New ADL Finding Hints at Much Broader Failure of Enforcement by Facebook by: David Andrew Weinberg | November 17, 2021 In the wake of a whistleblower complaint, Facebook has come under criticism for failing to take adequate measures to address hate speech on its platform. ADL has repeatedly noted that the company relies too heavily on artificial intelligence to manage hateful content, and that instead, social media companies such as Facebook need to step up enforcement at scale and by design,…
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November 08, 2021 A graphic shared on social media by the Nation of Islam warning against the COVID-19 vaccine (source: Twitter)
Months before the first COVID-19 vaccine began to be distributed in the United States, the Nation of Islam (NOI) had already widely disseminated its directive that Black people refuse the vaccine. Over a year later, the NOI and its leading members have continued their unrelenting promotion of anti-vaccine messages in social media posts, print materials, sermons…
November 05, 2021 Political prognosticators feared the 2021 off-year elections could usher in a new era of extremists in elected office. And while the worst-case scenario did not materialize, the election results appear to show an electorate that is not entirely averse to candidates with extremist (and extremist-adjacent) platforms and ideologies, signaling a potentially alarming trend ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
At least eight candidates who attended the January 6 …
November 03, 2021 Tucker Carlson’s special “documentary” series, “Patriot Purge,” which aired online the first week of November, 2021, via the Fox Nation streaming service, promotes many of the false conspiracy theories Carlson promotes on his regular show on Fox News—the Biden Administration is on a “manhunt” for conservatives; the FBI played a role in the January 6 insurrection; the military wants to purge any soldier whose point of view…
November 02, 2021 Each year, to commemorate the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, the notorious terrorist group Al Qaeda releases a video featuring one of the group’s senior leaders who typically reiterates the significance and impact of those deadly events from their warped perspective. Al Qaeda’s 2021 video, which was recently analyzed by experts in ADL’s Center on Extremism and the ADL department of International Affairs, was notable for…
December 29, 2020 Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, extremists across the ideological spectrum have used the virus as a platform for elaborate and alarming conspiracy theories. In March and April 2020, antisemitic, anti-government and Sinophobic conspiracies about the virus’s origins and “true purpose” were rampant online. In December 2020, as the COVID-19 vaccine was being shipped to frontline workers across the country, very familiar conspiracy theories took…
October 29, 2021
Lachlan Murdoch
Executive Chairman and CEO
Fox Corporation
1121 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036
Dear Mr. Murdoch,
I write once again to express deep alarm about the dangerous misinformation that FOX News continues to allow Tucker Carlson to express on your network and its platforms, this time in the form of a “documentary” about the insurrection on January 6.
In a trailer for “Patriot Purge,” which apparently is…
October 28, 2021 Three years ago, Robert Bowers opened fire inside a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, murdering 11 people and devastating the close-knit community of Squirrel Hill. Inspired by antisemitic, anti-immigrant and white supremacist views, Bowers posted his bigoted thoughts on Gab, a site known as a haven for extremists, and then acted on his words, committing history’s deadliest assault on the American Jewish community. In the immediate wake of the attack, and in the…
October 13, 2021 Remarks by Oren Segal,
Vice President, ADL Center on Extremism
as delivered -- (Full written testimony here)
To the U.S. House of Representatives
House Committee on Veteran Affairs
Washington, DC | Oct. 13, 2021
Chairman Takano, Ranking Member Bost, Members of the Committee:
On behalf of the Anti-Defamation League - ADL - I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the landscape of domestic extremism and related efforts to recruit and attract veterans. …
October 11, 2021 Since 2020, Twitter has taken steps to decrease hate and disinformation on its platform, officially banning some forms of Covid-19 misinformation or purging QAnon-related handles after the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. But while Twitter’s anti-extremist policies are more effective now than they were a year ago, the platform has not addressed the ease with which users are able to drive traffic to hate and misinformation hosted on outside sites.
To examine how…
October 11, 2021 On September 27, 2021, the non-profit journalist collective Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets) uploaded a cache of data allegedly linked to the Oath Keepers, a far-right anti-government militia, that included logs from the group’s private chatroom on Rocketchat, its emails from January 13 to September 19, 2021, and alleged membership information for more than 38,000 individuals. A review of these membership rolls found that 133 people provided emails with the …
June 29, 2021 In March 2021, Chet Hanks, son of actor Tom Hanks, published a series of social media posts critiquing white men’s attire and behavior, culminating a month later with the release of his song, “White Boy Summer.” A play on Megan Thee Stallion’s 2019 hit song, “Hot Girl Summer,” “White Boy Summer” has taken the internet and meme culture by storm. And while “White Boy Summer” was not initially intended to be hateful,…
October 05, 2021 Screenshot from the Twitter page of the Riyadh International Book Fair.
By David Andrew Weinberg
On October 1st, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Culture kicked off the Riyadh International Book Fair under the official patronage of the country’s ruler, King Salman. Billed this year as “the largest book fair in the history of the kingdom” and even “the region’s largest book fair,” the ten-day convention is one of the Arabian…
New York, NY, October 6, 2021 – ADL’s (Anti-Defamation League) Center on Extremism today released a report detailing the widespread and alarmingly effective efforts of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) and its founder, Richard Mack, to recruit law enforcement into the anti-government “patriot” movement.
The central tenet of CSPOA, borrowed from the anti-government extremist sovereign citizen movement, is that the county sheriff…
September 27, 2021 In the past eight months, at least nine Rise Above Movement (R.A.M.)-inspired “Active Clubs” have cropped up across the United States. This development signals a renewed effort from R.A.M. to rebrand and spread their influence with a focus on real-world white supremacist activism.
The clubs are geographically dispersed, loosely connected and localized chapters spanning from Indiana, Wyoming, New York, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. …
September 27, 2021 The recent blockbuster series of five articles from The Wall Street Journal exposing Facebook’s complicity in spreading toxic content underscores that it is far past time to recognize the harm caused by Facebook. Yet the company and other social media platforms continue to enjoy free rein despite playing outsized and destabilizing roles in determining what content is served up to billions of individuals worldwide.
The “Facebook Files” were based on…
September 09, 2021 By Greg Ehrie , Vice President of Law Enforcement & Analysis at ADL and former U.S. Air Force officer. This opinion piece was published on newsweek.com.
Twenty years ago, we witnessed a defining moment in American and world history. The terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 changed a generation and shaped our world like few events ever have, or ever will. With the passing of time, a new generation forges ahead and creates their own future while we commemorate the victims…
New York, NY, September 9, 2021 ... Educational reform in the Middle East is providing hope for continued progress in tackling extremism, according to a new report published today by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
The new report “Peace and Tolerance Education in the Arab World Two Decades after 9/11” authored by David Andrew Weinberg, ADL’s Washington Director for International Affairs, is a pioneering joint…
September 05, 2021 The Proud Boys are a right-wing extremist group with a violent agenda. That has never been more evident than over the course of the summer of 2021, when the Proud Boys and their associates reportedly engaged in violence at eight separate events.
That violence, often against counter-protesters, has included fighting with fists, as is traditional for the Proud Boys, but paintball guns have also become a popular weapon. Proud Boys have also allegedly attacked journalists in…
September 02, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3The number of hate crimes in the United States rose to the highest level in 12 years, propelled by increasing assaults targeting Black and Asian victims, the FBI reported Monday. White supremacist and anti-government extremists have expressed admiration for the Taliban, a worrying development for US officials grappling with the threat of domestic violent extremism. More than 70 State Department officials sent a letter to the U.S. Secretary of State…