Recent studies have noted a rise in both organized anti-Muslim activism as well as political Islamophobic speech. While these trends have been in place since 9/11, a more recent spike in the number of organized anti-Muslim hate groups has been noted in the US since 2015, roughly correlating with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and election to office. Concurrent with this broader political climate, meatpacking facilities, increasingly located in small cities or rural areas in the Midwest or Great Plains, have begun recruiting Somali immigrant and refugee laborers. This has resulted in a secondary migration of Muslim Somalis to smaller meatpacking cities in the Midwest or Great Plains, with some of these cities becoming home to organized and sometimes violent resistance to the Muslim newcomers and refugees. While rural sociologists have a history of analyzing community conflicts in meatpacking towns, most studies focus either on conflicts with Hispanic newcomers or anti-immigrant attitudes within the community. To date, the systematic study of rural (i.e. non-metropolitan) hate groups, specifically anti-Muslim hate groups, remains underdeveloped in both the rural sociological and general sociological literatures. In this paper, I undertake a case study of an anti-Muslim hate group in a small meatpacking city in the Great Plains, which has experienced a recent in-migration of Muslim Somali refugees seeking employment in the meatpacking facility. I utilize elements of social dominance theory and ethnic competition theories to develop hypotheses regarding the reasons (economic, ideological, or political conflicts) cited for this mobilization. I also utilize the framing perspective from the social movements literature to understand the ways in which this group justifies and frames their anti-Muslim activism as a pro-social and patriotic defense of religious freedom and community well-being. The data analyzed for this paper consists of seven transcripts from the hate group’s open, public meetings (which include attendee questions and discussions), one transcript from a town hall meeting with a refugee resettlement agency, and the content of the hate group’s Facebook page (454 group posts; 1,370 individual comments). The preliminary findings of this study suggest that the group amplifies core values of patriotism, religious freedom, and personal responsibility to justify their anti-Muslim activism. These primarily ideological points of amplification seem to resonate with the local supporters of the group, who argue that Muslims are incompatible with “American culture” and that American institutions have failed to protect and privilege Christians. As a result, the group and its supporters justify their anti-Muslim mobilization as a patriotic and pro-social defense of truth, religious freedom, and the Constitution.
