ADL Articles

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…

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…

May 07, 2021 By David Andrew Weinberg On the last Friday of Ramadan every year, the Government of Iran organizes what it calls Global Quds (i.e. Jerusalem) Day, which it uses as an opportunity to spread horrific propaganda calling for the destruction of the State of Israel, as well as messages of support for terrorist organizations and a deluge of antisemitic hate speech.  This year was no exception. On Friday, May 7, the main English-language Twitter account attributed to Iran…

February 12, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 Google's YouTube is still recommending extremist and white supremacist videos to viewers already susceptible to racial hatred, a new report from ADL found. Iranian schools are teaching antisemitism, hatred and conspiratorial material in their textbooks, according to a comprehensive analysis by ADL. Police in Spokane, WA are looking for the person who painted swastikas on the Temple Beth Shalom building and a Holocaust memorial. Read on for more…

December 17, 2020 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 The website of a Jewish high school in suburban New York was hacked and defaced with swastikas and antisemitic slurs. A member of a Chabad in Lexington was severely injured when a driver shouting antisemitic slurs dragged and ran over him outside the Jewish Student Center near the University of Kentucky. And the Senate passed a bipartisan bill by unanimous consent upgrading the status of the State Department Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat…

August 20, 2020 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 An FBI Twitter account tweeted out a link to a PDF containing the antisemitic “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” as well as FBI documents related to it, with no other context. President Trump on Wednesday offered encouragement to proponents of QAnon, a viral and dangerous conspiracy theory. According to a new study, Facebook “actively promotes further Holocaust-denial content to that user” and “has been unwilling…

August 07, 2020 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 Twenty state attorneys general called on Facebook to better prevent messages of hate, bias and disinformation from spreading, and said the company needed to provide more help to users facing online abuse. The leader of a white supremacist group was arrested in Weatherford, Texas on Saturday after police said he and two other men placed stickers on county property. And the global Jewish community continues to face rising antisemitism due to the…

June 19, 2020 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 ADL convened a coalition of civil rights groups encouraging corporate advertisers to pull spending from Facebook during the month of July to protest the company’s failure to make its platform a less-hostile place. The Supreme Court ruled that federal civil rights law protects gay, lesbian and transgender workers from discrimination. School textbooks used in institutions controlled by the terror group Hezbollah are teaching children “egregious…

January 09, 2020 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 An estimated 25,000 people marched across the Brooklyn Bridge and then gathered for a community rally, co-sponsored by ADL, in a show of strength and solidarity in response to the recent spate of anti-Semitic violence in the New York City metro area. The U.S. attack that killed an Iranian military leader has spawned a range of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jews “pushing” war against Iran. Music-streaming service Spotify is under…

November 25, 2019 In his remarkable address at ADL’s Never is Now Summit last week, the comedian and actor Sacha Baron Cohen called out major social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, for failing to stop the spread of anti-Semitism and hate on their platforms. “All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history,” Baron Cohen said in his remarks,…

November 22, 2019 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 Actor, screenwriter and director Sacha Baron Cohen slammed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other tech giants for their role in facilitating the spread of online misinformation and hate. A new global survey finds that about one in four Europeans harbors anti-Semitic beliefs. And in Monsey, New York, an Orthodox Jewish man was stabbed walking to morning shul; it was not immediately clear whether it was a hate crime. Read on for more on these…

September 19, 2019 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 ADL sent two of its most senior leaders to Capitol Hill this week to testify in front of Congress about the global threat of white supremacy and the proliferation of hate online. Police in Arapahoe County, Colorado are investigating a Snapchat image picturing three high school students with a caption using explicitly violent, anti-Semitic language. And after an outcry from ADL, the Women’s March voted to remove a board member with a long…

June 07, 2019 June 6, 2019 THE WEEK'S BIG 3 YouTube announces a new effort to remove extremist, white supremacist content from its platform, in what ADL called “an important step forward.” In an attempt to claim ‘prominent’ conservatives were being censored on social media platforms, a Fox News host cited an avowed anti-Semite as an example. Volkswagen is partnering with ADL to fund a new office in Berlin that will research and combat anti-Semitism throughout…

May 31, 2019 May 30, 2018 THE WEEK'S BIG 3 Jews in Germany were warned that wearing a kippah in public may be dangerous, due to a disturbing increase in anti-Semitic incidents. The Ku Klux Klan attempted to hold a rally in Dayton, Ohio over the weekend but failed spectacularly – being out numbered 600 to nine. Twitter is weighing whether banning white nationalists from their platform or allowing them to stay on and be debated is the proper approach in dealing with this issue. …

December 21, 2018 With approximately 3 percent of the world’s Jewish population residing in Latin America, ADL works in partnership with the organized Jewish communal institutions to lend our voices when needed. Going into 2019, as challenges to Jewish community grow worldwide, ADL’s focus on strengthening relations with local Jewish communities across Latin America will continue to be paramount, particularly in areas of common interest.   Political shifts  …

October 11, 2018 Hungarian Jewish billionaire, philanthropist and Holocaust survivor George Soros is widely recognized for funding progressive political and social causes, usually through grants made by his Open Society Foundations. As a result, Soros has become a lightning rod for conservative and right-wing groups who object to his funding of liberal causes. In far-right circles worldwide, Soros’ philanthropy often is recast as fodder for outsized conspiracy theories, including…