Americans were shocked by the violent insurrection carried out by a pro-Trump mob at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. President Trump had spent months goading his supporters to rally behind him and dog whistling to white supremacist groups to rise up, and they heeded his calls.

Susan Corke is not surprised by the rising tide of hate that exploded into public view at the Capitol. She is director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks and exposes hate groups and other domestic extremists. The Center's annual Hate Map currently shows that there are 838 hate groups active in the U.S. In the most recent official assessment, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security named 2019 as “the most lethal year for domestic violent extremism in the United States since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.”

The SPLC also explores who becomes radicalized in a podcast, Sounds Like Hate, which just launched its second season. In 2020, the podcast examined racism in Randolph, Vermont.

“2020 was a perfect storm," Corke says. "You had the coronavirus, and people were spending more time online and people were radicalizing online…What you have now in 2021 is the people that stormed the Capitol, as well as the majority of the Republican Party, are still not disavowing what happened on January 6.

"So we’re at a very dangerous and divided place in our country. These hate groups and those that have been radicalized are still very mobilized.”