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New York, NY, October 9, 2018 … ADL has unveiled a new and comprehensive report that examines the current state of white supremacy. “New Hate and Old: The Changing Face of American White Supremacy,” produced by ADL’s Center on Extremism, is a deep dive into the forces behind this deadly ideology -- from the emergence of the alt right to the ongoing threat posed by more established elements of the movement.
Among the contents of the report: a close look at the increasing use of podcasts by white supremacists to spread their hate, extremists’ internal debate over “optics” and the staggering statistics behind white supremacist violence.
“We need to take this threat very seriously and be proactive in combating it,” said ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. “Historically, white supremacists have killed more people in the United States than any other type of domestic extremist – and that remains true today. Violence continues to permeate the white supremacist movement.”
“White supremacists in the United States have experienced a resurgence in the past three years, driven in large part by the rise of the alt right,” said George Selim, ADL Senior Vice President of Programs. “Youth-oriented and overwhelmingly male, the alt right has provided new energy to the movement, but has also been a destabilizing force, much as racist skinheads were to the movement in the 1980s and early 1990s.”
According to analysts at ADL’s Center on Extremism, some white supremacists, such as neo-Nazis, seem to have been buoyed by the rise of the alt right, while other groups – most notably racist skinheads – appear to have lost potential recruits to the newer strain of white supremacy. The report also examines the political environment that has emboldened the alt right, and recent violence linked to white supremacists.
The report includes a series of legislative and administrative policy recommendations to combat the threat posed by violent, far-right extremists. As part of those recommendations, ADL calls on the United States Congress to enact a domestic terrorism statute that explicitly recognizes and punishes domestic terrorism as a crime, and also asks the federal government to collect statistics on domestic terrorism and other forms of extremist-related criminal activity and to ensure training for law enforcement on best practices to combat domestic terrorism.