Research & Analysis

September 27, 2017 During a September appearance at a mosque in Chicago, Nation of Islam student minister Wesley Muhammad claimed that Jews and the U.S. government are engaged in a “Pot Plot” to emasculate black men and turn them into homosexuals by distributing specially modified versions of marijuana. Muhammad has been dabbling in this conspiracy theory since 2016, and proposed a similar version in a June 2017 interview on Power 105.1’s The Breakfast Club, a nationwide…

September 20, 2017 Article Highlights: • Older white supremacists are adopting the slang of the alt right in an attempt to sound edgy and attract younger members. • Some white supremacists have created websites designed specifically to attract alt right adherents. • For racist neo-Confederates, the alt right offers a significant potential source of members, provided they can be converted to white Southern nationalism instead of a more universal form of white supremacy. Like…

August 30, 2017 The violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which featured anti-Semitic chants and imagery on full display, has fueled concern about whether the kind of hatred and violence seen in Charlottesville could inspire copycat incidents or acts of hate against Jews or Jewish institutions in other parts of the country. While it is impossible to directly link anti-Semitic incidents seen elsewhere to the horrific displays of hate witnessed in Charlottesville…

August 18, 2017 By Lauren Jones Civil Rights National Counsel at the Anti-Defamation League On August 17, 1915 a mob dragged Leo Frank, a Jewish superintendent at a pencil factory in Georgia, from his prison cell, drove him to a place where others stood ready with a noose, and lynched him. They called themselves the Knights of Mary Phagan. A crowd of men, women and children looked on and cheered. Within the local community, the members of the lynch mob were well-known. But their…

August 17, 2017 On August 13th, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula released the 17th issue of Inspire magazine featuring instructions from the “AQ-Chef,” including “a simple method for targeting trains…[involving] derailing a train from the railroad by placing an object on the tracks.” The magazine supplements the instructions with a list of priority targets, ranking “Jewish interests everywhere” first. While this is not the first time al-Qaeda…

August 15, 2017 Alongside the racism, nativism and xenophobia on display at Unite the Right, the event was also an expression of the animating power of anti-Semitism.  Marchers threw Nazi salutes as they waved swastika flags, proudly wore swastika pins and shirts, and shouted “sieg heil!”  A sign carried by rally-goers warned that the “Jewish media is going down;” another declared that “Jews are Satan’s children.”  A white…

August 13, 2017 On the morning of Saturday, August 12, hundreds of white supremacists descended on Charlottesville, Virginia, for the Unite the Right rally. The rally never happened, but it almost didn’t matter: The event was the largest and most violent gathering of white supremacists in decades. On Friday afternoon, over the objections of the Charlottesville city council, Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler secured a permit to gather in one of the typically bucolic college town…

July 28, 2017 Since July 14, 2017, the Al-Aqsa events have shaken both the geopolitical and virtual landscape of Jerusalem, and tensions have generated hateful, anti-Semitic speech from international terror groups and everyday-Twitter users. On July 27, the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula media outlet, al-Malahem Media, released a 13-minute video titled, “For You, oh Al-Aqsa,” featuring Khalid Batarfi, one of the organization’s senior military commanders. The video…

July 24, 2017 “Imagine getting your debts paid off, including student loans, back child support debt and get your home free and clear with the Little Promissory Note,” the website promises, “LPN Money that you don’t have to pay back once it is processed.”  A YouTube video advertising this “Little Promissory Note” promises that it “is the same as a dollar bill that can pay off all types of debts.” The Little Promissory note sounds…