A protest outside the headquarters of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. last Tuesday put the spotlight on a clash of views between the center and a coalition of African-American pastors and their supporters.

The groups of pastors condemn the SPLC for using its “hate group” label to describe faith-based organizations that are against the LGBT lifestyle

After getting married in 2006 Julie and Bryon Widner, former pillars of the white power movement had worked hard to put their racist past behind them.

And yet, the past was ever-present — tattooed in brutish symbols all over his body and face: a blood-soaked razor, swastikas, the letters “HATE” stamped across his knuckles.

The man who founded the Virginia nonprofit paying for the push to make English Nashville’s official language also is behind several organizations that have been labeled hate groups.

Dr. John H. Tanton, a retired eye surgeon, started both ProEnglish and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

The Southern Poverty Law Center identified FAIR as a hate group last winter based on its acceptance of $1.2 million from a white supremacist organization, employees’ ties to other such groups and a history of “anti-Latino and anti-Catholic attitudes.”

Barely three weeks after Americans elected their first black president amid a wave of interracial good feeling, a spasm of noose hangings, racist graffiti, vandalism and death threats is convulsing dozens of towns across the country as white extremists lash out at the new political order.

Even more ominously, America’s most potent symbol of racial hatred – the Ku Klux Klan – has begun to reassert itself, emerging from decades of disorganization and obscurity in a spate of recent violence. [video]

A jury awarded $2.5 million in damages on Friday to a Kentucky teenager who was severely beaten by members of a Ku Klux Klan group because they mistakenly thought he was an illegal Latino immigrant, the Southern Poverty Law Center said.

The verdict included $1.5 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages against “Imperial Wizard” Ron Edwards.

The law center said before the verdict that a large damage award could break the Klan group, allowing the teen and the law center to seize the group’s assets, including its headquarters, a 15-acre compound in Dawson Springs, Kentucky. [video]

So-called ‘white supremacy’ hate groups in the USA are changing their marketing tactics in an attempt to broaden their appeal.

The hate groups are on the rise as they market themselves to middle America, according to leaders of the groups and organizations that monitor them.

The renewed activity includes a boom on the Internet.