo-Nazi, Statewide

Israel United In Christ

General Hate, Phoenix

Israelite School of Universal Practical Knowledge

General Hate, Phoenix

Nation Of Islam

General Hate, Phoenix

National Reformation Party

White Nationalist, Statewide

National Socialist Movement

Neo-Nazi, Maricopa

Nationalist Social Club (NSC-131)

Neo-Nazi, Statewide

Oath Keepers

Far-right anti-government militia composed of current and former military and police.

Patriot Front

White Nationalist, Statewide

Patriot Movement AZ

General Hate, Litchfield Park

Proud Boys

General Hate, Statewide

Sicarii 1715

General Hate, Phoenix

The Order of the Black Sun

Neo-Völkisch, Mesa

United Families International

Anti-LGBTQ, Gilbert