ADL Articles

February 10, 2022 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 The Biden Administration’s Nominee for U.S. Special Envoy to Combat and Monitor Anti-Semitism Deborah Lipstadt vowed to speak out against antisemitism, regardless of the political affiliation, as the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee finally held her confirmation hearing this week. A Jewish high school student was reprimanded for refusing to give a Nazi salute in his Alabama classroom. Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker of Congregation Beth Israel…

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 20, 2022 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 The Jewish community is once again on high alert and calling for action after a gunman stormed a synagogue during Shabbat services in Colleyville, Texas, holding four hostages for over 11 hours before the rabbi and congregants were able to escape. Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right militia group the Oath Keepers, and 10 other individuals were charged with "seditious conspiracy and other charges for crimes" related to the breach of the Capitol on…

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 23, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 A staff member from a D.C. elementary school is reported to have told third-graders in library class to reenact scenes from the Holocaust, directing them to dig their classmates’ mass graves and simulate shooting the victim. Former president Donald Trump was condemned by the head of ADL after using antisemitic tropes about American Jews in a recent interview. A virulently antisemitic group with a reputation for mounting propaganda stunts…

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…

November 04, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 A fraternity house at George Washington University was vandalized over the weekend, including desecration of a Torah scroll. A day after a fire was set outside a Jewish synagogue in Central Austin, more than two dozen faith leaders and clergy members from across Austin were joined by community leaders at a rally as they called for unity following a recent spate of antisemitic incidents against across the city. Fox News personality Tucker Carlson…

October 29, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 A third of Jewish college students say they have personally experienced antisemitism in the last year, according to a new survey conducted jointly by ADL and Hillel. ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt blasted Facebook following the publication of a series of articles revealing the company's struggles to stop hate speech, human trafficking and coordinated groups that sowed discord ahead of the January 6 insurrection. Community leaders are rallying behind the…

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…

October 21, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 A local chapter of the environmentalist group Sunrise Movement said it won’t march in a voting rights rally in Washington because some of the participating groups are Zionist. A Denver high school was targeted with graffiti displaying messages of hate, antisemitism, racism and homophobia over the weekend, and a Jewish private school had a window smashed and its electricity cut off.  With the third anniversary of the Tree of Life shooting…

October 15, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 International and Jewish community leaders gathered in Malmö, Sweden this week for a conference to combat antisemitism and advance Holocaust remembrance. Twitter is struggling to curtail COVID-19 misinformation and hate speech originating from the fringe social network Gab and migrating to find massive audiences on the platform, according to a new report released by ADL. A review of recently revealed membership rolls for the far-right group Oath…

October 07, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 A new website where Jewish students can report antisemitism on college campuses and receive immediate support from security professionals and law enforcement launched. A new report from ADL details the decades-long efforts from an extremist group to make county sheriffs an absolute authority, with the ability to implement their own political agendas. A federal jury in Seattle convicted the purported leader of the violent neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen…