The Michigan branch of the Minneapolis-based National Socialist Movement (NSM) has been increasing its public activity in Michigan over the past few months. In Mount Pleasant, NSM members have been leafleting the Central Michigan University campus and are reportedly considering registering as a student organization despite questions about the group’s eligibility due to its racial discrimination. Additionally, in Grand Rapids a new chapter of NSM formed in summer of 2005 and has reportedly distributed “thousands of flyers” and attracted the attention of the police in one incident over the summer. According to news reports, NSM members from Grand Rapids also attended a neo-Nazi march last month in Toledo. There has been an increase in racist graffiti over the past few months, although it is unknown if the graffiti is connected to the NSM.

While it is always important to monitor the activities of racist groups like the National Socialist Movement, especially when they have in the past offered members military training and advocated violent means to achieve their ends, it is also important to remember that racism in the United States functions on a more systemic level. Despite the frequent media attention and the public displays of racism, organized white supremacy has a small constituency (the NSM has an estimated 200 members nationally) and as such cannot really compare to systemic and institutional forms of racism. While members of the NSM do benefit from some degree of white privilege, by virtue of their being white and male, the political structure in the United States, which actively reinforces racism through a variety of institutional means targeting people of color—disproportionate arrests, housing policy, and environmental policy (among other forms)—largely dismisses this extremist form of racism in favor of more institutional forms that guarantee its power over people of color.