Disturbing memes and images created using Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) are polluting social media with camouflaged hate and extremist propaganda. Innovations in AI technology, plus a wider range of tools available than ever before, have enabled the use of AI image generators for nefarious purposes—some of which have been coordinated and crowdsourced online. In the last year, one GAI feature has emerged as a favorite among extremists: The ability to embed shapes, symbols and…

“Go back to Auschwitz, bitch!” This disturbing antisemitic refrain rang out repeatedly at an anti-Israel protest held across the street from a synagogue in Fort Lee, NJ on November 5, 2023. More recently, in March and April 2024, anti-Israel protests outside of synagogues in nearby Teaneck have included protesters explicitly calling for the exclusion of “Zionists” from the community.    These incidents are part of a wave of antisemitic and extreme anti-Zionist…

A new analysis by the ADL Center on Extremism (COE) has found that online expressions of antisemitism on Telegram, a prominent messaging platform frequented by purveyors of hate speech, increased dramatically in the days following the Iranian regime's unprecedented assault on Israel on April 13, 2024. The weekend attack consisted of some 300 drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. The Iranian regime’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah and other Tehran-backed militias based in Iraq, Syria…

Anti-Zionist student groups on more than 100 U.S. college and university campuses have established “encampments” in recent days to ostensibly protest Israel’s actions in Gaza and their academic institutions’ alleged “complicity” in those actions. College campuses have been the site of many tense anti-Israel protests and antisemitic incidents since the start of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war that began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terrorist attack. These…

Anti-Zionist activists in the U.S. praised Iran for its drone attack on Israel, using rhetoric similar to what was used immediately after October 7.

Over the weekend of April 5, 2024, anti-Israel activists in the US and around the world marked Al Quds Day (“Jerusalem Day”) with protests and other events against Zionism and the state of Israel. This annual event, originally conceived by the leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, serves as a platform for support for terrorism and other violence against Israel and regularly includes virulent antisemitic and anti-Zionist…

CW: This piece contains reference to rape and sexual assault In the wake of the October 7 terror attack in Israel, horrific details began to emerge of Hamas assailants brutalizing Israeli women and girls, parading their broken bodies through the streets, and concertgoers being raped and murdered in front of their friends. By November, videos and eyewitness testimony were widely available to the public, showing and describing Hamas terrorists using rape as a weapon of war.    …

Daniel Haqiqatjou is an antisemite and conspiracy theorist who also spreads anti-LGBTQ+ and misogynistic rhetoric. He is the founder, editor-in-chief and contributor at the Muslim Skeptic, an online magazine that frequently elevates antisemitic tropes and antisemitic conspiracy theories under the guise of legitimate criticism of Israel or Jewish law.     Haqiqatjou has praised Hamas and its October 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel across his social media profiles and shared age…

Conspiracy theories and antisemitic narratives have flooded social media in the wake of an Islamic State-claimed terror attack at a music venue outside Moscow.  On March 22, 2024, four gunmen attacked concertgoers at Crocus City Hall, shooting into the crowd and using explosives to set the building on fire, killing at least 130 people and injuring at least 140 others.  Hours after the attack, the Amaq News Agency, a propaganda arm of the Islamic State (IS or ISIS), claimed…

Part of the ADL Center on Extremism’s coverage of the misogynist manosphere and its subcultures, each of which impacts women’s experiences of safety and equity – online and offline.     Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) is a distinct faction of the “manosphere,” the broad set of male supremacist, anti-feminist, misogynist and sometimes violent extremist movements that exist largely online. The MGTOW movement began online in the early 2000s when…

On March 13, 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that could potentially lead to a nationwide ban of the popular social media platform TikTok. According to the bill, the issue stems from TikTok being owned by a “foreign adversary,” which poses a national security threat. TikTok’s China-owned parent company ByteDance would be required to find another buyer within six months to avoid the app being pulled from app stores in the US. While the bill has not yet…

Friday, March 8, 2024, marked the annual commemoration of International Women’s Day. Over the weekend of March 8–10, anti-Israel activists nationwide used the occasion to celebrate female Palestinian terrorists, including glorifying individuals affiliated with recognized terrorist organizations and whose acts of anti-Israel violence have included bombings, plane hijackings and more.   As previously noted by ADL, in the months since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on…

The U.S. wing of Hizb Ut Tahrir, an international Islamist organization that seeks to establish an Islamic theocracy, held their annual conference on March 2, 2024, in Villa Park, Illinois.   The group, which is banned in the United Kingdom, Germany and several other countries, featured speakers who called for an army to invade and destroy Israel, justified the October 7 Hamas terror attack, suggested men should travel to Gaza to fight Israel, implored followers to “resist…

On March 9, 2024, authorities arrested Frankie Rizzello Jr., a 20-year-old resident of Chesterfield, Missouri, on two felony charges related to property damage motivated by discrimination, one grounded in religion and the other in race. According to charging documents from the University City Police Department, Rizzello faces these charges for allegedly spray-painting a church and an Asian restaurant with graffiti in 2023.   In October 2023, after an extensive examination of user…