FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ)

How do you define an extremist?

For our Center an extremist is an individual or group that subscribes to a belief system that is substantially antithetical to America's pluralistic democracy or someone who advocates violent methods to achieve their ends.

What are the different types of terrorists?

Ideologically Motivated

Beliefs
* Theological
* Political 
* Hybrid


Citizenship
* Domestic 
* Foreign


Psychologically Dangerous Sociopath
* Desires sense of power, knowledgeable about consequences

Mentally unstable
* Irrational or delusional

Personal Benefit or Revenge Benefit
* Offender gains financial, reputational, or other enhancement 


Revenge
* Offender settles an actual or perceived grievance against an individual or institution

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What is the Ku Klux Klan?

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is the nation's largest and most enduring terrorist group, founded in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1865. It waged a violent campaign against newly freed black slaves who exercised their rights and the whites who supported Reconstruction (Chalmers, 1981). Outrage over Klan atrocities led to the passage of the Federal KKK Acts, laws that are still used today to punish violent deprivations of civil rights. The Klan's influence ensnared the whole South and its membership soared to over 500,000 before it was "officially" disbanded in 1869 by its founder, a former Confederate general, Nathan Bedford Forrest (Chambers, 1981).

The Klan's second incarnation came in 1915. A Georgia preacher named William Simmons broadened the scope of Klan bigotry to also include Catholics, Jews, and new immigrants, in addition to African-Americans. He also sculpted Klan ideology to embrace Christian fundamentalism and fanatical patriotism-trends that are present today in the ideological framework of the Patriot movement. A new technological medium, the motion picture, broadcast a glorified and heroic Klan image to the nation in the popular D.W. Griffith film, Birth of a Nation. By the mid 1920s, the Klan had 4.5 million members throughout the East, with a disproportionate representation in Indiana. Lynchings committed or inspired by the Klan were a common terror tool in the South. Thousands of mostly black Americans were murdered by Klansmen or their sympathizers over the span of several decades. Before being coopted by racists, lynching had previously emerged as a punishment of choice by frontier vigilantes from the revolutionary era into the late 1800s (Bullard, 1991, pp. 14-18; Ridgeway, 1995, p. 52; KKK, 1975, p. 61; Lynching, 1975, p. 668-669).

By 1925, internal quarrels, corruption and highly publicized sex scandals led to a steep decline in Klan influence and membership until a violent southern revival during the Civil Rights era (Bullard, 1991, pp. 14-18; KKK, 1975, p. 619). 

During the late 1970s and the 1980s Klansmen relied on two distinct strategies to promote their cause. One strategy, that of mainstreaming racism, was pioneered by David Duke. Duke left the Klan and started his own group, the National Association for the Advancement of White People. Duke's strategy was to mainstream and subtly disguise his bigotry by exploiting racial divisions less directly than the more confrontational KKK style. He wore suits and submerged his racial views into mainstream political discussions of affirmative action, crime, drugs, federal authority, welfare, gay rights and education. Duke was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives, and was narrowly defeated in bids for governor and the U.S. Senate in the late 1980s. In 1988 and 1992, Duke unsuccessfully ran for President on the Populist Party ticket (Schwartz, 1996, p. 36-38).

The other Klan strategy was more violent and extreme. The Klan could no longer count on the mainstream membership and political support that sustained it in the South during the turbulent Civil Rights Era. During the 1980s many Klan factions adopted not only a disturbing new violent and militaristic style, but an increasing solidarity with other hatemongers they previously distrusted, notably neo-Nazis. During the 1980s in North Carolina and Texas, Klan paramilitary units terrorized minorities with impunity until federal courts enjoined them. In the late 1970s and 1980s Klansmen and their associates committed numerous murders, bombings and other violent attacks on minorities, eerily reminiscent of the Klan's previous waves of terror. While the Klan's violent shift and militaristic style increased membership off its early 1970s lows, to about 11,000 in 1981, there was an unintended consequence (Klanwatch, 1990, p. 47). Prominent watchdog groups like Klanwatch, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Center for Democratic Renewal engaged in a variety of successful strategies against the Klan and other organized hate groups that included monitoring, grass roots activism, legislative initiatives and civil law suits.

The Klan and other hate groups suffered a series of crushing legal blows for their connections to acts of hate violence in cases litigated by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). While the Klan today, with only 4,000 members nationally, is a mere shadow of its former self, Klan methods and ideology have played a key role in the evolution of American bigotry, antigovernment politics and paramilitary extremism.

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What is a hate crime?

Generically, hate crimes may be defined as those offenses committed because of the actual or perceived status
characteristic of another; or alternatively a crime where the motive is the actual or perceived status characteristic of
another- usually, but not necessarily the crime's victim or target. Status characteristics are those material attributes, like race, common to identifiable classes of people that society recognizes through law, tradition or custom.

Today, hate crime laws are sometimes more broadly defined to include offenses that prohibit against cross burnings, desecration to houses of worship, Ku Klux Klan antimasking laws, penalty enhancements, and stand alone civil rights or intimidation statutes. It is the last two statutes - the penalty enhancements and the stand alone statutes-that are the most broadly applicable to the widest range of criminal conduct, and the ones that are most commonly referred to as hate crimes. Hate crime is sometimes referred to as bias crime.

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What is the difference between stand-alone and penalty enhancement statutes.

Stand- alone statutes, such as California Penal Code � 422.6, create a separate chargeable offense rather than
enhancing the sentence meted out for an existing underlying offense. Typical for statutes of its type, California's
stand-alone statute punishes the interference with an individual's civil rights through intimidation by force or threat
because of status group membership such as race, religion, sexual orientation and ehtnicity among others. Stand-alone statutes do not require the charging of a separate underlying offense. 

Many states have adopted penalty enhancement statutes that increase the penalties after guilt is established for an underlying offense, such as assault or property damage. The enhancement becomes effective when the prosecution subsequently proves that the crime for which a defendant has already been convicted was either motivated by bias or involved discriminatory selection of a victim. For example, Wisconsin's penalty enhancement statute increases sentences imposed for crimes in which an offender intentionally selects a victim on the basis of such things as race, religion, national origin, or sexual orientation.

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How many hate crimes are officially reported in the United States?

The table below represents those criminal hate incidents officially reported in the United States by the FBI. As of this writing over two dozen states have statutes requiring hate crime data collection. In most instances, this requirement is often not adhered to by police departments- so these figures are generally believed to reflect a significant undercount.

Federal law only requires only that the FBI serve as a conduit for hate crime statistics and that it publish an annual
report on hate crime statistics - so law enforcement agencies that do not comply with the FBI request to release such statistics are completely free to do so.

Reported Hate Crime in the United States by Year and Bias Motive

Bias Motivation

The First Amendment, ratified in 1791, states: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances."

The First Amendment's wording is unique among the Bills of Rights in its apparent clarity and strength. The other
amendments in the Bill of Rights were worded to give government much more latitude when its action infringed on fundamental liberties. Notwithstanding the First Amendment's wording, disputes over the extent of its protections started soon after ratification and continue to this day.

The First Amendment is now applied to the actions of all level of government, not just Congress and the federal
government.

Over the years the Supreme Court has established other new standards relating to expressive rights. Specifically, the Court has identified various circumstances where the government has greater latitude to interfere with expression. These circumstances where the government has greater authority relate to the presence of either a compelling state interest, an unprotected area of speech; symbolic conduct; criminality, or the use of time, place and manner restrictions. Generally governmental regulations based on the content of the idea expressed will be overturned. If expression falls under an "unprotected" area of speech the government has far greater ability to regulate or proscribe it. Unprotected areas of speech include defamation, fraudulent commercial speech, obscenity, and incitement to criminality. Technically another unprotected category called "fighting words" exists, but is considered by many to be dormant because the Court has refused to invoke the category in upholding a speech restriction in five decades. 


Isn't hate speech protected by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment Free Speech provision?

Yes. As a general rule, the First Amendment protects hate speech as long as it does not:
include a physical threat of violence or property damage; 
incite imminent criminality;
does not defame a particular individual; 
solicit or actively abet criminality;
or evidence a conspiracy.


If hate speech is protected, don't hate crime laws also violate the Constitution's protection of freedom of speech?

The Supreme Court has consistently upheld criminal civil rights laws and hate crime laws that punish status based criminal acts or status based interference with particular civil rights. The Court has, however, invalidated criminal laws that seek to punish otherwise legal expression because it promotes bigotry or merely offends people. 

Still, the Court has also held that the criminal law can distinctly punish the harmful act of selecting certain classes of people for victimization- separate from the victimization itself- without punishing the underlying belief system that leads to such selection. The premise being that the act of discriminatory crime victim selection is a separate culpable harm that is distinguishable from the protected right to promote bigotry in a lawful manner. 

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What about the law in other countries?

Most other Western countries have various prohibitions on hate speech- although those laws are rarely enforced. There is an increasingly accepted international body of law - known as the Article 4 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination - which calls for the criminal punishment of racial hate speech. Countries that have criminalized racial hate speech, based on this protocol, include Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Advocates of hate crime victims have argued that the First Amendment Free Speech right should be weighed against the right to equality and respect covered by the Fourteenth Amendment.
For more on this specific issue, see "Countering Cyberhate: More Regulation or More Speech?" at

http://www.abanet.org/irr/hr/sum98cacas.html and "Racism and Racial Discrimination on the Internet, at

http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu2/10/c/racism/guzman.htm. 

In Canada a piece of federal legislation, The Sentencing Reform Bill (C-41) is a penalty enhancement provision, similar to those in the United States, that allows for increased sentences when a crime is committed because of someone's nationality, color, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, or sexual orientation. In addition Canada has far more expansive hate speech laws that are common to other Western nations with less stringent protections of free speech. Section 318 of the Canadian Criminal Code criminally punishes those who "advocate genocide" on the basis of color, race, religion or ethnic origin. Section 319 (1) punishes those who incite hatred on the basis of color, race, religion or ethnic origin where such incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace." Section 319(2) of the Canadian Criminal Code punishes the public communication of statements that willfully promote hatred on the basis of color, race, religion
or ethnic origin.

In the United Kingdom the primary law that punishes racial hatred is located in Part III of the Public Order Act
1986.(1)��17 et. seq. The statute punishes the incitement of racial hatred through words, conduct or the display of
written material . The law expansively defines race as including color, race, nationality (including citizenship) and ethnic or national origins. 

Germany also a has criminal law which punishes inciting racial hatred. In 1996 American Gerhard Lauck, was sentenced to four years in prison by a German court after he was apprehended by authorities during a European trip. Lauck was convicted for the mass mailing of hateful neo-Nazi materials to Germany, where it is banned, from his home in Nebraska where it is legal (Associated Press, 1996). Article 5 of the German Constitution provides limited protection for free speech but only to the extent that the expression is truthful and does not contravene the human rights of others (Rosenberg and Keesler, 2000)
S.C./B.L.

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Is non-violent, but bigoted hate speech online Constitutionally protected?

Yes, as long as it does not cause, threaten, solicit, or conspire criminality. In June 1997, in the case of Reno v. ACLU, the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling that had far reaching implications for hateful and other controversial websites. The Court voted 7-2 to invalidate two sections of the Communications Decency Act, a new law that among other things, punished the knowing transmission of various types of obscene, patently offensive or indecent messages in a manner in which minors might view it. The Court held that the Internet was a form of communication that enjoys the widest protection from government censorship or punishment. The justices rejected the government's contention that the Internet should be as highly regulated as broadcast radio and television, and in particular rejected the application of an indecency or offensiveness standard to Internet communications. The Court found that using indecency or offensiveness as benchmarks for restriction on Internet communications impinged on Constitutionally protected speech because they were both too vague and too restrictive (Reno v. ACLU,1997).

Pursuant to the Court's ruling, many offensive sites that spewed hatred remained Constitutionally protected. The Court's ruling in Reno, however, did not extend protection to individuals who use the Internet as an instrumentality to commit conduct, like threats, frauds, or criminal solicitation, that is unlawful irrespective of the context.

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Have there been hate-related prosecutions or civil cases pursued for online legal violations?

Yes, but these online bigoted violators have been prosecuted or pursued under existing laws. On September 26, 1996 Richard Machado using a university computer sent a racist epithet filled threat to about sixty, mostly Asian, students at the University of California, Irvine where he had flunked out that warned, " I personally will make it my life career to find and kill everyone of you personally. OK?????? That's how determined I am. Get the f**k out, Mother F**ker (Asian Hater)"

In February 1998, Machado became the first individual to be convicted in the United States of a so-called hate crime over the Internet. After a jury deadlock in his first trial a subsequent jury convicted Machado of violating 18 USC 245 for interfering with their right to attend a public college. Machado was sentenced to one year in prison. (United States v. Machado, 1998.) 

Less than a month later, in March 1998, 67 Latino students and employees of California State University, Los Angeles, MIT, and other institutions received a threatening e-mail that read in part: "I hate your race. I want you all to die. will (sic) do kill all your people for me, wetback....I'm going to come down and kill your wetback, affirmative action ass.....I hate wetbacks!!!Kill all wetbacks!!!"

In June 1999, Kingman Quon, an Asian-American California college student received a two year sentence under 18 USC 245 for sending those threatening e-mails. His probation bars him from using a computer or going online for a year once he is released from prison. (United States v. Quon, 1999.) 

Online haters face prosecution not only for violating traditional civil rights statutes, but also from other statutes dealing with telecommunications. Under 47 USC 223 those who seek to threaten , annoy, or harass another through the use of a telecommunications device by making lewd, indecent or anonymous contact face up to two years in prison. In addition 18 USC 875 provides for up to two years incarceration for threats communicated in interstate commerce which can include phone or computer lines. 

In October 1998 a neo-Nazi hate site, Alpha HQ, run by longtime Philadelphia racist Ryan Wilson became the first hate site to be removed by court order from the World Wide Web after the Pennsylvania Deputy Attorney General Trent Hargrove obtained a civil injunction. His site allegedly published threats against two Pennsylvania civil rights workers. The Attorney General's Office contended that the site was in violation of state laws that generally prohibited harassment, terrorist threats and ethnic intimidation. Wilson failed to appear in his own defense. Wilson later was assesses in a one million judgment in a federal administrative hearing for violating the rights of one of the sites targets. 

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How long have online hatemongers been around?

The use of computer networks by white supremacists dates back to the early 1980s when West Virginia neo-Nazi
publisher George Dietz established a computer bulletin board (BBS) to post racist, anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial material. These bulletin boards, accessible to those with a computer and a modem, were text postings arranged by titles that included "The Jew in Review," "The Holohoax," and "WVA Real Estate Bargains." These bulletin boards allowed space for additional comment and the downloading of files by interested users. Shortly thereafter the Aryan Nations and White Aryan Resistance set up BBSs of their own to spread their ideology. The men behind each BBS, Louis Beam and Tom Metzger, are influential white supremacists whose ideology promote random racist violence- a message well situated for the anonymous and far reaching medium of computer networks. During the mid 1990s anti-government "patriot" groups added this technology to an array of communication media that included fax networks and short-wave radio broadcasts. (Political Research Associates, 2000)

It was in the Spring of 1995 that computer programmer Don Black set up the first, and arguably most influential hate website, Stormfront, from his Palm Beach, Florida home. Black a former Ku Klux Klansman and federal felon, was soon joined by other notorious hatemongers on the web. Today, there are a vast array of bigots in cyberspace including the neo-Nazi National Alliance, Aryan Nations, White Aryan Resistance, World Church of the Creator, National Association for the Advancement of White People, various Klan factions, skinheads, holocaust deniers, and hate rock promoters. It is estimated that there are about 500 hate websites on the Internet in addition to various chat rooms, e-mail services, and USENET posting locations. Out of those 500 hate sites there are only a few dozen hub sites that update their content regularly and get a consistent stream of visitors. (Perine, July 25, 2000) 

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What were the characteristics of the African Slave trade?

The slave trade to the New World lasted over 350 years - into the 1860s (Fogel, 18). Brazil was the most common
destination for slaves during the period, with 41% of them ending up there. English and French Caribbean Islands and Spanish territories accounted for another 47% of the arrivals. Another 5% ended up in territories owned by Holland, Sweden and Denmark. England's American Colonies, and later the United States accounted for 7% of the slaves brought to the New World (Fogel at 18).

The extent of the New World slave trade is somewhat elusive, but staggering by any credible analysis. Earlier estimates put the number of slaves brought to the New World at 13.8 million persons, while more recent estimates were revised to about 9.7 million people, with an additional 150,000 persons going to Europe. [ Fogel 424].

IMPORTATION OF AFRICANS DURING SLAVE TRADE: 1451 - 1870 (Fogel 19)

BRAZIL	4,030
HAITI	936
JAMAICA	787
UNITED STATES/ ENGLISH COLONIES	661
GUYANA/SURINAM	500
MARTINIQUE	365
BARBADOS	344
GUADELOUPE	290
MEXICO	200
COLUMBIA	200
VENEZUELA	121
PERU	95
PUERTO RICO	77
GRENADA	67

It should be noted that while slaves were brought to many New World European territories, it was the British who were by far the most common traders in human cargo. The English regularly transported slaves to a variety of different locations in the Americas, administered by a variety of different European nations. [Franklin at 40]. The English would often trade items refined or manufactured in Europe such as fabric, metal goods, food liquor and guns for slaves. The exchanges would take place at trading posts along the coast of Western Africa. [Id].

Passage to the New World, called the "middle passage" was described by historian John Hope Franklin as a "veritable nightmare." Massive and inhumane overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, disease and suicide ravaged the ranks of Africans placed in transit. Many also suffered permanent injury from being constantly shackled together with little room to move. [Id. at 42]. Franklin estimates that only about half of these people transported to the New World actually ended up laboring in the Americas because of death, disease or disability. [Id at 42]. Notwithstanding, the tremendous loss in human life, those slaves that survived helped make the slave trade "one of the most important sources of European wealth in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries." (Franklin at 44) 

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What is the Holocaust?

The Holocaust refers to the largest and most recent coordinated genocidal attack against Jewry in world history. At its conclusion between five to six million men, women, and children of Jewish ancestry or religious affiliation were killed by the Nazi regime. Many others including gays, gypsies, the disabled, intellectuals, and Christian religious objectors were also systematically killed.

Estimated Figures of Jews Killed As A Result of the Holocaust

TABLE 1
Country Number Percent of Jewish Population Killed

Poland	3,000,000 - 90
SSR Ukraine	900,000 - 60
Hungary	450,000 - 70
Romania	300,000 - 50
SSR White Russ.	245,000 - 65
Baltic States	228,000 - 90
Germany/Aus.	210,000 - 90
Other	600,900
TOTAL	5,933,900 - 67

(Dawidowicz, 1975, p. 402)

TABLE 2
Nation Number of Jews Killed

Poland -	up to 3,000,000
USSR -	over 700,000
Romania -	270,000
Czechoslovakia -	260,000
Hungary -	over 180,000
Lithuania -	up to 130,000
Other	560,000
TOTAL	5,100,000

(Hilberg, 1985, p. 1220) 

The official Nazi propaganda bureaucracy orchestrated a systematic effort to scapegoat responsibility for Germany's military, diplomatic and economic defeats on to Jews. Media campaigns labeled Jews as rodents or vermin unfit for inclusion in an Aryan society. Nazi laws worked hand in glove with economic deprivation and social castigation to remove Jews from meaningful participation in German society.

On November 9, 1938 a two day long attack of coordinated hate crimes by roving bands of Nazi mobs commenced across Germany and Austria resulting in the death of 96 Jews, and the illegitimate arrest of 30,000 more. Arsons, vandalism and looting destroyed thousands of Jewish businesses, homes and synagogues. As correspondent Otto Tolishus reported in the New York Times, "...by nightfall there was scarcely a Jewish shop, cafe, office or synagogue in the country that was not either wrecked, burned severely, or damaged." The combination of government complicity and the lack of any meaningful public condemnation in Germany to this initial violent salvo is widely regarded as a crucial turning point for the even greater atrocities that followed (Berenbaum, 1993, p. 54; ADL,1991, p. 7). 

The final stages of the Nazi atrocities involved the complete isolation of Jews from society. Victims were stripped of their belongings and forcibly removed from their homes. In violation of Judaic law victims were tattooed with identification numbers on their forearms. They were transported in sealed railroad cattle cars to cramped unsanitary slave labor camps ringed by electrified fences, guard towers, and armed soldiers.

Most of the Jewish deaths that occurred under the Nazi regime occurred at 17 major concentration camps spread across Eastern Europe from 1942-1945. While most died from gassings involving either the insecticide Zyklon B or carbon monoxide, a smaller number died from shootings, beatings, anatomical experimentation and disease (Berenbaum, 1993, p.123; O'Brien & Palmer,1993, p.68). 

These concentration camps were the most efficient killing machines ever developed in human history. Those who were infirm, elderly, or too young for forced labor were immediately segregated and executed upon arrival. All others, except the few liberated by the Allies, were killed after a period of forced labor. At the conclusion of their period of forced labor, most victims were stripped naked and herded into large enclosures where they faced a painful death through asphyxiation from poison gas. The bodies of the victims were, contrary to Judaic law, cremated and reduced to ash in a mass collection of superheated black industrial iron ovens located on the premises. 

In disputed Soviet territory roaming Nazi SS and police killing squads called Einsatzgruppen, summarily executed whole communities of Jews. Approximately 25% of the Jews killed during the Holocaust were actually executed by the Einsatzgruppen (Berenbaum, 1993, p. 95). Nearly all the Jews who failed to escape European countries under Nazi domination during that period perished in concentration camps. One third of the world's Jewish population and nearly all of mainland European Jewry was obliterated (O'Brien & Palmer,1993, pp. 68-9; Berenbaum, 1993, p. 95). 

Notwithstanding wartime chaos and the Nazi's intentional attempt to hide the nature and extent of their brutality, the Holocaust is one of the most thoroughly documented events in human history. After Hitler's initial proclamation in 1939 authorizing the extermination of the disabled, explicit official documentation of extermination was still extensive, but involved the use of code words (Berenbaum,1993, p. 65). After the liberation of the concentration camps by the allies various members of Congress, the military, survivors and the press helped document the atrocities. The 1946 Nuremberg Trials presented exhaustive proof of the Nazi's extermination plan against European Jewry. During the trial the defendants did not deny the atrocities, but rather proffered that they were merely obeying commands. Among the damning evidence was Rudolf Hoess' admission to English interrogators on March 16, 1946 that he "personally arranged on orders received from Himmler in May 1941, the gassing of two million persons between June-July 1941 and the end of 1943, during which time I was Commandant of Auschwitz" (Stern, 1993, p. 69). 

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What is Holocaust Denial?

Holocaust denial is an extremist movement primarily promoted by anti-Semites and Nazi sympathizers that tries to deny or minimize the Historical fact of the European Holocaust. According to Cambridge University Professor Robert Evans Holocaust deniers generally in varying degrees subscribe to all or some of the following:
Jews were not killed in gas chambers or if they were, not on any significant scale;
the Nazis did not have any policy or undertake any attempt to exterminate European Jewry and that Jewish casualties were the result of unauthorized low level conduct: the number of Jews murdered did not go into the millions and the actual numbers were much lower; that the Holocaust is largely or entirely a myth invented by wartime Allied propagandists and sustained after the war by Jews to get money for Israel (Irving v. Penguin and Lipstadt, 2000, �8.4)

According to Professor Deborah Lipstadt, a noted authority on denial: "Modern Holocaust denial draws inspiration from a variety of sources. Among them are a legitimate historical tradition that was highly critical of government policies and believed that history was being used to justify those policies; an age-old nexus of conspiratorial scenarios that place a neat coherence on widely diverse developments; and hyperbolic critiques of government policies which, despite an initial connection to reality, became so extreme as to assume a quality of fantasy" (Lipstadt, 1993, p. 31).

The leading academic group representing American history scholars, the American Historical Association, without
dissent issued a declaration in 1991 holding, "No serious historian questions that the Holocaust took place." The
organization further maintained in 1994 that the AHA "will not provide a forum for views that are, at best, a form of
academic fraud" (ADL,1994, p. 8-9).

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What is genocide?

Genocide refers to the systematic and indiscriminate mass killing of most or all of a whole people or a nation. More modern uses of the term have encompassed less than total destruction of a people. In addition to the Nazi perpetrated Holocaust, genocidal or attempted genocidal killings have been perpetrated against the Armenians by the Turks in 1918, various Native American peoples by Anglo and Spanish European settlers to the Americas, West African tribes by slave traders and Muslims in the Balkans. Politically motivated mass killings, though not technically genocide, were also committed over the last century by Uganda's Idi Amin in the 1970s, the Khmer Rogue's Pol Pot in the 1970s as well as in the Stalinist Soviet Union and Communist China. 

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HateMonitor Associate Editor Sam Cacas is a writer based in San Francisco, California who has written extensively about civil rights issues, including hate violence, hate speech, and hate crimes for the last 18 years. He welcomes all questions/comments and can be reached at [email protected]