July 26, 2018 By Samuel Woolley | Belfer Fellow with ADL's Center for Technology and Society   Computational propaganda — the use of automation and algorithms on social media to manipulate public opinion — has become a global phenomenon. This has come as a surprise to many in the technology sector, and it’s quite the adverse development given that less than a decade ago experts hailed social media as a savior for democratic communication. Russian…

July 13, 2018 The Anti-Defamation League does not participate in partisan political activity, but that does not mean we should ignore racism or anti-Semitism on the campaign trail. Maria Estrada, who is running for a seat on the California State Assembly (63rd District), has attacked Zionism and Israel in a manner that raises concerns about anti-Semitism, and has expressed troubling support for notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan. It’s impossible to ignore the undercurrent of…

July 03, 2018 La comunidad latina en Estados Unidos está lidiando con una ola anti-inmigrante. Este odio se manifiesta de diversas maneras incluyendo el acoso que sufren alumnos cuando les gritan “construye el muro” durante juegos deportivos, cuando estudiantes juegan un juego que llaman “La Migra”  donde pretenden ser agentes de ICE y deportar a otros que actúan a ser migrantes, en fiestas universitarias de disfraces donde estudiantes se visten como…

June 25, 2018 By Karen Schrier | Belfer Fellow with ADL's Center for Technology and Society Can games be used to support positive social change, connectedness, and caring, and help reduce bias? These are the big questions I will be exploring over the next year as a Belfer Fellow with ADL’s Center for Technology and Society. There are many questions in this area that need to be answered, but here are a few initial insights: Games may support empathy — but there are…

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 13, 2018 On June 12, Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who has a history of making inflammatory and xenophobic statements, re-tweeted an anti-immigration post written by a man named Mark Collett. This left a lot of people wondering: Who is Collett? Short answer: A British white supremacist. Longer answer: Read on. Mark Collett is a British white supremacist with an active social media audience across the English-speaking world. Collett became active in the British far right in the…

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,…

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…

May 31, 2018 As world attention focused on the demonstrations taking place earlier this month along the Gaza border, Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdogan fanned the flames of incitement against Israel and Jews with remarks comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. It was just another in a long line of his vocal criticism of Israel, using incendiary language and anti-Semitic statements to attack Israel and mobilize Turkish and Muslim action against the Jewish State. Just days after the May 14…