Research & Analysis

ADL’s annual assessment found white supremacist events more than doubled year-over-year White supremacist propaganda, which allows extremist groups to disseminate hateful messages and gain attention with little risk of public exposure, has been on the rise for several years. In 2021, the overall numbers were down slightly, but paired with a 27 percent increase in antisemitic content and messaging. Since 2017, the ADL Center on Extremism has closely tracked white supremacist…

Every year people with ties to a variety of extreme movements and causes kill people in the United States; the ADL Center on Extremism tracks these murders. Extremists regularly commit murders in the service of their ideology, in the service of a group or gang they may belong to, or while engaging in traditional, non-ideological criminal activities. In 2021, domestic extremists killed at least 29 people in the United States, in 19 separate incidents. This represents a modest increase from…

What Social Media Platforms Miss About White Supremacist Speech Author Libby Hemphill is an associate professor in the University of Michigan's School of Information and the Institute for Social Research. She studies politicians, non-profit organizations, and television fans to understand how people use social media to organize, discuss, and enact social change. She also develops automated mechanisms for moderating and classifying content in social media in order to reduce toxicity in…

The year 2021 was marked by a series of heart-wrenching setbacks in the fight against hate around the world. From the Capitol insurrection on January 6 to brazen attacks on Jews, Asian Americans, and other marginalized groups in the streets of New York and Los Angeles, these events drew back the curtain on the prevalence of antisemitism and racism, fueled hatred in our communities and fostered division across society. Fortunately, they did not come without repercussions or a response…

As the year draws to a close, ADL looks back on the moments from 2021 that gave us hope and encouragement that our hundred-plus-year fight against antisemitism and hate is making progress. And there were plenty of big, inspirational moments to choose from in 2021: A $26 million verdict against the white supremacists responsible for Charlottesville; the launch of a $1.1 billion foundation to help prevent Anti-Asian hate crimes; and meaningful legal victories against racially motivated…

During the 2020-2021 academic year, much of the anti-Israel activist movement on campus continued to vilify Israel and Zionism and ostracize pro-Israel and Zionist students. This action disproportionately impacts large percentages of Jewish students, for whom a connection with Israel is an integral component of their religious, social, or cultural lives and identities. Many Jewish students reported feeling compelled to hide aspects of their identities. The campus anti-Israel movement…

How much hate exists online, and how large is its reach? Is it possible to independently evaluate the claims tech companies make about the amount of hate on their platforms and how effectively they are addressing it? To answer these questions, ADL Center for Technology and Society (CTS) is building the Online Hate Index (OHI), a machine learning system that detects hate targeting marginalized groups on online platforms. This report presents the inaugural findings of the OHI’s…

One of the many damning revelations from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen during her Congressional testimony on October 5 was that the platform devotes 87% of its research and resources on fighting misinformation to English-language content when only 9% of its users are English speakers. The lack of content moderation over hateful content in languages other than English has helped fuel global conflicts such as the civil war in Ethiopia. And it appears Facebook’s efforts in…

DOWNLOAD THE PDF REPORTAntisemitism has been a problem on college and university campuses for decades. But while the climate for Jewish students had been improving for many years, we are seeing an alarming new uptick in the number of reported antisemitic incidents across the country. Swastikas, Nazi symbols and other antisemitic graffiti have been reported on numerous campuses, and antisemitic tropes hurled at Jewish students have made headlines. Most notably, white supremacists…

By: Kiki Sorensen, Flickr, CC: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ We know that social media platforms play a large role in spreading hate speech, racism, and misinformation. In Facebook’s case, blockbuster disclosures by whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former product manager on the company’s now-disbanded civic integrity team, revealed that the company buried internal research showing it was aware of the ways the platform creates societal harm. Transparency reports…

Full Report The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) is an anti-government extremist group whose primary purpose is to recruit sheriffs into the anti-government “patriot” movement. CSPOA is led by Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff who gained celebrity on the right in the 1990s after suing to overturn a prominent gun control measure, the Brady Law, especially after the Supreme Court ruled largely in his favor. The central tenet of CSPOA, borrowed…

If there is a single thread that links QAnon’s origins, its current state, and where the conspiracy theory is likely to go in the short- to medium-term, it’s antisemitism. QAnon’s antisemitism has been most visible at two points: its beginnings – when it emerged from the swastika-studded fever swamp that is 4chan – and the present, when the most popular QAnon influencer, GhostEzra, is an open Nazi who praises Hitler, admires the Third Reich, and decries the…

Ninety-seven million Americans play online multiplayer games. While virtually all players surveyed in ADL’s third annual report on experiences1 in online games appreciated the social connectivity of gaming, an alarmingly large majority continue to encounter a firehose of hate and harassment. ADL’s survey explores the social interactions, experiences, attitudes, and behaviors of online multiplayer gamers nationwide. This year’s survey again asked about the experiences of a…

In the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America, conspiracy theorists across the ideological spectrum dismissed the widely accepted version of events and instead crafted alternative narratives about the perpetrators, their motive, and other details about the attacks. Some of these conspiratorial claims directly implicated Jewish people and Israel in the attacks, in a continuation of centuries-old antisemitic tropes about Jews supposedly manipulating world events for their own…

In recent years, American Jews have faced increased threats of violence and harassment both online and offline. According to ADL’s annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, 2019 and 2020 were, respectively, the highest and third-highest years on record for cases of harassment, vandalism, and assault against Jews in the United States since tracking began in 1979. The recent conflict between Israel and Hamas, after which there was an increase in antisemitic incidents reported domestically,…

​Since the chaos of the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, disparate groups of Trump supporters advocating the former president’s false assertions of a stolen election, QAnon adherents, election fraud promoters and anti-vaccine activists have organized events around the country to promote their causes. This phenomenon underscores the extent to which the line separating the mainstream from the extreme has blurred, and how mainstream efforts to undermine democratic…

A number of extremist and hate groups are currently registered as tax-exempt organizations with theIRSand many of these groups appear to be abusing their tax-exempt status.

On January 6, 2021, hundreds of fanatic Trump supporters and right-wing extremists intent on interfering with the confirmation of the 2020 presidential election results stormed the U.S. Capitol, where they fought police and destroyed property until finally evicted hours later.  The events of that day shocked the country, but the riot’s aftermath also surprised many Americans as the subsequent arrests of rioters included a number of people with connections to the U.S. military…