Hate group
social group that advocates hatred or violence towards members of a race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, or other group
A hate group is a social group that advocates and practices hatred, animosity, hostility, malice, and/or violence towards members of a race, ethnicity, nation, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other designated sector of society.
According to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a hate group's "primary purpose is to promote animosity, hostility, and malice against persons belonging to a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin which differs from that of the members of the organization."
Monitoring
In the US, the FBI does not publish a list of hate groups, and it also says that "investigations are only conducted when a threat or advocacy of force is made; when the group has the apparent ability to carry out the proclaimed act; and when the act would constitute a potential violation of federal law". The FBI maintains statistics on hate crimes.
Two private American non-profit organizations that monitor intolerance and hate groups are the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). They maintain lists of what they deem to be hate groups, supremacist groups and antisemitic, anti-government or extremist groups that have committed hate crimes. The SPLC's definition of a "hate group" includes any group with beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people—particularly when the characteristics being maligned are immutable. However, at least for the SPLC, inclusion of a group in the list "does not imply a group advocates or engages in violence or other criminal activity." According to USA Today, their list ranges from "white supremacists to black nationalists, neo-Nazis to neo-Confederates."
The Canadian Anti-Hate Network is a nonprofit organization that monitors hate groups in Canada.
According to the SPLC, from 2000 to 2008, hate group activity saw a 50 percent increase in the US, with a total of 926 active groups. In 2019, the organization's report showed a total of 1,020 hate groups, the highest number in 20 years, and a 7% increase from 2017 to 2018. The previous high was 1,018 in 2011, and the recent low point was 2014, when the list included 784 groups.
“Hate group” enters the record as social group that advocates hatred or violence towards members of a race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, or other group. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hate, group and social can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Hate group” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Hate, group and social provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3233801. The Library of Congress control number is sh98004639. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2000, 2008, 2019 and 2017.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Hate group”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Hate group primary sources, Hate group archive and Hate research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Hate group” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.