The following letter was submitted to The New York Times in response to "If We Silence Hate Speech, Will We Silence Resistance?" (Aug. 9) To the Editor:
The first flaw in Erik Nielson’s argument is his failure to define hate speech, which clearly means different things to different people. Speech that harasses, threatens or incites violence - whether it emanates from the left or the right – contributes nothing to the marketplace of ideas, and…
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August 15, 2018 Sparsely attended and heavily protested, Unite the Right 2 reflected the challenges facing the alt right and the larger white supremacist movement.
As he made his way towards D.C.’s Lafayette Park, rally organizer Jason Kessler was accompanied by about 30 right wing speakers and activists and a police escort. A massive police presence kept throngs of counter-protesters at a distance from Kessler and his group. There were no major incidents of violence, though some…
August 10, 2018 This week is the anniversary of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which attracted hundreds of bigots from around the country. We remember the TIKI torches, the chants “Jews will not replace us!” from angry white men, and the bias-motivated murder of counterprotester Heather Heyer.
On this anniversary, as groups in many cities are rededicating themselves to …
The following letter was submitted to The New York Times in response to "Free Speech Experts Argue Against Infowars Founder" (Aug. 8) To the Editor:
The debate over whether Alex Jones should have been removed from Facebook, Apple and other platforms seems almost quaint and academic when one looks closely at his long history of spreading outright lies and appeals to bigotry.
After the violent alt-right protest in Charlottesville, Va., a year ago, Mr. Jones announced that he…
August 07, 2018 The Unite the Right anniversary rally will take place at 4:30pm on Sunday, August 12 in Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C. Organizer Jason Kessler is promoting the event as a way to protest the “human rights abuses” he claims took place at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Despite his assurances that no “extreme elements” will be involved in the 2018 rally, Kessler has invited leaders from the alt right, as well as other…
Orange County, CA, August 2, 2018 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today welcomed the decision to bring a hate crime charge against Samuel Woodward, the man previously charged with the killing of his former high school classmate, Blaze Bernstein.
Woodward also faces felony murder charges in connection with the death of Bernstein, whose body was found in a shallow grave in Orange County in January with more than 20 stab wounds.
According to the Orange County District Attorney…
New York, NY, June 26, 2018 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) responded today to the 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court in Trump v. Hawaii, upholding President Trump’s discriminatory policy blocking immigrants and visitors to the United States from six Muslim-majority nations.
ADL CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt issued the following statement:
Today’s decision will be recalled as a dark and shameful stain on America’s history reminiscent…
June 21, 2018 The Latino community in the United States has increasingly been on the receiving end of anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric fueled by hate. Hate rears its ugly head in many ways, including bullying in schools where students chant “build the wall” at sporting events, play a game called “La Migra,” where students pretend to be ICE agents and deport students acting as immigrants, and in college costume parties where students dress like maids and gardeners,…
June 19, 2018 The Council of Conservative Citizens, a once-prominent white supremacist group that has been dormant for several years, reemerged to hold the “Nationalist Solutions” conference June 15-17 in Burns, Tennessee. The event was a joint effort with the California-based white supremacist group American Freedom Party (AFP).
The conference, which took place in Montgomery Bell State Park, attracted roughly 70 attendees and speakers. The two-day event featured a…
June 08, 2018 When Patrick Little’s anti-Semitic campaign run for Dianne Feinstein’s U.S. Senate seat ended in a crushing defeat, he cried foul, while some among his white supremacist supporters have responded with talk of revolution, violence, and the need for white supremacist candidates to focus on areas of the country with a white majority. Little won about 1.4 percent of the vote, or roughly 61,000 votes, according to initial counts.
In a post-election livestream,…
Table Talk: Family Conversations about Current Events For Parents, Families, and Caregivers Topic SummaryIt seems like we are seeing more and more news and social media stories about people experiencing bias as they go about their daily lives—riding the subway, shopping in a store, dining in a restaurant and hanging out with friends. Indeed, the surge of such stories makes it seem like racism, sexism, antisemitism and other forms of bias and discrimination are becoming more pervasive…
June 01, 2018 In his first major public speaking appearance since February 2018, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan delivered a nearly three-hour sermon filled with attacks on Jews and Judaism from his pulpit at Mosque Maryam in Chicago on Sunday, May 27.
Warning his audience about “Satanic Jews who have infected the whole world with poison and deceit,” Farrakhan distorted passages from ancient Jewish religious texts in order to justify his conspiratorial and vile rhetoric…
New York, NY, May 30, 2018 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today strongly criticized the selection of Fred Fleitz to be the National Security Council’s chief of staff. Fleitz has served as the senior vice president for policy and programs at the Center for Security Policy (CSP), an extreme, hawkish think tank that promotes the false conspiracy theory America is under threat from “Islamization” and that the implementation of Islamic law is imminent.
CSP is…
New York, NY, April 10, 2018 … In advance of the Senate confirmation hearings for Mike Pompeo, the President’s nominee for Secretary of State, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) sent a letter urging all members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to closely examine Pompeo’s views, given his past statements and close ties to stridently anti-Muslim groups.
The letter cites Pompeo’s past anti-Muslim statements and his associations with organizations that have…
Urges Congress Not to Restrict Campus Leader Discretion New York, NY, October 26, 2017 … As the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee held hearings on “Exploring Free Speech on College Campuses,” the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) urged Senators to recognize that, while the First Amendment protects hateful, offensive, and ugly speech, campus leaders have a responsibility to use their bully pulpit to address the impact and harm of this speech.
ADL…
October 03, 2017 In August 2016, then-NFL San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick decided to take a stand about racial injustice by refusing to stand for the National Anthem at football games. He spent much of the season either sitting or kneeling during the anthem. Fast forward to the 2017 football season where the controversy emerged again when on a Sunday in September, more than 200 NFL players took a knee during the Anthem.
This recent controversy over NFL players and…
New York, NY, September 12, 2017 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is troubled by the participation in a House Committee hearing of Stephen Halbrook, author of “Gun Control in the Third Reich,” who has frequently drawn parallels between gun laws in Nazi Germany and firearms legislation in the U.S. to build a case against gun violence prevention.
In a book and in a 2013 op-ed on Kristallnacht, Halbrook wrote: “Historians have documented…
New York, NY, September 7, 2017 … As college students are returning to a new academic school year, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has released a new, multi-platform resource to equip them with essential information and tools to deal with anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias on campus.
‘THINK. PLAN. ACT.’ is a comprehensive resource that prepares students for encounters with anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias by defining what constitutes anti-Jewish animus,…
Don't Tie the Hands of Administrators
New York, NY, July 27, 2017 … In testimony for House Oversight Subcommittee hearings on “Challenges to Freedom of Speech on College Campuses,” the Anti-Defamation League highlighted the breadth of protection afforded to harmful hate speech – and underlined the “moral obligation” by campus administrators and the community “to respond clearly and forcefully.”
The League’s statement also highlighted…
March 01, 2019 The Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) has a well-earned reputation as one of America's most reviled hate groups. The small, virulently homophobic group stages vitriolic, highly visible protests nationwide against groups and individuals they’ve identified as supporters of “homosexuality,” or who otherwise subvert what they refer to as “God’s law.”
Through outrageous statements and postings on their various websites, the…