by: Abraham H. Foxman | July 11, 2007 Jewish Telegraphic Agency NEW YORK (JTA) – With anti-Semitism resurgent in the world, one of the encouraging elements for the Jewish people, particularly if one is to compare things today to the 1930s and 1940s, is the remarkable change in the Catholic Church's attitudes toward Jews. In the past four decades, a conceptual revolution has taken place in the church's relationship with the Jewish people. The first step came with Vatican II and its…

May 21, 2010 The FBI has arrested Ron Edwards, leader of the Kentucky-based Imperial Klans of America (IKA), and his girlfriend, Christine Gillette, for possession and distribution of controlled substances, including hydrocodone and methamphetamine. Authorities also arrested a third person, Jeremy Katro, for marijuana possession. Strong ties to racist skinheads Edwards, who ran the IKA from a private compound in Powderly, Kentucky, is known for his outreach to racist skinheads via an…

May 09, 2013 On September 15, 2006, a federal judge in California sentenced two convicted leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang to life without parole, after jurors failed to reach a verdict on the proposed death penalty.   Chief Barry "The Baron" Mills, 57, and top lieutenant Tyler "The Hulk" Bingham, 59, were convicted in July of murder, racketeering and conspiracy.  Mills was convicted of ordering the murders of a dozen people, six of which were carried out, and…

May 01, 2010 Background Adam Gadahn (born Adam Pearlman) was born in 1978 in Oregon and grew up on a farm in Orange County, California. His parents reportedly changed their name to Gadahn in reference to Gideon, the Biblical warrior who defeated the enemies of Israel. Gadahn’s mother was raised Catholic. His father, born Jewish, grew up atheist and later converted to Christianity.  Gadahn and his three younger siblings were home-schooled and joined several Christian home…

April 09, 2010 Poker Face, an anti-government, anti-immigrant "Patriot" rock band based in Allentown, Pennsylvania, posted a press release to their Web site, questioning the government's motives in arresting members of the Hutaree Militia, an anti-government extremist group.  The Hutaree Militia allegedly planned to carry out violent acts against law enforcement in order to spark a larger confrontation with the government. Hutaree had used one of Poker Face's songs in a training video on…

March 09, 2010 Racist William Johnson, a lawyer and the chairman of the recently created white supremacist party American Third Position (A3P), and Kevin MacDonald, an anti-Semitic professor of psychology and a director of A3P, have taken the helm of a group that was spearheaded by young racists. These young racists initially formed a group called Freedom 14, whose members handed out fliers in Orange County and often posted to the white supremacist Internet forum Stormfront. On the forum,…

March 05, 2010 In early March 2010, a 36-year old man from California, John Patrick Bedell, drove east on a murderous mission.  Reaching Washington D.C., by March 4, that evening he drove to the Pentagon, parked his car in a convenient parking garage, then walked to a heavily-used entrance guarded by a security checkpoint with two Pentagon police officers checking identification cards. Bedell reached into his pocket, but instead of an ID card, he pulled out a 9mm semi-automatic pistol…

December 13, 2005 The neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement (NSM) held a rally in Toledo, Ohio, on December 10, 2005, in an effort to gain media attention and exploit racial tensions. The hour-long rally at City Hall included 63 neo-Nazis, some in uniform. Bill White, a Virginia NSM member and owner of the anti-Semitic Overthrow.com Web site, said the rally included members of the Ku Klux Klan, Retaliator Skinhead Nation and the Creativity Movement. Participants held placards, including…

February 04, 2010 Eustace Mullins, an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist for over half a century, died on February 2, 2010, a month short of his 87th birthday. Throughout his life, Mullins produced numerous books, essays and articles and delivered scores of speeches and lectures with a common bigoted theme: that Jews are allegedly responsible for many of the problems and evils that have confronted the modern world. Ezra Pound, the well-known anti-Semitic poet, was reportedly Mullins's…

November 04, 2009 A much-forwarded e-mail message suggests the automaker Honda has produced video "advertisements" featuring the leader of Hezbollah and the President of Iran.  The messages provide links to sites where the online videos may be downloaded and viewed. In fact, the videos are not produced by Honda, and the company has assured ADL it had nothing to do with their creation or distribution.  In response to inquiries about the ads,…

October 26, 2009 Jim Rizoli, an anti-immigrant activist and anti-Semite based in Framingham, Massachusetts, delivered a lengthy diatribe promoting Holocaust denial during the October 20, 2009 segment of his public access television show. Along with his twin brother Joe, Rizoli runs Concerned Citizens and Friends of Illegal Immigration Law Enforcement (CCFIILE), a group founded in 2003. Mainly known for demonizing Brazilian immigrants in Framingham, Rizoli took more than ten minutes of his…

October 16, 2009 A jury in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana, California, convicted a member of a violent white supremacist gang of first-degree murder of a fellow gang member. On September 14, 2009, the jury found Public Enemy Number One (PEN1) member Billy Joe Johnson, 46, guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and first-degree murder, the latter with the enhancements of murder by lying in wait and murder for the benefit of the gang, for the 2002 ambush slaying of a fellow PEN1…

by: Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor | November 01, 2005 ADL In 1965, a committee of clerics composed a statement that triggered a revolutionary change in the bitter, blood-stained 2,000-year relationship between two peoples: Nostra Aetate, Latin for "In Our Time." Despite its brevity, the document has forever transformed the relationship between Roman Catholics and Jews. In several bold paragraphs, Nostra Aetate repudiates the ancient Christian charge against Jews as "Christ-killers" and…

September 30, 2009 An e-mail rumor claims the Spanish fashion store chain Zara "has been openly anti-Semitic for a long time," and that "now they are selling bags with swastikas on them."  The much-forwarded message includes a photo of a handbag with colorful flowers and a green swastika sewn on one corner. The suggestion that Zara is "anti-Semitic" is false.  And the "bags with swastikas" reference involves an isolated incident that Zara's parent company quickly remedied two…

August 13, 2009 Officers with the Norfolk Police Department arrested a white supremacist for vandalizing numerous Virginia synagogues in April 2009. On August 9, 2009, officers arrested John Edward Grogan, 29, formerly of Florida, and more recently of Waynesboro, Virginia. Grogan has numerous visible tattoos, including the white supremacist acronym ROA, which stands for "race over all" and is the slogan of Volksfront, a neo-Nazi group most prominent in the Pacific Northwest, but which…

July 30, 2009 Starting in the spring of 2009, a number of right-wing extremist groups and individuals have begun using Twitter, a popular new Internet messaging tool, to broadcast their racist and anti-Semitic views. Twitter users write short lines of text up to 140 characters in length, called "tweets" by the service's creators, which allow users to broadcast short messages quickly to a number of people at once. The service began in 2006 and has become increasingly popular over the past…

July 14, 2009   Following a seven week trial, a federal jury in Las Vegas has convicted five members of the Aryan Warriors racist prison gang of drug and racketeering violations. On July 6, 2009, the jury convicted James "Gargoyle" Wallis, 48, Robert Young, 31, Kenneth Russell "Yum Yum" Krum, 49, and Charles Gensemer, 45, of racketeering conspiracy charges, which included numerous acts of murder, attempted murder, extortion, operating an illegal gambling business, identity theft…

by: Abraham H. Foxman | January 23, 2005 The Palm Beach Post Now I understand. The recently discovered document in which the Vatican instructed its representatives in France after World War II to prevent baptized Jewish children from being returned to their families, finally makes clear to me what happened to me as a "Hidden Child" after the war. Like the many thousands of Jews who probably were saved because Catholic individuals, families and institutions chose to take in Jewish children…

June 25, 2009 A judge in Kern County, California, has sentenced two members of the Oildale Peckerwoods racist skinhead gang to state prison for their recent violent actions in a local park. On May 30, officers with the Kern County Sheriff's Department arrested four alleged racist skinheads after an altercation at the Kern River in Bakersfield. The men were each charged with assault with a deadly weapon, a hate crime and gang participation. Three of the victims were hospitalized as a result…

June 16, 2009 In the wake of President Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court, white supremacists and anti-Semites responded by claiming that alleged Jewish power was responsible for her nomination and previous career success. They also employed anti-Semitic stereotypes to argue that Sotomayor is herself Jewish, or as one person suggested, a "cryptojew." Extremists constantly exploit current events, like Sotomayor's nomination, to demonize non-whites…