Hate Crimes May Be Down, But Anti-Semitism Is Still Malignant
Experts say Sunday’s shooting spree that left three dead is a reminder that anti-Jewish hate lives on in the U.S.
The killings of three people near Jewish Community Centers in Kansas City on April 13 were senseless, but investigators have gathered the alleged shooter’s intention was clear. The Southern Poverty Law Center said that suspect Frazier Glenn Miller, who went by the alias Frazier Glenn Cross when he was arrested, was a former grand dragon in the Ku Klux Klan and “raging anti-Semite” who spent the past several decades advocating for the extermination of Jews.
Miller spewed hate in over 12,000 posts on the anti-Semitic, white supremacist website the Vanguard News Network, using slurs to refer to Jews and blacks and calling the U.S. federal government the JOG, or the Jewish Occupied Government.
Thankfully, America is not teeming with Frazier Glenn Millers. Hate crime overall is declining in the U.S., according to the Federal Bureau of Investigations. In 2012, law enforcement agencies reported 5,796 total hate crime incidents, accounting for 6,718 offenses, down from 6,222 incidents of hate crime and 7,354 offenses in 2011.
But despite that downturn, anti-Semitic sentiments still make up the bulk of religious-bias crimes in the U.S. Nearly 60% of the 1,166 anti-religious hate crimes reported to the FBI in 2012 were anti-Jewish. Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center and editor of their journal the Intelligence Report, says Miller’s April 13 shooting spree is a reminder of a minor but notable undercurrent of anti-Semitism in American society.
more: http://time.com/63960/hate-crimes-anti-semitism/
