Hate group alliance holds together for an entire year -- but KKK members are starting to bail

A loose-knit alliance of white extremists has held together for an entire year -- no mean feat for hate groups.

The confederation has managed to survive past its first anniversary, on Saturday, although it's already gone through several name changes -- from the Aryan National Alliance to the Nationalist Front -- and dropped the swastika as its symbol, reported the Associated Press.

A spokesman for the group said U.S. nationalists are trying to follow the example of far-right groups in Europe that learned to work together instead of bicker over ideology and organizational structure.

“These things never last,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

She noted that the National Alliance had already dwindled to 11 groups, about half its original total.

Spokesman Matthew Heimbach, who filed a lawsuit last week blaming President Donald Trump for directing him to punch a black woman at a Kentucky campaign rally, said the Nationalist Front and other nationalist groups had cooperated on video presentations and propaganda strategies over the past year.

The groups had also banded together to support white nationalist Richard Spencer at his recent appearance at Auburn University.

Heimbach said about 100 people have registered to attend a Nationalist Front gathering this weekend in Pikeville, Ky.

The groups forged their alliance last year at a Ku Klux Klan bar in Georgia, although some robe-wearing KKK members have already dropped out and helped form the American Alliance of Klans last month in rural Florida.

“We want to see people stand up and make this country great again, like Trump is saying," Tom Larson, imperial wizard of the East Coast Knights of the KKK, told the AP. "We’re tired of seeing white people lose everything."