New York, NY, February 8, 2016 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today condemned a Facebook post by rock musician and gun rights activist Ted Nugent suggesting that prominent Jewish Americans are behind the advocacy for stronger gun control laws.
Earlier today, Nugent shared a graphic titled “So who is really behind gun control?” on his Facebook page. The visual featured thumbnail photos of prominent Jewish Americans, including former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Senator Chuck Schumer, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz and several others, with each photo emblazoned with the Israeli flag.
The post was accompanied by a written message from Nugent: “Know these punks. They hate freedom, they hate good over evil. They would deny us the basic human right to self defense & to KEEP AND BEAR ARMS while many of them have tax paid hired ARMED security! Know them well. Tell every1 you know how evil they are.”
The visual was apparently not created by Nugent, but has appeared in the past on anti-Semitic web sites.
Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO, issued the following statement:
Ted Nugent has a long history of being an equal opportunity offender. But his latest share on Facebook, making the outrageous suggestion that Jews are behind gun control, is nothing short of conspiratorial anti-Semitism. Regardless of one’s views on gun control, this kind of scapegoating of an entire religious group is completely unacceptable and completely divorced from reality.
It should go without saying that anti-Semitism has no place in the gun control debate. Nugent should be ashamed for promoting anti-Semitic content, and we hope that good people on both sides of the gun control debate will reject his tactics and his message. We hope that Nugent will have the good sense to remove this share immediately so that it does not spread virally across the internet.
In January 2014, ADL spoke out after Nugent made public remarks comparing film producer Harvey Weinstein to Hitler’s chief propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, charging that Weinstein was out to “destroy the NRA.”