Intelligence Report, Spring 2013, Issue Number: 149 The Year in Hate and Extremism By Mark Potok, Senior Fellow Now, in the wake of the mass murder of 26 children and adults at a Connecticut school and the Obama-led gun control efforts that followed, it seems likely that that growth will pick up speed once again. Even before serious talk of gun control began in Washington, the far right was already in something of a meltdown in the immediate aftermath of Obamaâs re-election, which came to many who got their campaign news from right-wing sources as a jarring shock. Right-wing outfits like TeaParty.org said a âCommunist coupâ was under way. Now, it seems likely that the radical rightâs growth will continue. In 2012, before Obamaâs re-election and the Newtown, Conn., massacre, the rate of Patriot growth had slackened somewhat, although it remained significant. Anger over the idea of four more years under a black, Democratic president â and, even more explosively, the same kinds of gun control efforts that fueled the militia movement of the 1990s â seems already to be fomenting another Patriot spurt. Even before the election last year, self-described Patriots sounded ready for action. âOur Federal Government is just a tool of International Socialism now, operating under UN Agendas not our American agenda,â the United States Patriots Union wrote last year in a letter âsent to ALL conservative state legislators, all states.â âThis means that freedom and liberty must be defended by the states under their Constitutional Balance of Power, or we are headed to Civil War wherein the people will have no choice but to take matters into their own hands.â Read more:http://www.splcenter.org/home/2013/spring/the-year-in-hate-and-extremism