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…

May 07, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 Four months after his ouster from Facebook and Instagram, the suspension of former president Donald Trump was upheld by the Facebook Oversight Board. A former leader in a violent neo-Nazi group was sentenced Tuesday to 41 months in prison for harassing journalists who reported on his activities and others. Police arrested a 29-year-old man on hate crime charges in connection with the vandalization of several Bronx synagogues, which included the…

April 22, 2021 Image: Fox News In the days following Tucker Carlson’s vitriolic, xenophobic commentary about demographic change, most white supremacist reactions were supportive of the Fox News personality and praised him for railing against “white genocide.” Some suggested that Carlson is finally showing his true colors and fully embracing white nationalism. One 4Chan poster wrote: “As predicted, Carlson is our guy.” Other extremists argued Carlson is not…

April 21, 2021 Screenshot: ABC News Extremists consistently use mainstream news stories as opportunities to share their racist, often violent, views on a range of social media and online platforms. The April 20, 2021 verdict in the Derek Chauvin murder trial was no exception. Chauvin was found guilty on all three charges in the May 2020 murder of George Floyd. Note: Many of the comments documented in this piece include racist, violent and otherwise disturbing language. Prior to the…

April 21, 2021 Burt Colucci speaks during private NSM gathering on April 16, 2021 UPDATE: On January 4, 2022, the Maricopa County Attorney’s office indicted Colucci on two counts of misdemeanor disorderly conduct and one count of felony disorderly conduct. On April 19, 2021, police in Chandler, Arizona, arrested the leader of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement (NSM), Burt Colucci of Kissimmee, Florida, for aggravated assault after he allegedly pointed a handgun at a Black…

April 09, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 Cameron Shea, a 25-year-old leader of the neo-Nazi extremist group Atomwaffen, pleaded guilty to threatening journalists and activists with Nazi posters and menacing messages. Coronavirus lockdowns last year shifted some antisemitic hatred online, where conspiracy theories blaming Jews for the pandemic’s medical and economic devastation abounded, researchers reported. The Arkansas Senate on Wednesday approved a stripped-down hate crimes bill…

April 06, 2021 The best-known images from the January 6 rally and assault on the U.S. Capitol largely feature men, decked out in camouflage, MAGA hats and QAnon paraphernalia. But women made up about 14 percent of those who have been charged in relation to activity that day. This is an unusually high number of women for a right-wing extremist event, which is attributable at least in part to the high concentration of QAnon supporters at the January 6 events, and to the significant number of…

March 31, 2021 4.12.21 UPDATE:   The White Lives Matter marches that took place on Sunday, April 11 were very sparsely attended. Counter-protesters made up the majority of attendees -- and in some cases were the only attendees.  Huntington Beach saw the largest rally, with around 10 WLM marchers, some bearing extremist symbols and others with various right-wing flags, and 500 counter-protesters at its peak before being…

March 25, 2021 UPDATE: According to the TruNews website, the channel was banned from Facebook on April 3, 2021, and the TruNews page has been removed from the platform.  In early 2020, ADL wrote about TruNews and its host and founder, Rick Wiles, detailing the fundamentalist Christian video streaming site’s consistently antisemitic, anti-Zionist, anti-LGBTQ+ and Islamophobic rhetoric. In July 2020, a follow-up piece focused on TruNews’ use of…

March 25, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 Asian Americans reported the single biggest increase in serious incidents of online hate and harassment as racist and xenophobic slurs blaming people of Asian descent for the coronavirus pandemic spread over the past year, according to a new survey from ADL. ADL is asking for an independent investigation into a Massachusetts high school football team that used Holocaust-related language including “Auschwitz” and Jewish words in its on-field…

March 18, 2021 From March 6-12, 2021, anti-Israel groups American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and UK-based Friends of Al-Aqsa held an all-virtual Aqsa Week, described on AMP’s website as “programs and educational webinars... that focused on Jerusalem, its Islamic significance...the Prophetic connection to Palestine to[sic] the dark era of the Crusades and US/UK policy towards Jerusalem.” Many events, however, featured speakers who veered into inflammatory rhetoric,…

March 09, 2021 Extremist movements pose many problems to society, from spreading hate and intolerance to engaging in significant and deadly violence.  It is particularly problematic when adherents of extreme causes are able to persist in key institutions dedicated to protecting the people of the United States, institutions such as emergency response units, law enforcement and the military. Of these institutions, the U.S. military is the largest, with more than two million active duty…

March 05, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 U.S. House leaders canceled Thursday’s legislative session and rescheduled morning votes after police officials warned of a possible plot by a militia group to storm Capitol Hill. A suspect ADL identified as an alleged white supremacist was arrested after the FBI raided the Florida home he was renting after moving from New Jersey. Jewish groups called for an investigation into allegations that a Frontier Airlines flight crew made antisemitic…

February 26, 2021 Young Pharaoh, whose real name is Marshall Daniels, is an antisemitic conspiracy theorist who promotes racist theories about the superiority of Black people. He has also touted QAnon conspiracy theories, including Pizzagate and Frazzledrip (which accuses high profile Democrats of cutting a child’s face off and wearing it like a mask in a Satanic ritual) and uses popular QAnon hashtags. In 2021, he was invited and then disinvited from speaking at the annual CPAC…

February 26, 2021 As of February 25, 2021, more than 30 virtual events celebrating Black History Month have been disrupted by racist Zoombombing attacks. Zoombombing first gained attention nearly a year ago, during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, as extremists and anonymous online trolls took advantage of the new reliance on virtual conferencing technology by disrupting a wide range of events, often targeting marginalized communities. In this most recent spate of virtual…