The Soldiers of Odin are a self-defense group which first popped up in Finland. The purpose is to defend natives from violence by the invading Third Worlders. A chapter was also organized in Canada, which led to Vice shrieking and sending low-testosterone reporters to try to "infiltrate" the group so they could whine about it online. ( Instead, they ran away .)

Now, the Soldiers of Odin are apparently organizing in the United States.

Members of the organization—which gets its cryptic name from the Norse god Odin—have been patrolling the streets of European cities since last year, in response to a wave of mostly Muslim asylum-seekers coming through the EU’s porous borders. But, the anti-immigrant group has now spread to the U.S. and is growing like wildfire—with the help of a powerful social-media recruitment program, Soldiers of Odin has now established U.S. chapters in at least 42 states since February. [Europe's Newest Vigilante Group Lands in the U.S., by James King, Voactic, May 5, 2016]

Wow, 42 chapters! That's pretty impressive growth. They must be on the streets in every major city!

But... have you actually seen any? I haven't, and I write for an anti-immigration website.

What's the evidence for this claim?

The official Soldiers of Odin USA Facebook page, which started in February, boasts a membership of more than 4,000 people. The page is private, and the movement’s leaders have to accept a person into the group—not anyone can just click a “like” button and become a Soldier of Odin. As Pitcavage [a 'senior research fellow with the Anti-Defamation League] notes, this doesn’t necessarily mean there are 4,000 vigilantes actively “patrolling” U.S. cities; some are just “cheerleaders” of the movement, he said. But the group definitely has a presence that lives beyond cyberspace.

Oh. Facebook.

This is pretty common with a lot of these kinds of groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center ($PLC to us here) publishes a list of "hate groups" every year which is breathlessly reported by the Main Stream Media. And of course, the groups are always going up, up, up! The Fourth Reich is nigh!

But then if you actually look at the last of groups, the scam is revealed. Many of these groups don't really exist. Many are double counted. Some are simply one guy with a website. Sometimes, one guy with a website magically becomes several hate groups.

We're a hate group of course, which is absurd. So is FAIR. So is the Family Research Council for God's sake. And yet, every year, this nonsense generates silly stories about how New Jersey is on the brink of being taken over by the Klan. Now that Donald Trump is the Republican nominee, they might as well just label the whole GOP a "hate group."

This is the same kind of thing. Sure, groups are organizing but this seems exaggerated. More importantly, questioning groups like the Anti-Defamation League about these groups is an obvious conflict of interest. Of course they will say the group is racist and a threat. Of course they will call this a "nasty" group of people (as opposed to those generous souls at ADL). They have to to pay the bills.

The Main Stream Media of course, will not cover stories about immigrant crime. They will not cover stories about political corruption. They will not challenge the status quo. They won't write exposes about left wing militant groups who get funding from universities and local governments. But let one guy with a website say he's unhappy about immigration and the world caves in.

The role of the modern reporter is to soothe the powerful and comfort the comfortable. So their job is to hunt down dissidents, point and sputter, and caterwaul at anyone who says the emperor has no clothes.

Most of the time, this means falling for obvious hoaxes. Other times, it means simply making things up. But usually, it's cases like this; taking a group which doesn't have a huge presence on the ground and building it up to be a some gigantic threat.

The $PLC was simply ahead of the curve. They may be in trouble in the years ahead: the MSM is cutting in on their business model.