April 26, 2004 Sean Michael Gillespie, a reputed member of the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations, was arrested in Russellville, Arkansas, on April 16, 2004, for allegedly trying to firebomb a synagogue in Oklahoma City two weeks earlier. Gillespie, 20, is accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at Temple B'Nai Israel on April 1, 2004. The incendiary device caused only minor damage. He was arrested two weeks later at a fast food restaurant in Russellville, Arkansas, by FBI agents, Arkansas State…

February 18, 2004 On February 13, 2004, Stephen John Jordi, a thirty-five-year-old former Army Ranger from Coconut Creek, Florida, charged with planning a terrorist bombing campaign, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to one count of attempted firebombing. As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors dropped two other charges against Jordi, including distributing explosives information and possession of an unregistered silencer. Jordi was arrested in Miami Beach on November 11, 2003,…

February 13, 2004 On February 12, 2004, a solider with the U.S. National Guard, Ryan Gibson Anderson, was arrested at Fort Lewis in Washington for allegedly attempting to spy on behalf of Al Qaeda. According to military officials, Anderson is suspected of attempting to share information, through a chat room on the Internet, about U.S. military and weapons capabilities with people whom he thought were associated with Al Qaeda. However, the chat room was monitored by law enforcement…

February 03, 2004 An image purporting to be an advertisement for Nike shoes, which has been circulated widely by e-mail, shows the aftermath of an apparent suicide bombing in Israel. A bloody shoe lies in the foreground. The text, appearing next to Nike's trademark swoosh symbol, reads: "You may not survive the blast. But your shoes will." This ad is an obvious forgery. ADL has been in contact with Nike. The company has received a number of inquiries from members of the public questioning…

December 16, 2003 Rumors about the alleged Nazi "ties" of the late Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, have circulated widely through the Internet in recent years. These charges are untenable and politically motivated. Despite some early financial dealings between Prescott Bush and a Nazi industrialist named Fritz Thyssen (who was arrested by the Nazi regime in 1938 and imprisoned during the war), Prescott Bush was neither a Nazi nor a Nazi sympathizer.

September 05, 2003 Marty Laine Foakes, aka Marty Donohue, allegedly a key figure in the Aryan Brotherhood (AB), a violent racist prison gang, was arrested near San Francisco on September 3, 2003, after her location was discovered during a drug investigation in the Bay Area. The Aryan Brotherhood, founded in 1964, is one of the most well-known prison gangs in the United States, heavily involved in running the illegal drug trade in many prisons. It combines the racism and anti-Semitism of…

January 01, 2003   Christian Identity is a religious ideology popular in extreme right-wing circles. Adherents believe that whites of European descent can be traced back to the "Lost Tribes of Israel." Many consider Jews to be the Satanic offspring of Eve and the Serpent, while non-whites are "mud peoples" created before Adam and Eve. Its virulent racist and anti-Semitic beliefs are usually accompanied by extreme anti-government sentiments. Despite its small size, Christian Identity…

December 13, 2002 Growing support for Iraq among far-right extremists in Germany and Austria is cause for increasing concern. The nexus of support for Iraq centers around Joerg Haider, the Austrian far-right politician and Freedom Party head, who has made three trips to Iraq thus far. Haider met with Saddam Hussein and the two reportedly discussed the "Zionist and US conspiracy" against Iraq. Along with other members of his Freedom Party, Haider is a member of the Austrian-Iraqi Society,…

October 03, 2002 A recent "news item" posted on several Web sites and circulated via e-mail alleges that basketball legend Michael Jordan was recently criticized by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and others for wearing a black armband to show solidarity with the Palestinians. The report reads as if it were a news story, yet has no validity or truth whatsoever. The quotes attributed to an ADL spokesperson are fabricated. One version of the e-mail, which has been posted on a Muslim…

August 05, 2002   Erich Gliebe succeeded William Pierce as Chairman of the neo-Nazi National Alliance (NA) following Pierce's death in July 2002. Prior to his ascendancy, Gliebe, 39, managed the white power music label Resistance Records, which is owned by the NA, and led the NA's largest regional unit, located in Cleveland.   Read the full report, Extremism in America: Erich Gliebe - “The Aryan Barbarian” (PDF).    

January 01, 2002   Dan Gayman, a former high school principal, leads the Schell City, Missouri-based Church of Israel, and is widely regarded as one of the theological leaders of the Christian Identity movement. He has popularized the “two seedline” theory -- widely accepted among Identity adherents -- which purports that Jews descend from a sexual union between Eve and Satan (only white Christians descend from Adam and Eve). He has been credited with inspiring such groups…

December 01, 2001   Willis Carto has been one of the most influential American anti-Semitic propagandists of the past 50 years. Since emerging as a right-wing organizer in San Francisco in the early 1950s, he has been associated with nearly every significant far-right movement in the country, from neo-Nazism to militias, segregationism to Holocaust denial. Known for his reclusiveness, he has founded and overseen from behind the scenes an intricate network of bigotry whose outlets have…

December 01, 2001   The St. Louis-based Council of Conservative Citizens traces its roots directly to the racist, anti-integrationist White Citizens' Councils of the 1950s and 1960s.   Its current leader, atorney Gordon Lee Baum, was an organizer for the WCC and built the Council of Conservative Citizens in part from the old group's mailing lists. Like its predecessor, the CCC inflames fears and resentments, particularly among Southern whites, with regard to black-on-white…

December 01, 2001   The Creativity Movement was one of the most notorious hate groups in the 1990s, gaining publicity for its rapid growth and the violent incidents with which it was associated. Originally founded by Ben Klassen in 1973 as Church of the Creator, the organization fell into disarray in the mid-1990s following the criminal convictions of several of its members, the suicide of Klassen in 1993 and a successful lawsuit brought by the family of a Gulf War veteran murdered in…

November 30, 2001 Two white supremacist brothers received hefty prison sentences for setting fire to three synagogues in Sacramento, California, and a building housing an abortion clinic. U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. sentenced Benjamin Matthew Williams to 30 years in prison for planning and organizing the June 1999 arson attacks. James Tyler Williams was sentenced to 21 and ¼ years in prison for his role in the attacks. In addition, the brothers were ordered to pay…

October 22, 2001 Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, a rumor circulated on the Internet claimed that 4,000 Jews did not report to work, or "called in sick" that morning. It suggested that no Jews died because they somehow had foreknowledge of the attack. There are several variations of this rumor, including one suggesting that Israel was behind the attacks. Such rumors are absurd. Among those who died in the collapse of the Twin Towers were scores…

June 20, 2001   Read ADL's comprehensive report, Two with Ties to White Supremacy Suspected in Plot to Bomb Boston Sites Police in Boston have arrested two individuals with alleged ties to white supremacist groups. Leo V. Felton, 30, and Erica Chase, 21, were indicted June 20 on federal charges of plotting to blow up property perceived to have a Jewish or African-American association in order to incite a "racial holy war." Felton and Chase were arrested April 19, 2001 when the…

November 30, 1999   For more than three decades, Louis Beam has been on a crusade against a government he views as tyrannical and controlled by Jewish conspirators. Beam first became active on the far right as a paramilitary Klansman, later as a neo-Nazi with Identity ties. In each incarnation he has been a powerful voice of anti-government hatred and white supremacy, one of the most influential and incendiary figures on the far right. Generally considered the first important…

September 01, 1999 IntroductionFor the better part of this century, anti-Semites have alleged that American Jews have conspired with their co-religionists to "control" the motion picture industry in the United States. The assertion that Jews "control" Hollywood, the media, banking and finance, among other things, is an anti-Semitic canard which dates back more than 70 years to an anti-Jewish campaign waged in the 1920s by the Dearborn Independent, a long-defunct publication backed by the late…