If one were to look at the case details on paper, it would look like a random act of violence caused by unchecked rage. The initial case’s ruling drew a lot of outrage from Asian-Americans and activists across the country and beyond. It appeared as though the judge was trying to sweep it under the rug since key witnesses and even the police officers who were at the scene weren’t present for the trial and weren’t even aware it happened until after the verdict.

Indeed, if political correctness was an effort to police offensive language in institutional settings – in school, at the workplace, in the media – the backlash against such restrictions is a kind of bacchanalian road rage that took root in cyberspace and is now in full bloom on and off line. It is as if, constrained in real life, America’s id knee-jerked itself into virtual space, making a permanent home there.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reported a total of 867 hate incidents in the ten days following the election. The national advocacy organization South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), meanwhile, recorded 207 hate or bias-related incidents aimed at South Asian, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Middle Eastern, and Arab communities in 2016. The SAALT figures mark a 34 percent increase from 2014, with 95 percent of the reported cases motivated by anti-Muslim sentiment.

A year ago, the headline of the report on hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center read “Hate Groups on the Rise.” This year’s report concludes that hate groups have risen for the second year in a row. The rise in the number of hate groups in the U.S. corresponds with the radical right getting emboldened by the candidacy of Donald Trump, according to the SPLC’s annual census of hate groups and other extremist organizations​.

In less than 24 hours after two Las Vegas police officers and a bystander were gunned down by two Neo-Nazis, anti-government spewing white supremacists, Stormfront's website blew up. There were nearly 200,000 threads and more than 2 million posts. This dwarfed the number of posts from all other topics on the site combined during that period. Stormfront is the nation's premier, self-promoted, online meeting place where hundreds of neo-Nazi, anti-government, white supremacist groups and tens of thousands of individuals spew hate with aplomb. 

A group of Black and immigrant Greeks have banded together to form a self-defense group to counter the attacks of a gang that targets citizens of color in the country. Nicknamed the “Black Panthers,” the group uses cell phones, social media, and neighborhood patrols to record any activity perceived as a threat from the far-right neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party. Regarding the massive economic crisis in Greece, the Golden Dawn Party has risen in power and blame immigrants for the high unemployment and crime. 

In an interview with The Root, Mark Potok, one of the country's leading experts on hate groups, said that the day after President Obama was elected there were so many new people expressing interest in white supremacist groups that websites for some of those groups actually crashed. Among the groups mentioned by Potok, who serves as director of publications at the Southern Poverty Law Center, were Stormfront, a popular online message board for the white supremacist movement, and the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), which has been called "the white-collar Klan."

The legion of websites, bloggers, talk show jocks, and the occasional GOP official that has teed off on President Obama and at times Michelle Obama with assorted borderline racist digs, taunts, and depictions have been relentless. The offensive remarks quickly evoke a storm of outrage, and the offender gets rebuked. This happens because they are public figures, and their comments are publicly aired. They fly high on the public’s radar scope.