ADL Articles

April 05, 2022 Introduction  In recent years, American public life has been increasingly marked by the rise of extremism and the erosion of democratic norms. A torrent of white supremacist activity and the growing prevalence of conspiracy theories have spurred some individuals and groups to commit acts of violence. American society has been further compromised by rampant misinformation, resulting in a deeply divided and polarized electorate. Concomitantly, antisemitism has been at a…

April 04, 2022 Source: Boston University Students for Justice in Palestine The 16th annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), a series of worldwide anti-Israel events, took place in the United States and Canada March 21-28, 2022. This year’s theme, announced on the BDS Movement’s website, was "the role of culture, and art in particular, in decolonizing our minds in our collective struggles against cultural appropriation and oppression." While some events reflected the week…

March 14, 2022 Mainstream social media companies have allowed Nation of Islam (NOI) leader Louis Farrakhan’s antisemitism and anti-vaccine disinformation to once again find a home on their platforms. In the days since Farrakhan’s annual Saviours’ Day address was broadcast on February 27, 2022, videos of the hours-long speech have received over 500,000 views across dozens of YouTube channels and Facebook pages. The content of the address, which as ADL previously reported,…

March 09, 2022 Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, extremists and antisemites across the ideological spectrum have used the war as fodder for promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories. Emanating from classic antisemites and white supremacists, as well as QAnon influencers and Proud Boys acolytes, classic tropes of Jewish power, financial control and “abuse” of the Holocaust narrative abound online. In just a few short weeks, tens of thousands of social…

February 28, 2022 The Nation of Islam (NOI) held its annual Saviours’ Day event on February 27, 2022. The event, which commemorates the birth of NOI founder Fard Muhammad and culminates in a keynote address by longtime NOI leader Louis Farrakhan, regularly features extensive antisemitic, bigoted and conspiratorial rhetoric. In 2022, Farrakhan again injected antisemitism into his address,  claiming that Jews are the enemy of Jesus and promoting antisemitic tropes about Jewish…

February 25, 2022 Nicholas Fuentes, a well-known white supremacist pundit and organizer, will host his third annual America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC III) in Orlando, Florida on February 25, 2022. Fuentes founded AFPAC in 2020 to serve as a counterweight to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event being held at the same time, also in Orlando. Fuentes’ third AFPAC conference will not only bring together the Groypers, followers and supporters of…

February 23, 2022 On Saturday, February 19, 2022, 43-year-old Benjamin Jeffrey Smith allegedly fired into a crowd of racial justice protestors, killing one woman and injuring five other people. Smith reportedly initially yelled at the group of protesters who were gathering on his block in Portland, Oregon, to protest the recent police killing of Amir Locke, a Black man who was shot while Minneapolis police were serving a no-knock warrant. Smith, who police have named as the primary suspect,…

February 04, 2022 NSM members demonstrating in Orlando, Florida, January 29, 2022 On February 4, 2022, the Orange County (Florida) Sheriff’s Department arrested and charged three participants of a neo-Nazi demonstration in Orlando, Florida, for their alleged role in the January 29, 2022, hate crime assault of David Newstat, who is Jewish. Newstat, who saw the demonstration and stopped to confront the group, said he was spit on, pepper-sprayed and punched. Video of the altercation…

January 20, 2022 1. Los judíos son la comunidad religiosa más atacada en Estados Unidos. Según los datos anuales del FBI sobre delitos de odio, definidos como delitos criminales motivados por prejuicios, los delitos contra la comunidad judía constituyen más de la mitad de todos los delitos basados en la religión. El número de delitos de odio contra los judíos ha oscilado entre 600 y 1.200 al año desde que el FBI comenzó…

January 17, 2022   1. Jews are consistently the most targeted religious community in the U.S. According to the FBI’s annual data on hate crimes, defined as criminal offenses which are motivated by bias, crimes targeting the Jewish community consistently constitute over half of all religion-based crimes. The number of hate crimes against Jews has ranged between 600 and 1,200 each year since the FBI began collecting data in the 1990s. There were 683 hate crimes against Jews in…

January 16, 2022 On January 15, 2022, a gunman entered Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, during Shabbat morning services. After a ten-hour standoff with local, state and federal authorities, the hostage taker, identified as 44-year-old British national Malik Faisal Akram, was pronounced dead at the scene. All four hostages were released, apparently unharmed. Predictably, Islamist extremists immediately expressed support for Akram’s actions. Online, prominent…

January 16, 2022 On Saturday, January 15, 2022, a gunman entered Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, during services, taking three congregants and a rabbi as hostages. The standoff ended more than ten hours later with all hostages released, apparently unharmed, and the alleged perpetrator, identified as 44-year-old British national Malik Faisal Akram, dead. The synagogue was streaming its service on Facebook when the perpetrator entered the building and the initial period of…

January 06, 2022 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 One year after the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, lies about the election and continued misinformation about the riot itself have contributed to a climate where extremists remain emboldened and a threat to our democracy is ever present, new ADL reporting shows. ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt is out with a new book entitled “It Could Happen Here: Why America is Tipping from Hate to the Unthinkable and How We Can Stop It,” which…

December 16, 2021 In the wake of a deadly SUV incident in Waukesha, Wis., white supremacists are leveraging the tragedy by sowing racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories on the ground and online. On November 21, 2021, Darrell E. Brooks Jr. allegedly drove his SUV into a crowded Christmas parade, killing six and injuring over 60 others. While a harrowing tragedy, Waukesha Police Chief Daniel Thompson said Brooks was apparently fleeing a domestic disturbance and declared the incident …

December 01, 2021 UPDATE: As of December 9, 2021, Facebook has removed all nine posts reported on the platform in conjunction with our research.  October 2021 marked one year since Facebook banned Holocaust denial from its platform and officially classified Holocaust denial as hate speech instead of misinformation. On the first anniversary of this policy’s enactment on Facebook properties, analysts in ADL’s Center on Extremism (COE) sought to determine whether the…

November 19, 2021 On Friday, November 19, 2021, a jury delivered a unanimous verdict in the murder trial of Kyle Rittenhouse: not guilty on all five counts, which included homicide and reckless endangerment. The presiding judge warned those in the courtroom against expressions of emotion, but right-wing extremists were bound by no such restrictions, and they reacted online to the ruling with praise for Rittenhouse, vitriol towards “antifa” and the left, and excitement about the…

December 29, 2020 Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, extremists across the ideological spectrum have used the virus as a platform for elaborate and alarming conspiracy theories. In March and April 2020, antisemitic, anti-government and Sinophobic conspiracies about the virus’s origins and “true purpose” were rampant online. In December 2020, as the COVID-19 vaccine was being shipped to frontline workers across the country, very familiar conspiracy theories took…

October 25, 2021 Unite the Right participants hold shields and a sign taken from counter protesters during the day's unrest. Photograph credit: John Penley, Facebook In the four years since the Unite the Right rally (“UTR”) in Charlottesville, Virginia, the major players and groups have undergone seismic change. This is certainly true for the defendants in the Integrity First for America lawsuit, which goes to trial this week. In stark contrast to the white supremacist…

September 02, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3The number of hate crimes in the United States rose to the highest level in 12 years, propelled by increasing assaults targeting Black and Asian victims, the FBI reported Monday. White supremacist and anti-government extremists have expressed admiration for the Taliban, a worrying development for US officials grappling with the threat of domestic violent extremism. More than 70 State Department officials sent a letter to the U.S. Secretary of State…