August 06, 2019 In the days following the El Paso, Texas, shooting massacre that left at least 22 dead, white supremacists and other anti-Semitic extremists reacted to the murders and the killer’s manifesto with a mixture of praise and criticism. Kevin MacDonald, a longtime white supremacist author and psychologist, tweeted that he agreed with the shooter’s assessment of the political dynamics in the country, and shared his concern about the “great replacement,&rdquo…

In August 2019, at a time when parents and teachers should have been be thinking about children’s new notebooks and back-to-school jitters, they instead had to contemplate how to talk with their children about mass shootings and anti-immigrant bias. On Saturday, August 3, 2019 a gunman opened fire in a shopping center in El Paso, Texas—a city that prides itself as one of the safest in the U.S. Some families were there to do their back-to-school shopping at Walmart when tragedy…

On Saturday morning, August 3, 2019, a gunman opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and at the adjacent Cielo Vista Mall. The death toll is believed to be at least 20, and several dozen people are reportedly injured.  The alleged shooter, 21-year-old Patrick Crusius of Allen, Texas, was taken into custody shortly after the shooting. The FBI has reportedly opened a domestic terrorism investigation into the shooting, while Texas authorities are investigating the…

August 02, 2019 THE WEEK'S BIG 3 A new report from ADL reveals extremist items, including those promoting white supremacy, are widely available for purchase on Amazon, despite the company’s terms of service against such products. The alleged gunman responsible for killing three at a California food festival promoted a book cited by white supremacists on social media shortly before opening fire. The NonProfit Times is out with their annual “Power and Influence Top 50,”…

July 30, 2019 After a deadly shooting spree at the Gilroy (California) Garlic Festival on July 28 that left three dead and 15 injured, an Instagram account was discovered that appears to have recently been created by the shooter, Santino Legan. In a post made not long before the attack, Legan asked why towns were overcrowded and open space paved over to make room for “hoards [sic] of mestizos and Silicon Valley white tw*ts.” Legan also urged people to read the book Might…

July 29, 2019 Items and merchandise promoting right-wing extremist ideologies, including white supremacy and the anti-government militia movement, are still being offered for sale by various third-party sellers on Amazon, in apparent violation of the company’s own policies, according to a recent search of the retailing site by experts in ADL’s Center on Extremism. Hateful books (including paradigmatic white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries) are easily accessible, usually…

July 19, 2019 Edition: July 18, 2019 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 President Trump directs “blatantly racist” tweets at four Democratic Congresswomen of color, telling them to “go back” to where they came from. Argentina marks the solemn 25th anniversary of the bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 and wounded 300. White supremacists in Massachusetts have launched a coordinated fliering campaign, targeting area synagogues with propaganda…

July 02, 2019 While Facebook is working with leading civil society organizations, including ADL, to address civil rights concerns on their platform, their latest report raises more questions than it answers about how Facebook intends to do this.  Many of the audit committee’s recommendations are not novel but, if implemented, would be valuable steps forward in addressing hate, harassment and radicalization on Facebook — such as blocking for targets of large-scale…

July 02, 2019 Even as mainstream social media companies are struggling to eliminate extremist content and users from their platforms, the opportunities of scale and reach provided by these platforms continue to be leveraged and weaponized by extremists. And as mainstream companies increase their content moderation efforts to clamp down on hate, extremists are migrating to other platforms. White supremacists are relatively easy to find on mainstream sites like Facebook and Twitter, despite…

June 28, 2019 Edition: June 27, 2019 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 White supremacists increased college campus recruiting efforts with more propaganda distributions for the third straight year. ADL and partners are teaming up in an initiative to help redirect those seeking extremist content on the internet to material that exposes the falsehoods of these hateful movements. In a victory for immigration advocates, the Supreme Court ruled the Trump Administration cannot, for now, include the…

June 27, 2019 June 2019 ADL’s Center on Extremism monitors the growing white supremacist propaganda efforts, including those targeting U.S. college campuses. During the 2018-2019 school year, from September 1, 2018 to May 31, 2019,  ADL documented 313 cases of white supremacist propaganda on campus – a 7% increase from the 292 recorded during the 2017-2018 academic year. This increase was particularly evident during the 2019 spring semester, which saw more…

June 25, 2019 UPDATE:  On June 26th, ADL submitted this statement urging passage of the Voting Rights Advancement Act as part of House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties hearings entitled “Continuing Challenges to the Voting Rights Act Since Shelby County v. Holder. This week marks six years since the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision in Shelby County v. Holder gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the nation…

June 17, 2019 It’s that time of year when seniors play “pranks” as a final goodbye to their high school days. Intended to cause havoc, senior pranks may be planned for weeks or months leading up to graduation. These pranks are often harmless, fun and light-hearted and, in the best of cases, reflect a positive climate and school spirit. But some pranks have the opposite effect. They are offensive, harmful to individual students and negatively impact school climate. These…

June 14, 2019 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 Organizers of the “DC Dyke March” attempted to implement a ban on Jewish Pride flags, claiming they too closely resemble the flag of Israel. In Detroit, a small group of neo-Nazis carrying weapons disrupted an LGBTQ Pride march by spewing homophobic, racist and anti-Semitic slurs at participants and pretending to defile an Israeli flag. A gay man in Atlanta was shot and killed in what police are classifying as a hate crime. Read on for…

June 13, 2019 Key Highlights In 2018, 13 individuals were arrested for domestic criminal activity motivated by Islamist extremism. Four of the 13 arrests were linked to terror plots, one of which resulted in the murder of a high school student. All 13 individuals arrested for domestic Islamist extremist activity in 2018 were lawfully in the United States at the time of their arrest. Eleven of these individuals were U.S. citizens, one was a lawful permanent resident originally from…

June 11, 2019 On Sunday, May 19th, Deir Yassin Remembered (DYR) led a protest outside a “Breakfast for Israel” fundraiser for Magen David Adom, the Israeli version of the Red Cross, at Congregation Beth Sholom in Teaneck, New Jersey. About a dozen protestors from DYR – an organization whose leaders have called for the elimination of Israel, described Zionism as a “cancer” and claimed that Israel is a hub for pedophilia and organ trafficking – were joined…

June 11, 2019 On Saturday, June 8, ten neo-Nazis associated with the National Socialist Movement protested Detroit’s Motor City Pride Festival, carrying guns and shouting homophobic and anti-Semitic slurs. NSM leader Burt Colucci and Aric Lemieux, NSM’s South Michigan chapter leader, headed up the protest, which included participants from Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Massachusetts and Michigan. Lemieux expressed his intention to protest the festival months ago, and other group…

June 07, 2019 June 6, 2019 THE WEEK'S BIG 3 YouTube announces a new effort to remove extremist, white supremacist content from its platform, in what ADL called “an important step forward.” In an attempt to claim ‘prominent’ conservatives were being censored on social media platforms, a Fox News host cited an avowed anti-Semite as an example. Volkswagen is partnering with ADL to fund a new office in Berlin that will research and combat anti-Semitism throughout…