information:extraction, structural:expansion
Racist cults

Sociologist and historian Orlando Patterson has described the Ku Klux Klan, which arose in the American South after the Civil War, as a heretical Christian cult, and he has also described its persecution of African Americans and others as a form of human sacrifice. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the existence of secret Aryan cults in Germany and Austria strongly influenced the Völkisch movement and the rise of Nazism. Modern-day white power skinhead groups in the United States tend to use the same recruitment techniques as groups which are characterized as destructive cults.

Vibert L. White, Jr., a former member of the Nation of Islam and a former leading advisor to it, characterized the organization as a cult, accusing its leader Louis Farrakhan, along with other organizational leaders, of using black nationalism and religious dogma to exploit black people for personal and political gain. The Nation of Islam preaches black supremacy, that its founder Wallace Fard Muhammad was a Messiah and his successor Elijah Muhammad was a divine messenger, and that white people were a race of devils to be overthrown apocalyptically.