Research & Analysis

From Memorial Day through Labor Day 2024, the ADL Center on Extremism (COE) tracked a sustained, high level of white supremacist activity that included paramilitary-style marches, demonstrations, “fight nights,” propaganda drives, and disruption of public forums across the country. COE documented 64 white supremacist events across 25 states between May 27 and September 2, 2024. A majority of these events were small, with just five to 12 participants, but there were also larger…

An analysis by the ADL Center on Extremism identified five influencers on X whose engagement spiked in the days and weeks after Hamas’s attack on Israel, with content that included virulent anti-Zionism alongside antisemitic tropes, disinformation and other forms of hateful or harmful rhetoric. In the six months following October 7, 2023, the combined audience engagement on X for these five influencers—Jackson Hinkle, Lucas Gage, Jake Shields, Sam Parker and CensoredMen&mdash…

On July 13, 2024, Donald Trump suffered minor injuries when an individual fired multiple shots at the former president shortly after Trump took the stage during a campaign rally in Butler, PA. The attack killed one rally attendee and injuring three, including the former President. The shooter has been identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, PA. While the motivation for the attack remains unknown, federal law enforcement are treating the incident as an assassination…

Across the country in recent months, many anti-Israel activists have been engaged in strategic “escalation” to further their cause. These actions have included increasingly aggressive and targeted protests, property destruction and defacement, physical takeovers of institutions deemed to be “complicit” in alleged Israeli military actions, and even multiple cases of ideologically motivated arson attacks.  For the most part, the tactics themselves — such as…

While the anti-Israel encampments have largely been dismantled, their architects appear determined to capitalize on what they see as their most successful organizing tactic in a decade. “Summer school” is now in session, led locally and nationally by pro-Palestinian individuals and groups.  These ”schools” — currently scheduled to run from June through August — are designed to educate and train student and community activists. Some are only open to…

Extremists and online trolls are using Suno, an increasingly influential Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) music creation tool, to make songs promoting hate speech, racist stereotypes, calls for violence and extremist rhetoric. The tool, created by Suno AI, became popular in 2023 after the company announced a partnership with Microsoft.  Today, many users employ the tool for innocuous purposes. However, the ADL Center on Extremism has discovered a vast library of disturbing songs…

While the days of lockdowns and social distancing are behind us, anti-vaccine narratives remain prevalent on social media, and extremists continue to exploit these sentiments to recruit new members, raise money and mainstream their beliefs. Many extremists view anti-vaxxers as a massive pool of potential fresh recruits and followers primed for the “red pill.”      While the mainstreaming of once-fringe anti-vaccine beliefs poses obvious risks to public health,…

Disturbing memes and images created using Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) are polluting social media with camouflaged hate and extremist propaganda. Innovations in AI technology, plus a wider range of tools available than ever before, have enabled the use of AI image generators for nefarious purposes—some of which have been coordinated and crowdsourced online. In the last year, one GAI feature has emerged as a favorite among extremists: The ability to embed shapes, symbols and…

Anti-Zionist student groups on more than 100 U.S. college and university campuses have established “encampments” in recent days to ostensibly protest Israel’s actions in Gaza and their academic institutions’ alleged “complicity” in those actions. College campuses have been the site of many tense anti-Israel protests and antisemitic incidents since the start of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war that began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terrorist attack. These…

Anti-Zionist activists in the U.S. praised Iran for its drone attack on Israel, using rhetoric similar to what was used immediately after October 7.

Conspiracy theories and antisemitic narratives have flooded social media in the wake of an Islamic State-claimed terror attack at a music venue outside Moscow.  On March 22, 2024, four gunmen attacked concertgoers at Crocus City Hall, shooting into the crowd and using explosives to set the building on fire, killing at least 130 people and injuring at least 140 others.  Hours after the attack, the Amaq News Agency, a propaganda arm of the Islamic State (IS or ISIS), claimed…

Part of the ADL Center on Extremism’s coverage of the misogynist manosphere and its subcultures, each of which impacts women’s experiences of safety and equity – online and offline.     Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) is a distinct faction of the “manosphere,” the broad set of male supremacist, anti-feminist, misogynist and sometimes violent extremist movements that exist largely online. The MGTOW movement began online in the early 2000s when…

On March 13, 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that could potentially lead to a nationwide ban of the popular social media platform TikTok. According to the bill, the issue stems from TikTok being owned by a “foreign adversary,” which poses a national security threat. TikTok’s China-owned parent company ByteDance would be required to find another buyer within six months to avoid the app being pulled from app stores in the US. While the bill has not yet…

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…

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…

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,”…

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…

Part of the ADL Center on Extremism’s coverage of the misogynist manosphere and its subcultures, each of which impacts women’s experiences of safety and equity – online and offline.  Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) are a part of the manosphere, a broad set of male supremacist, anti-feminist, misogynist and sometimes violent movements that exist largely online. MRAs embrace traditional masculinity as the ideal state of men in society and vehemently reject the…

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…