ADL Articles

February 09, 2017 Florida legislators have filed House Bill 303 and Senate Bill 436 – the so-called “Florida Student and School Personnel Religious Liberties Act” – (HB303/SB436).  The House Sponsor of the bill  – Representative Kim Daniels of Jacksonville – asserts that its purpose is to require public schools districts to enforce the religious discrimination protections of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act…

February 07, 2017 Earlier today, Betsy DeVos was confirmed as the new United States Secretary of Education. As we have done with many other Cabinet nominees over the years, the Anti-Defamation League had sent a letter to Senators on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions to urge members to ask Secretary of Education nominee Betsy DeVos a range of questions at her confirmation hearings.  The ADL letter drew on the League’s deep expertise in…

February 01, 2017 Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and the David Horowitz Freedom Center, an ultra-conservative organization that claims to combat the efforts of the “radical left and its Islamist allies to destroy American values,” launched a new campaign against college campuses that offer protection to undocumented students. Milo is expected to bring public attention to the campaign at an appearance at the University of California, Berkeley, on February 1st…

January 31, 2017 White supremacists Jared Taylor and Richard Spencer have both recently claimed President Donald Trump as part of the so-called “alt-right” – evidenced, they argue, by his “pro-white” executive orders on immigration and refugees. Trump’s election has certainly inspired a feeling of empowerment and pride among white supremacists, including Spencer and Taylor. And while Spencer spent the week following Trump’s inauguration…

January 24, 2017 On Saturday, January 21, 2017, the day after the inauguration of President Donald Trump, 500,000 people gathered in Washington, DC for the Women’s March–to express their unity for women’s issues and to speak out against the demonizing and hateful rhetoric that pervaded the past election cycle. An additional 400,000 marched in New York City , 250,000 in Chicago and according to Women’s March organizers, there were 673 “sister marches&rdquo…

January 24, 2017 Five members and associates of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of America were arrested last week on robbery charges in Union County, Mississippi. Three of the suspects in the January 16 crime are convicted felons, further evidence that Klan groups tend to attract people with criminal histories or proclivities. The Union County Sheriff’s Department received a 911 call from the intended victim on January 16, and the responding deputies were able to…

January 17, 2017 On MLK Day 2017, I participated in an important interreligious conference organized by the Shalom Hartman Institute, which convened faith leaders from across the Jewish and Muslim communities. Below are highlights of my remarks from the “Jews and Muslims in America Today: Political Challenges and Moral Opportunities” conference that was held at The Abraham Joshua Heschel School in New York City on January 16, 2017: Good morning.  Shalom…

January 13, 2017 On January 9, a Reddit-user discovered a horrific image on his way to work, under his own feet.  When the man bought a pair of Polar Fox boots, he did not realize that the rubber treads on the bottom would leave swastika shaped footprints.  “There was an angle I didn’t get to see when ordering my new work boots,” ‘FRSHFSHFCKR’ wrote alongside the images of the boot soles and the track marks they left. The next day, the white…

January 11, 2017 For more than a year, white supremacists from a variety of hate groups have organized events and activities under the banner of “white lives matter.” What started as a transparent white supremacist slogan designed to respond to the Black Lives Matter movement is now used to protest a range of topics including the removal of confederate symbols from public spaces, immigration, the Anti-Defamation League, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored…

January 10, 2017 Last month, international action put the onus on Israel for the absence of peace with the Palestinians, with the December 22 UN Security Council resolution, followed by Secretary of State John Kerry’s  speech on December 28, both focusing on Israel’s settlement policy.   In response to Secretary Kerry, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu charged: “For more than an hour, Kerry obsessed over the issue of settlements and hardly touched on…

January 09, 2017 In recent years, ISIS propaganda has urged followers to use a range of weapons, from knives to guns to cars, in terror attacks. The latest issue of the group’s Rumiyah (Rome) magazine reveals a new focus: incendiary attacks with various flammable weapons. Rumiyah, which is distributed online, is a relatively new English-language propaganda magazine; it emphasizes individual attacks against Western targets. An entire section of the magazine…

January 05, 2017 Alt right and neo-Nazi blogger Andrew Anglin, who runs the white supremacist website Daily Stormer, has for several weeks threatened to stage an anti-Semitic armed march in Whitefish, Montana. Though no march permit has yet been filed with town officials, Anglin today announced a date for his purported march, January 16, calling it the “James Earl Ray Day Extravaganza.” January 16, 2017, is also Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. This is no coincidence. …

December 28, 2016 Google deserves praise for taking steps to prioritize authoritative information sources in search results. Last week, the company released a statement saying that, “when non-authoritative information ranks too high in our search results, we develop scalable, automated approaches to fix the problems, rather than manually removing these one-by-one.” As a leading company in the online and technology field, Google has been the target of individuals and groups…

by: Jonathan Greenblatt December 23, 2016 Andrew Anglin, the neo-Nazi who runs The Daily Stormer, a blatantly racist and anti-Semitic website, has ratcheted up his campaign of harassment against the Jewish community in and around Whitefish, Montana, including announcing an armed march in the town by white supremacists that he has scheduled for January. Whitefish is the part-time home of Richard Spencer, a prominent spokesperson within the white supremacist alt right, and his…

December 21, 2016 Editor’s Note:A Muslim academic and a Jewish interfaith rabbi recently sat down together for a discussion about the spate of hate crimes that have taken place in the aftermath of the 2016 election campaign and what can happen with Jews and Muslims work together to combat hate speech. The following conversation between Dr. Mehnaz Afridi, Director of the Holocaust and Genocide Institute at Manhattan College, and Rabbi David Sandmel, Director of Interreligious…

December 20, 2016 » Follow All Posts On Our Top 10 List As 2016 draws to a close, the Anti-Defamation League is counting down the major milestones we accomplished this year in the fight against hate. Here’s a look at some highlights of our work this year – bringing us that much closer to our goal of achieving a world without hate. Alarmed by a year when anti-Semitism coursed through social media, anti-Semitic incidents rose and Jewish stereotypes appeared…

December 20, 2016 » Follow All Posts On Our Top 10 List As 2016 draws to a close, the Anti-Defamation League is counting down the major milestones we accomplished this year in the fight against hate. Here’s a look at some highlights from our education division: Demand for ADL’s education programs and curriculum increased substantially in 2016, as educators, families and community leaders sought ways to help young people feel safe&nbsp…

December 20, 2016 Richard Spencer, the white supremacist most closely associated with the alt right, appears to be making common cause with neo-Nazis, something that did not seem likely even a few years ago. Before becoming a white nationalist, Spencer worked for the mainstream American Conservative magazine and carefully cultivated his image as a “suit and tie” racist who did not use blatantly racist language or sport racist tattoos. However, over the last month, Spencer has…

December 19, 2016 » Follow All Posts On Our Top 10 List As 2016 draws to a close, the Anti-Defamation League is counting down the major milestones we accomplished this year in the fight against hate. ADL has tracked the hateful activity of extremists for decades, but early in 2016 we were among the first to detect something different: A number of white supremacists, who identified as part of the Alt Right, were publicly voicing support for major presidential candidates…

December 16, 2016 What’s the easiest way to spot a white supremacist? The answer used to be pretty easy: You look for Klan robes or a swastika tattoo. But the recent rise of the clean-cut, besuited Richard Spencer and the alt-right has challenged these conventions, and parallels a movement within white supremacist circles to re-brand their cause – eliminating easily identifiable symbols in favor of a new, “kinder, gentler” image, an attempt to make…