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Article: Countering hatred.(religious response to hate crimes and white supremacist activity)
- Article from:
- The Christian Century
- Article date:
- September 8, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 The Christian Century Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In a nine-state area of the Midwest, 272 far-right-wing organizations--including Christian Identity, Christian Patriot, neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan groups--ply their racist and anti-Semitic ideologies. Hundreds of other groups are known to operate nationally, involving tens of thousands of true believers and their followers. Violence can and does erupt from their ranks, as was evident in August when former Aryan Nations security officer Buford Furrow went on a shooting rampage at a Jewish day-care center in Los Angeles and then murdered a Filipino-American postal worker. (See related story on page 842.)
Religion-based hatred is the engine of the violent far-right; ...