White Supremacist, Tracked by COE, Arrested on Vandalism Charges in Missouri
Article
On March 9, 2024, authorities arrested Frankie Rizzello Jr., a 20-year-old resident of Chesterfield, Missouri, on two felony charges related to property damage motivated by discrimination, one grounded in religion and the other in race. According to charging documents from the University City Police Department, Rizzello faces these charges for allegedly spray-painting a church and an Asian restaurant with graffiti in 2023. In October 2023, after an extensive examination of user…
Table Talk: Family Conversations about Current EventsYou may have heard about “swatting” because it's been in the news recently. What exactly is swatting? Why do people do it? Because young people are exposed to swatting online, on both mainstream websites and the “dark web” (i.e., hidden websites) and because some swatting incidents begin in online gaming or other digital platforms, it is an important topic to discuss with young people. Swatting is &ldquo…
Untangling False Claims About Ashkenazi Jews, Khazars and Israel
Article
Research from ADL has documented in detail the rise in antisemitism and anti-Zionism in the weeks and months following Hamas’s brutal assault on Israel on October 7, 2023. One of the most insidious claims used to discredit both Jews and Israel is that Ashkenazi Jews (i.e., Jews who trace their ancestry to Northern and Eastern Europe) have no historical or genetic relationship to Jewish antiquity in the land of Israel—making Jews “colonizers” with no legitimate claim to…
Anti-Israel activists, Terrorist Organizations Hail Aaron Bushnell as a “Martyr” After Self-Immolation Outside Israeli Embassy
Article
On February 25, 2024, Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force, approached the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., and set himself on fire to protest the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, saying he would “no longer be complicit in genocide.” His act of protest has garnered praise from anti-Israel groups and foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). Bushnell is the second person to self-immolate in front of a U.S.-based Israeli government building in protest of the…
Farrakhan Responds to Israel-Hamas War with Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories in Saviours’ Day Speech
Article
The Nation of Islam (NOI) held its annual Saviours’ Day conference at the Huntington Place convention center in Detroit, Michigan, on February 22–25. As in years past, the event featured significant antisemitism, including from longtime NOI leader and keynote speaker Louis Farrakhan. Farrakhan’s keynote address concluding the conference on Sunday, titled “What Does Allah, the Great Mahdi and the Great Messiah Have to Say About the War in the Middle East,”…
Lakewood Megachurch Shooter Expressed Antisemitism, Support for Islamist Terrorist Groups
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Preliminary research by the ADL Center on Extremism (COE) shows Genesse Moreno, who opened fire at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, on February 11, 2024, before being killed by off-duty officers, expressed support for a range of antisemitic, anti-Zionist and extremist beliefs and praised U.S.-designated terrorist groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah. Moreno’s mother reportedly attended the church, but it is unclear why Moreno targeted Lakewood in the attack that…
Posters on X Attack FCAS Super Bowl Ad Urging People to Stand Up to Antisemitism
Article
The Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS), a non-profit organization founded by Robert Kraft, aired multiple advertisements during the Super Bowl on February 11, 2024, urging people to #StandUpToJewishHate. Notably, a new ad premiered during the game, featuring Dr. Clarence B. Jones, former advisor to and speech writer for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Although online reactions to the campaign were largely positive, many users on X (formerly Twitter) were quick to criticize the…
Platform Transparency Reports - Just How Transparent?
Article
Executive Summary Transparency reports of the largest social media platforms continue to be anything but transparent. New research from the ADL Center for Tech & Society (CTS) shows that most of these platforms only publish partial information about how much hate content they remove or action in some way. To make matters worse, these reports are often hard to locate, void of meaningful information, and only provide patchy insights into how platforms address hate, harassment,…
Islamic State, Al-Qaeda Call for Violence Against Jewish Communities Following October 7 Attack
Article
Though Salafi-jihadist groups like the Islamic State (IS) and Al-Qaeda (AQ) have a long and well-established history of making calls for violence against Jews, over the last few months they have capitalized on the momentum of the Israel-Hamas war to broadcast violent messaging, justify hateful rhetoric against the state of Israel and denigrate Jews around the world. Using their official media outlets, as well as supporter-produced propaganda, both the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda have called on…
Jacksonville Shooter’s Newly Public Writings Reveal White Supremacist Beliefs
Article
On August 26, 2023, Ryan Christopher Palmeter shot and killed three Black people at a Dollar General in Jacksonville, Florida, before killing himself. On January 19, 2024, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department released the shooter’s “manifesto,” which he left behind for his family to find. The vitriolic, hateful writings show that Palmeter held white supremacist beliefs and demonstrated a wide range of hate, including racism, extreme anti-LGBTQ+ animus, xenophobia and…
Campus Antisemitism Online: The Proliferation of Hate on Sidechat
Article
ADL Center for Tech and Society shows anonymous campus messaging apps like Yik Yak & Sidechat are failing to curb hatred triggered by the Israel-Hamas war.
Tunnel Discovered Under Chabad Headquarters Sparks Antisemitic Firestorm Online
Article
On January 8, 2024, clashes broke out at the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn, known as 770, over a passageway allegedly constructed by students from adjacent properties into the synagogue. This passageway, referred to as a tunnel in the media, was discovered in December 2023, and when a cement truck came to fill it, skirmishes broke out between police and involved individuals. Video footage showed men inside and in front of the passageway, both defacing the property and…
In our final episode of 2023, Oren Segal and Jessica Reaves look back at some of the developments in hate and extremism we wish would end along with the year
Unfounded Claims of “Organ Harvesting” Reignite Embers of Decades-Old Hospital Scandal and Centuries-Old Trope
Article
Longstanding accusations of Israeli organ harvesting have reemerged in the aftermath of the October 7 massacres. This conspiracy theory plays on the blood libel trope, which dates to the Middle Ages and alleges that Jews use the blood of Christian children to bake their Passover bread. In the current Israeli-Palestinian context, organs are substituted for blood, and in some cases, activists are alleging that Israel purposefully kills Palestinians to harvest their organs.
In…
Owen Benjamin (aka Owen Smith) is a former mainstream comedian and actor who has embraced far-right conspiratorial and antisemitic content since 2018. He released a standup comedy performance on October 13, 2023, that includes antisemitic, anti-LGBTQ+ and racist rhetoric.
Benjamin, who starred in several films and comedy specials in the early 2010s, experienced significant success as a mainstream conservative comedian, and appeared in the movies The House Bunny and All’s Faire…
Investigating Digital Abuse: Mitigating Harm Online and On the Ground: A Toolkit for Law Enforcement
Action Guide
ADL’s toolkit on digital abuse and online hate equips law enforcement with tools to address hate or harassment that starts online but does not always stay there