Maine has a history of hate groups. In the 1920s, the KKK, a strong presence in the state, was aimed mostly at Catholics, particularly Franco-Americans. As many were “relative newcomers” from Quebec, this was largely a nativist, anti-immigrant movement.
But the 1920s were long ago and Maine now has a reputation for tolerance and support of civil rights.
Yet a new study finds a relatively high portion of Mainers associated with the hate group Stormfront.
As the author of the study, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, explains about the group:
Stormfront was founded in 1995 by Don Black, a former Ku Klux Klan leader. Its most popular “social groups” are “Union of National Socialists” and “Fans and Supporters of Adolf Hitler.” Over the past year, according to Quantcast, roughly 200,000 to 400,000 Americans visited the site every month. A recent Southern Poverty Law Centerreport linked nearly 100 murders in the past five years to registered Stormfront members.
The white nationalist posters on Stormfront have issues with many different groups. They often write about crimes committed by African-Americans against whites; they complain about an “invasion” of Mexicans; and they love to mock gays and feminists. But their main problem appears to be with Jewish people, who are often described as super-powerful and clever — the driving force, generally speaking, behind the societal changes they do not like. They sometimes call the Holocaust the “Holohoax.” [source]
Going through the profiles and posts to this hate group’s site, the study identified the states of members and posters and determined a population ratio by state. It’s shown below in a map:
Maine is not in the category with the highest proportion of people linked to Stormfront, but it is in the next to highest group.
It also sticks out in New England and the Northeast more generally for this horrible metric.
At the same times, as a recent study shows, Maine is among those same states when it comes to being “ideologically loose,” a concept that refers to “how flexible — or not — people are in terms of enforcing rules and accepting variances from social norms.”
While the author doesn’t break down the objects of hate by state, he notes that overall the top targets are not Muslims and Hispanics. No, it’s blacks and Jews.