The number of hate-motivated incidents recorded nationwide surged past 1,000 in the month since Donald Trump was elected president, though the outbreak appears to be subsiding, McClatchy Newspapers reports. The Southern Poverty Law Center says the stories are “nonetheless as heartbreaking and infuriating as before.” The 1,094 reports compiled by the center from Nov. 9 to last Monday represent a rash of attacks that one monitor has described as unprecedented in her two decades at the center. In perhaps the largest-scale incident, more than a dozen mosques and Islamic centers around the country received identical letters calling for a Muslim genocide and describing Muslims as “Children of Satan” and “a vile and filthy people.” In several places, the report links the spate of incidents to the rhetoric of Trump’s campaign. Monitors also linked Trump’s emboldening of white supremacists directly to the rise in incidents at universities, listing nearly three dozen campuses where reported hate attacks have occurred.
“With white nationalist ‘alt-right’ figureheads like Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopolous touring college campuses, the increased confidence that these groups are feeling following Mr. Trump’s victory, and the unprecedented press attention they are receiving, it isn’t surprising to see that nearly 74 percent of these incidents occurred on campuses, where the ‘movement’ hopes to build its numbers,” the report says. So many assailants invoked Trump’s name in their attacks that the center created a category specifically for Trump-related incidents. They land between “swastikas” and “white nationalist fliers” in terms of frequency. Trump has yet to forcefully reject such incidents, much less accept any responsibility for the example his anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim tone set for his supporters. Civil rights groups said Trump’s request on a “60 Minutes” interview days after the election for bias-motivated attackers to “stop it” simply wasn’t enough. The center identified 26 incidents in which Trump supporters were the victims, not the perpetrators.