by: Rabbi David Sandmel December 04, 2017 On Chanukah, we celebrate religious and national freedom. In the second century B.C.E., according to the available sources, the Maccabees led the Judeans in a revolt against the Seleucid king Antiochus, who outlawed the practice of Judaism to control his empire. He oppressed the people and desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem.
After defeating the Seleucids, who had overextended themselves in their war against Egypt, the Hasmoneans recaptured the…
1213 Results
December 01, 2017 Thursday’s acquittal of undocumented immigrant Jose Ines Garcia Zarate in the 2015 murder of Kathryn (Kate) Steinle has sparked an outcry from white supremacists and other extremists.
Zarate claims he unintentionally killed Steinle when a stolen gun he was carrying went off accidentally. While a San Francisco jury agreed with this assessment, right-wing extremists are framing the acquittal as a symptom of multiculturalism, blaming Jews and non-whites for the…
December 01, 2017 By David Barkey, Religious Freedom Counsel & Southeastern Area Counsel
The U.S. Supreme Court soon will hear oral arguments in a case called Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Cakeshop’s owner is asking the Court do something unprecedented – allow him based on religious objections to refuse service to customers for who they are.
ADL recently joined an amicus brief to the Court filed by a coalition of civil rights and religious…
November 30, 2017 November 24 witnessed the deadliest terror attack in Egypt’s history when gunmen detonated explosives at a Sufi mosque in the Sinai Peninsula and then sprayed the worshippers with bullets, killing more than 300 people and wounding more than 100. While no organization claimed responsibility for the attack, it is thought to have been carried out by local militants affiliated with the Islamic State.
Sufism, a branch of Islam, is a minority regarded by the Islamic…
November 29, 2017 This backgrounder is based on information from Hope Not Hate, an organization based in London: http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/
Origins of Britain First
Britain First (BF) is a far-right, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant group founded in 2011 by former members of the British National Party (BNP), a far-right political party with ties to neo-Nazis. The group is estimated to have about a thousand members. Britain First was founded by Jim Dowson and Paul Golding in…
November 29, 2017 President Donald Trump retweeted three violent, anti-Muslim videos Wednesday. It is just the latest illustration of how the president bolsters and amplifies the messages of extremists and other purveyors of hate.
Trump retweeted the videos from the account of Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, a far right extremist anti-Muslim group with ties to the British National Party, a racist, anti-minority neo-Fascist group.
Such extremist propaganda is one of…
November 27, 2017 By Mark Pitcavage, Senior Research Fellow for the Center on Extremism
Many subjects are difficult to report on, but extremist and fringe movements are particularly difficult landscapes for journalists to navigate, strewn with rough terrain and the occasional landmine. As someone who has monitored right-wing extremism for more than two decades, I’ve had the pleasure of reading many fine works of journalism on extremist-related subjects, but I’ve also seen…
November 27, 2017 Our country is engaged in a public conversation about sexual harassment and assault. Since the Harvey Weinstein allegations came to light, there is a long and growing list of 33 high-profile men who have been accused of sexual harassment. As we watch the cascade of accusations, admissions and denials, we have to ask ourselves if we are capable of making a difference with the next generation.
How can we address sexual harassment and assault with children and teens so that…
November 17, 2017 Since it began losing territory in Iraq and Syria last year, the Islamic State has shifted its propaganda away from rapturous rhetoric describing sweeping conquests across the region to more muted language urging its followers not to lose hope, and to embrace its last best chance for relevance: lone wolf attacks in the West.
Islamic State’s reputation as a notorious terrorist organization is one of the few things that remains after the territorial losses…
November 16, 2017 A few days before the 22nd anniversary of the Million Man March/Holy Day of Atonement, NOI’s leader, Louis Farrakhan tweeted: “Black People: We should be more convinced that it is time for us to separate and build a nation of our own.” Farrakhan’s pronouncement, which was echoed in his anniversary speech, “Separation or Death,” was retweeted nearly 2.9K times, a number that included alt-right leaders Richard Spencer and Mike Enoch, as…
November 12, 2017 On Nov. 11, 60,000 Poles chose to celebrate Poland’s Independence Day by marching with organizations whose names, symbols and ideology are directly copied from anti-Semitic Polish organizations of the 1930s.
The National Radical Camp (ONR) and All-Polish Youth organizations want an ethnically and religiously homogeneous Poland. All white, all Catholic. No Jews, no immigrants.
Among the red and white Polish national flags were the green flags of the falanga, ONR…
November 10, 2017 A year ago, when the Anti-Defamation League convened its first major summit on anti-Semitism in New York City, all of the signs pointed to a distinct resurgence of the world’s oldest hatred.
Jewish journalists had endured withering assaults on social media. Anti-Semitism was a serious and growing concern on college campuses. And hatred of Jews was once again entering the public conversation as Americans witnessed one of the most divisive presidential elections in…
November 07, 2017 November 2, 2017 marked the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, a letter signed in 1917 by British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour expressing his country's support for the establishment of a national Jewish home in Palestine. While the UK and Israel celebrated the anniversary of this Declaration, which has become a symbol of international recognition of the Jewish right to self-determination, Palestinians and others have used the occasion to protest, and demand an…
November 06, 2017 “It’s okay to be white,” stated the flier posted on the door of a high school in Silver Spring, Maryland. The flier, consisting of nothing but that phrase in large type on an otherwise blank sheet of paper, also appeared in numerous other places around the U.S. on Halloween, including Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Ohio, Washington, and Illinois, as well as Alberta in Canada. More instances appeared over the weekend of November 4-5.
…
November 01, 2017 White supremacists have been fighting among themselves ever since the violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. That infighting escalated following last weekend’s White Lives Matter (WLM) rally in Shelbyville, Tennessee.
About 200 white supremacists around the country attended the WLM rally. The main organization behind the rally was the Nationalist Front, which includes groups such as League of the South, a Southern…
October 24, 2017 The white supremacist Nationalist Front will hold a series of “White Lives Matter” protests at various points in Tennessee on Saturday, October 28, 2017. The events will begin at 10am EST and culminate in a private social event that evening. With an expected attendance of around 200 people, this could be the largest gathering of white supremacists since Unite the Right in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The morning protests will be held in Shelbyville, and will…
by: Kenneth Jacobson October 20, 2017 On October 19 at Lincoln Center in New York City, an important and inspiring conference took place hosted by the George W. Bush Institute. The conference addressed the issue of “The Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In the World.”
It was an honor for ADL to have been invited to attend this event. (I was among a small select group of our leaders, including ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, to have been in the audience that day). The presence of…
October 20, 2017 Three Texas men are currently in jail in Alachua County, Florida on charges of attempted homicide for their roles in an altercation following Richard Spencer’s speech at the University of Florida in Gainesville yesterday. The three men allegedly yelled, “Heil Hitler,” while driving by a group standing near a bus stop, leading to an altercation in which one of them, Tyler Tenbrink, reportedly fired a gun. All three men, William Fears, Colton Fears, and…
October 20, 2017 Recently, a video game designer was working on a multiplayer first-person shooter game at a small studio. Others in the company were building battle maps, weapons, and different avatars — but she was the only person to raise her hand and say, "What are we doing to make sure that folks who are playing this game online aren't being totally awful to each other?"
She decided to create community guidelines, looking at lists of hateful words to determine which words could…
October 19, 2017 Andrew Anglin, a neo-Nazi who runs The Daily Stormer website, is encouraging supporters who can’t get into Richard Spencer’s speech at the University of Florida to target Jewish and black religious and cultural institutions.
In a piece posted to his website, Anglin encouraged his followers to go to Spencer’s speech dressed in regular clothes and to cover up any racist tattoos. He suggested that they not wear khakis and polo shirts, which is widely…