The KKK's recent recruitment drive isn't doing the organization's membership rolls much good, according to the New York Post.

The hate group has launched an intense recruitment drive across the nation, targeting racially tense areas such as Charlottesville, and even getting a bit creative with designing Valentine's Day-themed flyers.

Despite all of this effort, people aren't buying what the KKK is selling, the Post reports, citing a new Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) report called, Year in Hate and Extremism.

The report's authors found that the total number KKK chapters in the United States dwindled to 72 in 2017, down from from 130 in 2016. However, the number of neo-Nazi groups rose to 121 up from 99 in 2016.

The report also looked into "black nationalist hate groups," and found that they increased to 233 chapters in 2017, up from 193 in the previous year.

SPLC’s Intelligence Project director Heidi Beirich commented on the “collapsing” of traditional KKK groups, noting that long-running hate group's decline was due to the changing tastes of younger white supremacists.

“It’s just extremely old-school and, I think, honestly weird to them,” she said. “That’s not the image that they have of what white nationalism should be.”

Overall, the report found that there are a total number of 954 hate groups in the U.S., a four percent increase in comparison to 2016.

Beirich attributed the increase to Trump's ascendancy to the presidency, which gave the "alt-right" a mainstream political presence they hadn't been afforded prior.

“President Trump in 2017 reflected what white supremacist groups want to see: a country where racism is sanctioned by the highest office, immigrants are given the boot and Muslims banned,” said Beirich. “When you consider that only days into 2018, Trump called African countries ‘shitholes,’ it’s clear he’s not changing his tune. And that’s music to the ears of white supremacists.”

SPLC

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