ELLSWORTH, Maine — White supremacist hate groups, like the one that has made itself known in Bucksport recently, have had fleeting success in Maine.
The Bucksport Bay White Youth Pride Party has been distributing pamphlets in the area to attract young people to the group, which has declared its goal “to reclaim U.S.A. soil to the white race.”
There is typically little of this type of hate group activity in Maine, according to Mark Potok of Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based group that monitors and exposes hate groups and other extremist activities around the country. Potok is director of the center’s Intelligence Report, which investigates hate groups.
Potok said Tuesday that he was not aware of the Bucksport group or of any ties it might have to other more established organizations around the country.
He also raised questions about whether the group was authentic, based on comments included in the pamphlets and those made by one of the organizers, who identified himself in a telephone interview with the Bangor Daily News on Monday as “Proprietor Mutt.”
“If they are for real, they are a very unusual group,” Potok said in a telephone interview. “It’s unusual for a hate group to describe itself literally as a hate group and to refer to ‘people of color.’ That’s not the type of language they use. It’s way too PC [politically correct] for them.”
Despite a surge in hate groups in general around the country over the past decade — an increase of 54 percent since 2000 — there has been little activity in Maine. The Southern Poverty Law Center notes on its website that there currently are 932 known hate groups operating across the country. That number includes neo-Nazis, Klansmen, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists, border vigilantes and others.
Of those, only two organizations, North East White Pride and the National Socialist American Labor Party, are listed as being active in Maine.
Nationwide, interest in these types of groups is likely to continue to grow, Potok said, fueled mainly by fears of “nonwhite” immigration in the country. Immigration, the economy and the election of President Barack Obama, the nation’s first African-American president, are all factors in that growth.
“The country is getting less white,” he said. “That is the motivation and that is what is helping them grow.”
Recent projections indicate that by 2050, white Americans no longer will be in the majority, Potok said.
“That’s a big change, and that’s what is driving this growth,” he said.
Despite the continued growth, Potok noted, the number of people involved in hate groups is extremely low. Although accurate numbers are difficult to come by, he estimated there are between 100,000 and 200,000 people actively involved in hate groups around the country.
“In a country of 300 million, that’s pretty thin,” he said.
Local reaction to the Bucksport Bay White Youth Pride Party’s presence has been muted. Bucksport Town Manager Roger Raymond said Tuesday that while area residents seemed concerned that this type of activity might occur in their town, it appeared to be a very small effort.
“The general reaction has been that this was just somebody passing out a few fliers looking for attention and that it has all been overblown by the media,” he said. “We hadn’t seen any gatherings; there hasn’t been any activity. We hadn’t seen any indication that this was attracting any attention. But he’s certainly getting a lot of it now.”
On the other hand, Raymond said, residents were very concerned that this type of activity might take place in the region.
“It’s certainly not a reflection of the feelings of people in Bucksport or any town in the area,” he said. “Nobody here supports this type of thing. We’ll do everything we can to make sure this is monitored carefully, and if there’s any indication that they might cause harm, we’ll take steps to deal with it immediately.”
If history is any indication, this new group will not be long in the spotlight. Over the years, hate groups have had brief periods of success in Maine but have always faltered.
White supremacist groups had their most successful period in Maine during the 1920s. According to previously published articles in the BDN, membership in the Ku Klux Klan was estimated at between 15,000 and 150,000. Klan members marched through the streets of a number of Maine towns, and local chapters built halls in Bangor, Lewiston and Rockland. Several Klan-backed candidates won seats in local elections, and Ralph O. Brewster, who was actively supported by the Klan, narrowly won the Republican nomination for governor and then handily won the governorship in the general election in 1925.
More recently, evidence of racism in Maine appears mainly in reports of isolated incidents:
In 1996 a white counselor at the Maine Youth Center put a pillow case over his head and entered the cell of a black teen.
Also in 1996, two men pleaded guilty to civil rights charges in a cross burning incident near the home of two black-biracial families in Augusta.
In 1999 two Biddeford residents wore Ku Klux Klan style hoods outside the home of a black mayoral candidate.
In November 2008 two black effigies about 2 feet tall were discovered hanging by nooses in Bar Harbor and Tremont the day after Obama was elected president.
About seven years ago, organized efforts by two national groups were focused on Lewiston where an estimated 1,000 Somali immigrants had relocated. Members of the West-Virginia-based National Alliance passed out pamphlets in December 2002 seeking new members, and in January 2003, World Church of the Creator members held a rally which drew about three dozen people at the Lewiston Armory. A counter, anti-racism rally drew an estimated 4,000 people, according to published reports.
Later that year, World Church of the Creator members distributed pamphlets targeting Jews and racial minorities in a Portland neighborhood.