April 21, 2020 Headline: Coronavirus: Anti-Immigration, Xenophobia and Homophobia Short description: Extremists are using fear of the virus to stoke nativist, homophobic hate As the coronavirus continues to surge globally, virus-related conspiracy theories are proliferating online. These antisemitic, xenophobic, hateful messages spread misplaced blame and misinformation, making it more difficult to access accurate information while elevating fear and anxiety. While some of these…

April 20, 2020 As the coronavirus continues to surge globally, virus-related conspiracy theories are proliferating online. These antisemitic, xenophobic, hateful messages spread misplaced blame and misinformation, making it more difficult to access accurate information while elevating fear and anxiety. While some of these messages are new, many are simply old tropes repackaged for a modern pandemic. Conspiracy theorists are positing that the coronavirus was manufactured by humans,…

April 20, 2020 Americans’ response to the coronavirus pandemic now includes a spate of nationwide rallies decrying stay-at-home orders and calling for “reopening” the economy. While many of the protests calling for the reopening of the economy and the lifting of state-issued quarantine mandates have been organized by more mainstream conservative organizations, a number have been sponsored in whole or part by identified extremists and a range of rally participants have carried…

April 20, 2020 As the coronavirus continues to surge globally, virus-related conspiracy theories are proliferating online. These antisemitic, xenophobic, hateful messages spread misplaced blame and misinformation, making it more difficult to access accurate information while elevating fear and anxiety. While some of these messages are new, many are simply old tropes repackaged for a modern pandemic. ADL is tracking some of the coronavirus-related anti-Asian incidents here. Sinophobia …

April 19, 2020 By Dr. Mark Pitcavage On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck bomb in front of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The blast destroyed the building, killing 168 men, women and children and injuring hundreds more. Twenty-five years later, the Oklahoma City bombing remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in American history.  McVeigh and his accomplice, Terry Nichols, were not part of any large, well-funded terrorist organization; they…

March 25, 2020 As the COVID-19 coronavirus continues to spread across the globe, examples of those seeking a scapegoat for the virus continue to proliferate. As ADL and other groups have explored, there have been numerous cases of xenophobia in the US related to the virus, particularly attacks against Asian individuals and groups. Internationally, there have also been many attempts to link COVID-19 to Israel, Zionists and Jews, with some people baselessly claiming the virus is part of a…

March 06, 2020 White supremacist Robert Sterkeson interrupted Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Thursday, March 5, 2020, rally in Phoenix, Arizona, when he waved a Nazi flag behind Sanders. Fellow rally attendees quickly pulled the flag from Sterkeson’s hands, and security teams removed him from the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Sterkeson, of Glendale, Arizona, is a self-described “stunt activist” who has harassed a range of Jewish and…

January 13, 2020 UPDATE: On March 15, 2021, John William Kirby Kelley was sentenced to 33 months in prison for his role in numerous swatting attacks targeting journalists, a Virginia university, a historic predominantly Black church in Virginia, an Islamic Center in Arlington, Texas, and a former U.S. Cabinet member. On January 10, 2020, federal authorities arrested 19-year-old John William Kirby Kelley of Vienna, Virginia, for his alleged role in a multi…

November 08, 2019 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 An avowed white supremacist in Colorado was arrested after federal investigators uncovered a plot to bomb an historic synagogue. Campus officials at East Tennessee University are opening an investigation after signs saying “It’s okay to be white”— a popular white supremacist slogan — appeared around campus. A man in Milwaukee is facing felony hate-crime charges for allegedly throwing acid on a Latino man because of his…

November 05, 2019 Update: February 26, 2021: A federal court sentenced Richard Holzer to 19.5 years in prison.  Update: October 15, 2020:  The Justice Department announced that Richard Holzer, 28, pleaded guilty to federal hate crime and explosives charges for plotting to blow up the Temple Emanuel Synagogue in Pueblo, Colorado. According to a DOJ press release, Holzer faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for the hate crime charge…

August 16, 2019 THE WEEK'S BIG 3 A man in southern Nevada was arrested after investigators uncovered his plot to attack an LGBTQ nightclub, a local synagogue and the regional ADL office with firearms and explosives. A white supremacist group distributed anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic fliers at Seattle-area synagogues as part of a coordinated propaganda effort. And over 100 tires were slashed in a predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in NJ. Read on for more on these headlines,…

June 14, 2019 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 Organizers of the “DC Dyke March” attempted to implement a ban on Jewish Pride flags, claiming they too closely resemble the flag of Israel. In Detroit, a small group of neo-Nazis carrying weapons disrupted an LGBTQ Pride march by spewing homophobic, racist and anti-Semitic slurs at participants and pretending to defile an Israeli flag. A gay man in Atlanta was shot and killed in what police are classifying as a hate crime. Read on for…

June 02, 2019 Remarks by Jonathan Greenblatt CEO and National Director, Anti-Defamation League To the ADL National Leadership Summit June 2, 2019, Washington, D.C. (As prepared for delivery) Thank you, Esta, for that kind introduction, and welcome to our 2019 National Leadership Summit. I am so glad to be here. Its been an exhausting year and a hard year, and to that end I want to ask you to pause for a moment of silence to honor the 12 people who were killed in…

May 23, 2019 UPDATE: A large law enforcement contingent kept the peace as only nine HSK members and associates participated in Saturday’s rally. Yards away, separated by a fence and a wall of police, hundreds of counter-protesters drowned out the barely visible Klan group with a united and peaceful message against hate. The Honorable Sacred Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (HSK), a small Madison, Indiana-based Klan group led by Derek Dean Eaglin and Kate Nicole Eaglin, has scheduled…

April 12, 2019 THE WEEK'S BIG 3 Congress holds a hearing on the growing threat posed by white nationalism and increase in hate crimes; anti-vaccination advocates are misappropriating Holocaust imagery to push their agenda; and Airbnb reneges on its decision to de-list properties in the West Bank. Read on for more on these headlines, news you can use to fight hate this week, and the latest info about ADL around the country.   1 A Flood Online of Hate Speech Greets…

December 17, 2018 FBI agents and Snohomish County deputies arrested a Washington state white supremacist last week for allegedly making threats to carry out mass killings of Jews and other minorities.  Dakota Reed, 20, of Monroe, Washington, was charged with malicious harassment—Washington’s hate crime statute—and making bomb threats.  Authorities also seized a cache of firearms, ammunition and white supremacist propaganda from Reed’s residence. The…

November 05, 2018 Louis Farrakhan spent Sunday in Iran, according to the English language version of MEHR, an Iranian news agency, spewing anti-American, anti-Israel rhetoric. The Nation of Islam leader, ostensibly in Iran to mark the 39th anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, lashed out repeatedly at the U.S. and the Trump administration’s new sanctions against Iran. He reportedly called the U.S. a “big liar” and described the new sanctions as …