Racial intimidation

Force or superior power may be used to exploit a different racial group through fear. This may be achieved by physical or psychological intimidation, police brutality, inequality before the law, or indoctrination. Racial intimidation serves to maintain racial inequalities and exploitation and may lead to apathy or to subversive activities.

"Hate crime" is a popular term that does not have a legal meaning and conveys widely varying interpretations. It can include any crime based on religion, race, national origin, gender, disability and sexual orientation.

Racist violence has been a regularly recurring social phenomenon in many European countries. Often racist violence manifested itself in "waves" which attracted public attention. Some well-know episodes were: during the 1950s (by the Teddy Boys) and in the late 1960s and early 1970s ("Paki-bashing") in Britain; in 1973 in France (with at least 12 Algerians killed); in the first half of the 1980s in the Netherlands; during the Gulf War in France and Britain; in the early 1990s in Germany. Many cases of racist violence were experienced between such "waves". It was not the violence that disappeared, but mass media and political attention that declined.

It is alleged there were 70,000 racially motivated attacks in the UK in 1992, only 7,793 of which were reported, namely 10%. Another survey for the same year reported 140,000 episodes of racial harassment or attack. Based on reports in major Dutch daily papers, there was an incident of racist violence approximately every three and a half days in the Netherlands in 1992. During 1993, 75 people died as a result of racially motivated attacks in Western Europe.

World Church of the Creator members in Southern Florida are thought to be tied to several racially motivated beatings. In 1999 four Florida members were convicted for the pistol-whipping and robbery of a Jewish video store owner. They were supposedly trying to raise money for "the revolution."