Surging numbers of hate groups. Rising right-wing populism and antisemitism. Mounting acts of deadly domestic terrorism. Increasing hate crimes. Exploding street violence.

That was the landscape of the radical right in 2018.

In the U.S., white supremacist anger reached a fever pitch last year as hysteria over losing a white-majority nation to demographic change — and a presumed lack of political will to stop it — engulfed the movement. White supremacists getting pushed off mainstream web platforms, President Donald Trump’s willingness to pass a tax cut for the rich but failure to build a wall and a turn to the left in the midterm elections drove deep-seated fears of an accelerating, state- and Silicon Valley-orchestrated “white genocide.”

Even Trump’s opportunistic November attacks on a caravan of migrants moving slowly north through Mexico were seen as all talk and no action by the white supremacist and anti-immigrant movements.

“Starting to feel swindled by @realDonaldTrump,” influential antisemitic writer Kevin MacDonald tweeted on Nov. 15. “He will get slaughtered in 2020 unless he does something serious for his base on immigration.” White nationalist Richard Spencer, who infamously led a crowd of fellow racists at a Washington, D.C., meeting in Nov. 2016 with a toast and raised stiff-armed chant of “Hail Trump,” was more blunt. Spencer took to Twitter in November to proclaim, “The Trump moment is over, and it’s time for us to move on.”

Video of SPLC—The Year in Hate and Extremism The Southern Poverty Law Center releases "The Year in Hate and Extremism."

These fears and frustrations, heightened by U.S. Census Bureau projections that white people will no longer be a majority by 2044, helped propel hate to a new high last year. The total number of hate groups rose to 1,020 in 2018, up about 7 percent from 2017. White nationalist groups alone surged by nearly 50 percent last year, growing from 100 chapters in 2017 to 148 in 2018. But at the same time, Trump has energized black nationalist hate groups — typically antisemitic and anti-LGBT organizations — with an increase to 264 from 233 in 2017. Overall, though, the great majority of hate groups are those that despise racial, ethnic or religious minorities and they, unlike black nationalist groups, have a firm foothold in the mainstream.

The previous all-time high number of hate groups the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) counted was 1,018 in 2011, when rage against the first black president was roiling. Amid the era of Trump, hate groups have increased once again, rising 30 percent over the past four years. And last year marked the fourth year in a row that hate group numbers increased after a short period of decline. In the previous four-year period, the number of groups fell by 23 percent.

When Anger Turns Into Action

White supremacists’ angry energy metastasized in the two weeks leading up to the midterm elections, when three radical right terrorist attacks and one failed attempt at a mail-bombing spree shook the country, leaving 15 dead. The overall death toll tied to the radical right rose in 2018 as well, as white supremacists in Canada and the U.S. killed at least 40 people, up from 17 in 2017.

Among these killings was the Oct. 24 murder of two black people in a Kroger supermarket by a white man who first attempted to attack a Louisville-area black church, but couldn’t get in. Then, on Oct. 27, an immigrant-hating antisemite killed 11 at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh 10 days before the election. Radicalized online, Robert Bowers, who like Spencer had soured on Trump, imbibed a popular white supremacist conspiracy that Jews are bringing nonwhite immigrants and refugees into the U.S. to accelerate “white genocide.” Bowers voiced these lies on the social media forum Gab, a refuge for deplatformed haters. Also in the run-up to the election, a thankfully incompetent Facebook-using mail bomber who wanted to go “back to the Hitler days,” targeted Trump critics and set the country on edge.

The violence was so shocking that CNN’s exit polls found that three-quarters of voters said it was an important factor in their vote.

The midterms tended to validate hate groups’ fears for the future. Many extremist candidates lost, including prominent anti-immigrant and anti-LGBT candidates. Even more angering to hate groups were the dozens of women — who an increasingly misogynistic hate movement sees as allies to “white genocide” — elected to the new U.S. Congress, including two Muslims and a senator from Arizona who is openly bisexual. For white supremacists, these newly elected officials symbolize the country’s changing demographics — the future that white supremacists loathe and fear.

There were, however, some bright spots for extremists. Republican Ron DeSantis, who has a history of consorting with anti-Muslim groups and making racist statements, is Florida’s new governor. Republican Brian Kemp, Georgia’s new governor, ran on a hostile anti-immigrant platform. And Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, who has repeatedly regurgitated white supremacist ideas, was re-elected. But in all cases the margins were narrow, and some in the GOP seemed to have finally acknowledged that racism and bigotry might not be good campaign fodder. King, for example, was rebuked by Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Ohio, the National Republican Congressional Committee chair, for racist tweets and comments a week before the election. “We must stand up against white supremacy and hate in all forms, and I strongly condemn this behavior,” Stivers tweeted.