March 19, 2021 By David Andrew Weinberg
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the Supreme Leader of Iran and an active presence on various social media platforms in multiple languages. And although he uses these accounts to spread hatred, violence, and dangerous disinformation – let alone his calls to destroy the State of Israel – these platforms allow him to keep doing so in seeming violation of their own policies.
This is in purported deference to his status as a political…
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February 22, 2021 Social media platforms have received the lion’s share of attention for enabling users to spread hate and disinformation and plan and incite violence and terrorist acts. Flying under the radar are infrastructure providers like Epik, a domain registrar and web hosting company that works with nearly 750,000 websites and is ranked among the 50 largest web hosts. A domain is the address of a website you type into the URL bar of an internet browser. Domain registrars are…
February 12, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3
Google's YouTube is still recommending extremist and white supremacist videos to viewers already susceptible to racial hatred, a new report from ADL found. Iranian schools are teaching antisemitism, hatred and conspiratorial material in their textbooks, according to a comprehensive analysis by ADL. Police in Spokane, WA are looking for the person who painted swastikas on the Temple Beth Shalom building and a Holocaust memorial.
Read on for more…
January 15, 2021 We live more and more in digital spaces, so we have to work harder to distinguish protected online speech from unprotected online conduct. In the wake of the attack at the U.S. Capitol on January 6—an attack that was planned, mobilized and livestreamed online—this work has gained an even greater sense of urgency, especially when it comes to doxing.
Many people define doxing as posting someone’s personal information online. But doxing as a blanket…
January 15, 2021 A livestream video shot by a newly-elected West Virginia lawmaker shows a disturbing gap between what a mob of Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol thought about the events of January 6 and what the rest of the world actually saw.
Derrick Evans, a freshman member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, viewed fellow rioters swarming around him and forcing entry into the Capitol as a celebration. He was visibly giddy. But for horror-struck viewers, it was a violent…
January 13, 2021 The January 6 attack at our nation’s Capitol was deliberate and coordinated. Individuals who broke the law must be held accountable, but we cannot ignore that social media platforms, like Gab, may well bear a measure of criminal responsibility for the attack as well. To the extent Gab intentionally served as a forum for people to plan, coordinate, engage in or otherwise facilitate the criminal activity that took place on January 6, a Department of Justice investigation…
December 11, 2020 THE WEEK’S BIG 3
The only Anne Frank memorial in the United States was vandalized Tuesday, a distressing display of hate that has prompted a police investigation. A report into last year's Christchurch mosque attack found that New Zealand security agencies were "almost exclusively" focused on the threat from Islamist terrorism, and police failed to enforce proper checks on firearm licenses. Facebook is embarking on a major overhaul of its algorithms that detect hate…
November 24, 2020 UPDATE:
In July 2021, during a investigative radio show and podcast, Alex Mann, an Australian journalist for ABC’s Background Briefing, identified CatboyKami (aka Philip Hedley) as Tor Gustafsson Brookes.
Extremists are constantly adapting and finding ways to reach new audiences, spread and spew their hate and create online content. Their latest tactic involves the use of Omegle, a free online chat service that randomly pairs anonymous users for…
November 20, 2020 The latest Facebook Transparency Report, which covers July 2020 to September 2020 (Q3 2020), raises some alarming concerns around the prevalence of hate speech on the platform, leaving ADL with several questions that demand clear answers. ADL published a blog post about the opaque nature of Facebook’s transparency reports in January 2019. Many of the same problems that existed in the 2019 reports continue in Facebook’s most recent transparency efforts.
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November 17, 2020 Facebook has been vocal about its recent efforts to suspend and ban hateful, conspiratorial and violent content from its platform. And yet a great deal of extremist content remains.
As of November 16, 2020, even a cursory search of Facebook brings up white supremacist, racist and antisemitic pages. The following is a sampling of extremist groups and individuals currently active on Facebook.
Antisemites and Holocaust Deniers:
TruNews is a fundamentalist…
14 is numerical shorthand for the white supremacist slogan known as the "14 Words": "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."
14 Words is a reference to the popular white supremacist slogan: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."
ALTERNATE NAMES: Fourteen Words
Read more about 14 Words
1488: 14 words and the 8th letter of the alphabet. Combined this creates a powerful symbol for white supremacists. Find out the true meaning of these numbers.
ALTERNATE NAMES: 8814
Read more about 1488
88 is a white supremacist numerical code for Heil Hitler. Read more about the meaning behind the numbers, as well as how it’s used in non-extremist forms.
Remarks by Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO November 09, 2020 Thank you all for tuning in today for the 5th annual Never is Now conference. There is so much to discuss, but before we get started, I want to pause and remember Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks who left us too soon this weekend. He was an extraordinary leader, a remarkable rabbi, a gifted scholar and a beautiful man. He will be missed. May his memory always be for a blessing. We gather today -- virtually -- at what feels like the start…
Racist skinheads view anti-racist skinheads (typically known as SHARPs, an acronym for Skin Heads Against Racial Prejudice) as enemies and frequently attack them (and vice versa). Racist skinheads also commonly create anti-SHARP imagery that typically demeans SHARPs or implies violence should be used against them. Additional Images:
The Arrow Cross symbol derives from the Hungarian fascist political party known as the Arrow Cross Party that was active during 1935-45. Since then, various neo-Nazis and white supremacists have used the symbol themselves, either generically or as part of the logo of a specific hate group.
ALTERNATE NAMES: Crosstar
Read more about Arrow Cross
The Aryan Fist symbol is a white supremacist symbol adopted from the "black power fist" used by black nationalist groups in the 1960s and 1970s.
ALTERNATE NAMES: White Power Fist, White Fist
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ALTERNATE NAMES: Ku Klux Klan, MIOAKGroup Status: Active (in that there are many active Ku Klux Klan groups)
For the past century, the primary symbol related to Ku Klux Klan groups (other than Klan robes themselves) is what Klan members may call the MIOAK (an acronym for "Mystic Insignia of a Klansman"). It is more commonly referred to as the "Blood Drop" Cross. It appears as a square white cross in black outline against a circular red background. In the middle of the cross is what appears…
ALTERNATE NAMES: Ku Klux Klan, MIOAK
Read more about Blood Drop Cross
Group Status: Legacy (the group is no longer active but some symbols may remain as tattoos, graffiti, etc.)
The term "blue-eyed devil" is a racial epithet originating in Asia directed against people of European ancestry. Some white supremacists have adopted the term in recent decades and may refer to themselves as blue-eyed devils.
In 1995, a white power music band emerged in Delaware that called itself the Blue Eyed Devils. The band created a distinctive logo consisting of a rounded…