Disputed KKK Chapter, Village Of Gurnee Removed From 'Hate Map'

GURNEE, IL — The village of Gurnee is no longer listed as the home of a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan on a map of hate groups released by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In the latest edition of its "Hate Map," released Tuesday, the SPLC identified 1,020 active hate groups operating in the United States in 2018. The total is up from 917 in the previous version of the map and represents a 30 percent increase since 2014, according to the group.

In 2017, SPLC announced Gurnee was home to a previously unknown chapter of the Ku Klos Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a 154-year-old racist hate group, and included the town on its nationwide map with an icon of a white hood. Village officials disputed the assertion.

Gurnee police said they investigated the claim and found no evidence of any KKK activity since the group aborted a planned march in the village in 1987, according to the Lake News-Sun. Likewise, Illinois State Police's terrorism and intelligence center said it found no connection to the village in any records of organized hate groups in its database.

The origin of Gurnee's inclusion dates back to a November 2016 post on a KKK website by a person claiming to be an "exalted cyclops" in Illinois who listed "Gurnee, IL, 60031" as an address and included an email address, according to a feature in Politico Magazine.

Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project, publisher of the group's Intelligence Report and Hatewatch blog, told Politico the group received a response to an email to the address provided by the poster asking for more information. Gurnee police said they "were not able to substantiate that this person even existed," according to the magazine.

“Even though the police couldn’t locate them doesn’t mean that they’re not there,” Beirich told Politico. “If we were to remove all the communities that hate the fact that there’s a hate group in their town, we wouldn’t be providing the data.” She said about a third of chapters disappear every year.

Representatives of the village and the SPLC have yet to respond to requests for comment on the removal of the reference to a local KKK chapter in the latest edition of the map. If they do, their responses will be added here.

In a release announcing the 2018 edition of the map, Beirich said it has become “critically important” that people understand what she called “the landscape of hate.” The number of these groups is surging in the era of President Donald Trump, who has faced fierce criticism for his anti-immigrant rhetoric.

“We hope the new, interactive map helps people recognize and better understand the extremist activity occurring in their communities and how it’s part of a larger movement,” said Beirich.

The map allows users to filter by ideologies tracked by the organization. Some of the categories include anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, anti-muslim, holocaust denial, Ku Klux Klan, male supremacy, Neo-Nazi, racist skinhead and white nationalist.

The map shows that states with the most hate groups per capita tend to be concentrated in the Southeast, northern Rocky Mountain regions and western Great Plains. This includes Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas, as well as Idaho and Montana.

Meanwhile, several states in the Midwest saw the least number of hate groups per capita. Among these states were Kansas, Iowa and Wyoming.

In a video accompanying the report, the group says there were roughly 375 hate groups nationwide in 1999. That number has ballooned over the years to more than 1,000 this year. Beirich called the rise “disturbing” and said it’s no coincidence the rise coincides with Trump’s election.

“The trend is unmistakable,” she said in the video. “Trump has energized the radical right by fanning the flames of racial resentment over immigration and the country’s changing demographics.”

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.