ADL Articles

April 05, 2022 Update: On Tuesday, April 5, 2022, Creech appeared on the Alex Jones Show, where he confirmed his identity -- and his role in perpetrating the biolab conspiracy theory. The ADL Center on Extremism has, with a high degree of confidence, identified “Clandestine,” the man behind the viral biolab conspiracy theory, as Jacob Creech, a self-described former restaurant manager and Army National Guard veteran living in rural Virginia. The discovery highlights…

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…

March 03, 2022 In the week since Russian President Putin declared a “special military operation” in Ukraine, the Russian leader has become a pariah among much of the global community. Even white supremacist communities, once steadfast in their support for Putin’s Russia, are now questioning whether the invasion is worth the cost in “white” lives. They are also railing against non-white refugees resettling in “white” Europe and offering support for a…

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 27, 2022 The America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC III) was held on February 25, 2022, in Orlando, Florida. This annual white supremacist event is purposely held in Orlando to coincide with the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event taking place nearby. This year, nine individuals, including white supremacists, media personalities and political figures spoke at the conference (three of these speakers spoke virtually through pre-recorded videos). …

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 25, 2022 On February 23, 2022, the People’s Convoy trucker demonstration, ostensibly aimed at ending nationwide COVID-related policies, departed the Adelanto Stadium parking lot in Southern California, bound for Washington, D.C. Smaller convoys, like the one that launched the same day in Scranton, PA, are being planned in several states, but the People’s Convoy is the most organized and high-profile of these protests. While there is no evidence of extremist groups…

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 16, 2022 Truckers line up their vehicles on Metcalfe Street as they honk their horns in Ottawa, Canada on February 5, 2022. | Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images - Source: Politico For the second time since February 13, an unknown hacker leaked information from GiveSendGo, a Christian-oriented crowdfunding website, revealing identifying information of people donating both to Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” protest and the January 6 demonstration outside the U.S. Capitol…

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 25, 2022 Oregon State Rep. candidate Dan Tooze wearing hat with Proud Boy symbol (Source: Telegram) The American political landscape one year after the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol reflects the yawning divides highlighted on that violent day and reveals the extent to which extremist beliefs have become part of the mainstream. As the 2022 midterm election campaigns kick into high gear, ADL’s Center on Extremism is tracking more than 100 problematic political…

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 19, 2022 Sovereign citizen guru Bobby Lawrence appeared on QAnon conspiracy theorist Ann Vandersteel's show, SteelTruth, on June 1, 2021, where he discussed how to become an American State National. Source: Rumble More than a year after Q’s final post and the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., a small but growing number of QAnon adherents are openly embracing the beliefs of the anti-government extremist sovereign citizen movement. From…

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 12, 2022 Latin American countries have struggled to keep up with economic pressures, which had started prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and were exacerbated by the health crisis. Furthermore, political polarization seems to have permeated across the region with elections that appear to favor populist far left and far right candidates. What will this all mean for the Jewish communities in the region in 2022?           The Jewish…

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…