The SPLC is the premier U.S. organization monitoring the activities of domestic hate groups and other extremists – including the Ku Klux Klan, white nationalists, the neo-Nazi movement, antigovernment militias and others.

We track more than 1,600 extremist groups operating across the country. We publish investigative reports, train law enforcement officers and share key intelligence, and offer expert analysis to the media and public.

Our work fighting hate and extremism began in the early 1980s, amid a resurgence of Klan violence that began several years after the end of the civil rights movement. Each year since 1990, we have released an annual census of U.S. hate groups. In the mid-1990s, we also began documenting the number of radical, antigovernment militias and other organizations that comprise the far-right “Patriot” movement.

Over the years, we’ve crippled or destroyed some of the country’s most notorious hate groups – including the United Klans of America, the Aryan Nations and the White Aryan Resistance – by suing them for murders and other violent acts committed by their members or by exposing their activities.