July 23, 2007 A jury in San Francisco convicted Eric Hunt, 24, of felony false imprisonment as a hate crime, misdemeanor battery, and misdemeanor elder abuse for his attack against noted author, Holocaust survivor, and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel. The jury found Hunt, a resident of Sussex County, New Jersey, guilty on July 21, 2008, after hearing two weeks of testimony, including Wiesel's account of the attack and details regarding Hunt's mental health and Holocaust denial beliefs. On…

July 17, 2007   Federal authorities have indicted 14 men believed to be members of a white supremacist gang based in the Nevada prison system. The federal racketeering indictment, which was unsealed in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas on July 12, 2007, charges the men with murder, extortion, drug trafficking, fraud, identity theft, gambling schemes, and other crimes both behind bars and outside of the prisons, in order to “promote white supremacy and purity of the white race…

July 11, 2007 Two members of Public Enemy Number 1(PENI), a large and violent white supremacist gang based in Southern California, were found guilty of first-degree murder and other charges related to their activities with the gang. Michael Allen Lamb, 32, and Jacob Anthony Rump, 30, both of Huntington Beach, were convicted of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and committing murder for the benefit of the gang. The verdict came in on July 10, ten days after the Santa Ana…

May 30, 2007 White supremacist David Lane, a member of The Order, a white supremacist terrorist group that carried out armed robberies, assassinations and other crimes during the 1980s, was found dead in his cell at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.  Lane, 68, was reportedly suffering from cancer. Lane was associated with a variety of Klan and neo-Nazi groups, including Aryan Nations, in the 1970s and 1980s and gained notoriety when he and other members of The Order (also…

April 12, 2007 Palm Springs, California, police arrested Mandie Kearns, 28, of Desert Hot Springs, for allegedly stabbing two African-Americans on April 5, 2007. The incident occurred behind a coffee shop in Palm Springs, after a street fight had broken out involving a group of 15 to 30 people.  The two victims found by police, a man and a woman, both 20 years old, were severely beaten and stabbed; the woman had two collapsed lungs. Police arrested Kearns at the scene, where…

March 01, 2007 The Anti-Defamation League has received inquiries over the years about conspiracy theories regarding the Bilderberg group, a legitimate business entity with ties to Europe and America. The following information debunks a recurring myth, circulated via the Internet, that the group is part of a conspiracy to promote a "new world order" under their control. Deriving its name from the Dutch hotel where it first met in 1954, the Bilderberg group is an actual, legitimate…

January 29, 2007 A widely circulated e-mail suggests that U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) attended a fundamentalist Muslim religious school, known as a "madrassa," as a child living in Indonesia, and that his childhood education was steeped in radical Islam. In fact, from ages 6 through 10, he attended a public school in Indonesia with both Muslim and non-Muslim students. Sen. Obama is not a Muslim; he is a Christian who attends the United Church of Christ.

January 12, 2007 Many scholars and experts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have strongly criticized Jimmy Carter's book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, for its distortions, misrepresentations, and one-sided arguments that blame Israel for the conflict while giving the Palestinians a pass. Yet the book is being celebrated in online white supremacist forums for its anti-Israel, conspiratorial and anti-Semitic propaganda value.  Some white supremacists in the United States have embraced…

January 12, 2007 The former leader of the Sharpsburg, Maryland-based World Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, who disbanded his group in November 2006 to join the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement (NSM), is accused of forcing a child to perform oral sex on him. Gordon Creal Young, 40, of Sharpsburg, Maryland, was arrested on January 10, 2007, on seven criminal counts, including two counts each of second-degree assault and sex abuse of a minor, second-degree sex offense, and one count of…

January 11, 2007   Two high ranking members of the racist prison gang Aryan Brotherhood were convicted in Los Angeles, California, of federal racketeering charges stemming from six murders and three attempted assassinations. Robert Lee "Blinky" Griffin, 59, and John William “Youngster” Stinson, 52, were convicted on January 9 of conspiracy to commit racketeering, and committing violent acts in aid of racketeering.  Both men face life sentences without the…

October 16, 2006   Matthew C. Courtney, 34, a "major" in the white supremacist prison gang Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, was sentenced on October 6 to nearly 15 years in prison for his part in the 2005 theft of 26 guns. Courtney, of Midland, Texas, was convicted in federal court in July of conspiracy to possess and dispose of stolen firearms, being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm and possession of a stolen firearm.   He was accused of stealing the guns from a…

September 29, 2006   Two known members of the Texas Aryan Brotherhood, a racist prison gang, were charged on September 21, 2006, with capital murder in the death of a young Mansfield, Texas, woman.  The victim was the girlfriend of the group's Dallas area leader, Jason "Trooper" Hankins, and was allegedly killed for saying bad things about the Aryan Brotherhood.  Both of the men accused of the crime have criminal records.  Dale "Tiger" Clayton…

September 07, 2006 Five years after the devastating September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, conspiracy theories about Jews' involvement in the events of that day continue to be promulgated through the Internet, publications, books and videos. Soon after the attacks, a number of conspiracy theorists on the far right and far left, as well as in the Muslim and Arab world, blamed the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad or the Israeli government for the attacks. Today, those theories…

August 18, 2006   Two white supremacist brothers pleaded guilty in federal court in mid-August to throwing swastika-etched rocks at Temple Beth Israel in Eugene, Oregon, during a religious service in 2002.  Both defendants are self-avowed white supremacists who admitted they sought to commit acts of violence against Jews, African-Americans, and members of other ethnic and racial groups. Jacob Laskey, 25, and Gabriel Laskey, 21, face a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison…

August 02, 2006 Four leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang were convicted of racketeering, murder and conspiracy charges on July 28, 2006. After two weeks of jury deliberations, Barry “The Baron” Mills and Tyler “The Hulk” Bingham, were found guilty of ordering attacks against Black inmates from their maximum security cells. Two lower level leaders, Christopher Overton Gibson and Edgar “Snail” Hevle, were convicted of conspiring to murder Black…

July 31, 2006   One woman was killed and 5 others wounded in a shooting at the Jewish Federation building in downtown Seattle on July 28, 2006. Naveed Afzal Haq, a 30-year-old U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, surrendered to authorities in the building about 12 minutes after the shooting began.  The Federation's assistant director was killed and five other women injured.  One of the injured women was five months pregnant. Haq, who allegedly forced his way through a…

July 27, 2006   A San Diego jury recommended a death sentence for an Orange County racist skinhead convicted of murdering two parking lot attendants in 1999. Jeffrey Scott Young, 32, was earlier convicted of murdering a man and a woman seven years ago at the Five Star Park Shuttle & Fly parking lot. The bodies of booth operator Teresa Perez, 31, and manager Jack Reynolds, 44, were found on the floor of a business trailer in July 1999 after an apparent botched robbery. …

June 19, 2006   An admitted racist since the age of 12, Matt Hale became one of the most effective and best-known leaders of the far right after he became head of the World Church of the Creator (as it was then known) in 1996. Under Hale's PR-savvy guidance the group regularly gained publicity for its activities and for the violent incidents associated with its members. A 1999 decision by the State of Illinois to reject Hale's application for a law license, due to his past "conduct,"…

May 23, 2006 This report exposes the growing rage of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other racists toward immigrants, particularly Hispanics. A number of extremist groups have held anti-immigrant events and protests and racheted up their hateful rhetoric toward immigrants. In addition, racists have targeted Hispanics in a number of violent incidents. Read the full report, Extremists Declare 'Open Season' on Immigrants (PDF). OVERVIEW As the public debate…

May 08, 2006 An e-mail rumor long circulated on the Internet suggests that the maker of Vans skateboarding shoes is anti-Jewish because some of their shoes come with a pattern resembling a Star of David on a portion of their outsole (bottom).  Some of the more conspiracy-minded e-mails suggest that this pattern was created by the company to put Jews down ("step on Jews") or that the company was "founded by neo-Nazis." ADL has concluded that there is no truth to any of these…