Newhouse A1 - Right-Wing Extremist Groups Becoming More Active After Post-9/11 Lull

Skinheads, neo-Nazis, white separatists and other extremist right-wing groups are stepping up grass-roots organizing from the rural West to suburban New Jersey, say experts who track such groups. Radical right-wing activity slowed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, as internal disagreements erupted over the merits of the attacks and leaders of several organizations died or went to jail, several authorities said. But the groups are becoming more active -- distributing leaflets in neighborhoods, holding public rallies, starting Web sites and reaching out to like-minded activists overseas. "We have to understand that these groups are not passe and are starting to re-emerge," David Carter, a criminal justice professor at Michigan State University, told law enforcement officials at a recent Justice Department conference in Washington. The Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama civil rights watchdog that monitors the groups, counted 751 active U.S. chapters in 2003, up from 708 the year before. The number of hate-related Web sites rose from 443 in 2002 to 497 last year, the center said in a report. Don Black, a former Alabama Ku Klux Klan leader, said white separatists are seeing more Internet activity turn into "real-world activism."