June 02, 2021 Telegram image that appears to be Blevins wearing a swastika armband and T-shirt with seal of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps On May 28, 2021, Texas authorities arrested Coleman Thomas Blevins of Kerrville after he allegedly threatened to carry out a mass shooting at an area Walmart. Blevins was charged with making a terroristic threat to create public fear of serious bodily injury. He appears to embrace a convoluted extremist ideology that includes elements of white…

June 02, 2021 Across Europe, protests against COVID-19 restrictions and public campaigns promoting vaccines against the virus have included Holocaust symbols and imagery, such as the yellow star. The utilization of this type of Holocaust imagery wrongly compares the antisemitic, racist, misogynist, xenophobic and homophobic Nazi-regime and its genocidal acts to current government measures to contain the pandemic. Comparing the two is not only an act of moral outrage, but also represents an…

June 01, 2021 Over the last few years, TikTok—the social media app that allows users to create and share short videos—has gained immense popularity. With hundreds of millions of users, the platform is particularly popular among younger individuals. As ADL’s Center on Extremism (COE) documented in August 2020, while much of the content on TikTok is lighthearted and fun, extremists have exploited the platform to share hateful content and recruit new adherents. A recent review…

During the two weeks of military conflict between Israel and Hamas in May 2021, antisemitic incidents in the U.S. reported to ADL increased by 75% compared to the two weeks before the fighting began, from 127 to 222, according to preliminary data. (Also see update: Full data for month of May 2021). Many of these incidents appear to have been perpetrated by individuals scapegoating American Jews for the actions of the Israeli government. The incidents have taken place at and around the…

May 24, 2021 Against the backdrop of violence in the Middle East, ADL noted a rise of antisemitism across social media. Although much of that antisemitism focuses on alleged “evil” perpetrated by Zionists or Zionism, there has also been a significant increase in classic antisemitism, including tropes of Jews as controlling, greedy and immoral. To explore this further, the Center on Extremism (COE) researched the prevalence of posts that include language invoking classic…

May 14, 2021 By: David Andrew Weinberg  Less than a year ago, a high-profile sermon at the Grand Mosque in Mecca fueled speculation Saudi Arabia might be prepared to follow some of its neighbors’ footsteps by making peace with Israel.  However, clerics at Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mosque in Mecca as well as the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina sent a starkly different series of messages this week, in how they…

May 13, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 Fighting between Israel and Hamas escalated in what has become the heaviest flare-up since the 2014 war, with extremist violence also erupting in Israeli cities with large Arab and Jewish communities.  A new poll from Pew finds that most Jews believe antisemitism in America has increased in recent years and said they feel less safe now than they once did. The Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence arm is setting up a dedicated team to…

May 10, 2021 On April 14, 2021, both Al Qaeda and the pro-Al Qaeda propaganda outlet Jaysh Al-Malahim Al-Electroni (Electronic Battle Army) released magazines that include articles about the cultural strife in America and the West more broadly. The articles touched on the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, the racial justice protests in summer 2020, and the deepening of American political divisions. Both articles portray the West as declining and divided. The Jaysh Al-Malahim article,…

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…