November 05, 2020 A subset of high-profile, misinformation-laden posts reached a combined potential audience of more than 108M followers, with over 1.1M likes and retweets prior to ADL reporting them to Twitter on November 4, 2020. From the time ADL reported the tweets to Twitter on November 4 until our final check on November 9, we found that the misleading tweets that remained unaddressed by the social media platform had been liked or retweeted more than 297,000 additional times. Tweets…
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The European Kindred is a large white supremacist prison gang based primarily in Oregon. Gang members often use a two-handed hand sign in which three fingers of one hand are spread to look like an E and two fingers of another hand are spread to resemble a K.
The handsign of the Hammerskins, a racist skinhead group, consists of two crossed forearms emulating the "crossed hammers" of the Hammerskins logo.
Alternate Names: Nazi Salute, Sieg Heil Salute, Fascist Salute, Roman Salute The Nazi or Hitler salute debuted in Nazi Germany in the 1920s to pay homage to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. It consists of raising an outstretched right arm with the palm down. In Nazi Germany, it was often accompanied by chanting or shouting "Heil Hitler" or "Sieg Heil." Since World War II, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists have continued to use the salute, making it the most common white supremacist hand sign in…
Alternate Names: Nazi Salute, Sieg Heil Salute, Fascist Salute, Roman Salute
The Nazi or Hitler salute debuted in Nazi Germany in the 1920s to pay homage to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. It consists of raising an outstretched right arm with the palm down. In Nazi Germany, it was often accompanied by chanting or shouting "Heil Hitler" or "Sieg Heil." Since World War II, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists have continued to use the salute, making it the most common white supremacist hand sign in the world.
The Nazi salute was one of a number of similar salutes adopted by fascist parties and movements across Europe in the interwar period. These salutes were often claimed to be based on an ancient Roman salute, but this does not appear to have been the case. However, people making such salutes today sometimes assert, typically insincerely, they are “Roman” salutes rather than “Nazi” ones. White supremacists have also adopted the term “roman,” as in “throwing a roman,” for the Nazi salute. In recent years, they have also created a typographical or emoticon version of the salute (see O-Slash Hitler Salute and Double Romans).
From its beginnings in the 1860s, the Ku Klux Klan has employed a variety of salutes and hand signs both public and private. Most of the hand signs and gestures used by the first and second Ku Klux Klans have fallen by the wayside over the years, except for the Klan salute, which dates back to 1915. It resembles a Nazi salute (which some Klan members will also use), except that it is performed with the left arm. Often Klan members will separate the fingers of their hand when making the salute …
The term "peckerwood" originated as a racial epithet directed at whites. Today, it has been adopted by adherents of the white supremacist prison gang subculture, especially in southern and western states, to refer to themselves. The handsign for "peckerwood" consists of forming the thumb, index finger and middle finger of one hand to form the letter "P," and the four fingers of the other hand to form the letter "W." This is especially common in California, where peckerwood street…
Peckerwood Midwest is a white supremacist gang based primarily in Missouri, active both in prisons and on the streets. The gang's "patch" tattoo consists of a diamond-shaped swastika inside a larger Iron Cross. Inside the swastika are SS bolts; outside the Iron Cross are the numbers 23/16.
The Solid Wood Soldiers are a Texas-based white supremacist prison gang. Their primary tattoo consists of the initials SWS, with the two S's represented by lightning bolts. Above the initials appears the image of a bear claw, with the number 4 in the middle and sometimes the letters HCRL.
ALTERNATE NAMES:
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In the 2000s, white supremacists created a handsign intended to memorialize the Schutzstaffeln or SS of Nazi Germany, Hitler's secret police, political army, and concentration camp guards. The handsign utilizes both hands to make a lightning bolt symbol, as a pair of lightning bolts was the main symbol of the SS. Additional Images:
The Supreme White Alliance is a hardcore racist skinhead gang based primarily in the Midwest. Members sometimes use a two-handed handsign in which four fingers from one hand and three fingers from the other hand are used to represent the number 43. The gang uses 43 as a numeric symbol because the alphanumeric equivalents of the gang's initials (19 for S, 23 for W, and 1 for A), when added together, equal 43.
The handsign used by the Vinlanders Social Club, a racist skinhead gang, consists of holding up the first, second, and fourth fingers of one hand.
Members of the white supremacist group Volksfront have used several handsigns to represent their gang. A common one-handed sign features the fingers of the right hand divided into a "V" shape, often held over the chest. A two-handed sign uses one hand to make a "V" shape (using two or four fingers) and the other hand to make the shape of the letter "F."
October 16, 2020 THE WEEK’S BIG 3
After years of urging from ADL and other civil rights organizations, Facebook will ban posts that deny the Holocaust. A video has gone viral on social media of a man shouting at a Hasidic Jewish man for not wearing a mask on an empty New York City street. YouTube on Thursday became the latest social media giant to take steps to stop QAnon, the sprawling right-wing conspiracy theory community whose online fantasies about a cabal of satanic pedophiles…
October 15, 2020 Nearly half of American adults experience online harassment and nearly one third experience severe harassment, but society still struggles with understanding the deep impact of online hate. Too often, we see “online hate” contrasted with “real world violence.” Trust us: to victims and targets of swatting, doxing, cyberstalking, and cyberharassment, the abuse they experience online is very real.
We know that digital abuse pushes targets offline…
October 11, 2020 THE WEEK’S BIG 3
Jewish members of Congress are facing antisemitic attacks on Twitter in the lead-up to the November election, according to a new report from ADL. Facebook said it is escalating the campaign against QAnon, pledging to remove any Facebook pages, groups and Instagram accounts aligned with the conspiracy group. The FBI says it thwarted what it described as a plot to violently overthrow the government and kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Read on…
October 08, 2020 At the Extremes: The 2020 Election and American Extremism
In the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election, the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) Center on Extremism in conjunction with ADL’s Center for Technology and Society are releasing a series of news briefs on topics of concern regarding the role extremism plays in our current political environment.
Here's Part 3:
Conspiracy Theories and Anti-Asian Hostility on Twitter
Who/What: After President…
October 07, 2020 “Like it or not it’s about to become a ‘significant time in American history’: Patriots vs. traitors…Start preparing now: food, ammo, fuel…ballots and/or bullets. God knows my heart, and my aim is true.”
Such a message would not be a surprising discovery on extremist platforms like Telegram or Gab, but we are increasingly seeing this violent and apocalyptic rhetoric on Facebook “Patriot” pages, populated largely by…
August 31, 2020 Under the guise of anti-censorship and free speech, video-hosting service BitChute has become a hotbed for violent, conspiratorial and hate-filled video propaganda, and a recruiting ground for extremists.
BitChute founder Ray Vahey’s concept for the platform came from, in his words, “seeing the increased levels of censorship by the large social media platforms in the last couple of years. Bannings, demonetization, and tweaking algorithms to send…
August 20, 2020 THE WEEK’S BIG 3
An FBI Twitter account tweeted out a link to a PDF containing the antisemitic “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” as well as FBI documents related to it, with no other context. President Trump on Wednesday offered encouragement to proponents of QAnon, a viral and dangerous conspiracy theory. According to a new study, Facebook “actively promotes further Holocaust-denial content to that user” and “has been unwilling…
August 19, 2020 On August 19, one of the FBI’s official twitter handles, the FBI Records Vault, disseminated a link labeled “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.” There has been widespread confusion about the FBI’s motives for doing this, and concern that in doing so the FBI is spreading an antisemitic text. The Protocols is a notorious antisemitic forgery created at the turn of the 20th century by the Czarist secret police and describes an alleged secret plan of…