Research & Analysis

July 16, 2021 On July 15, 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed that it had indicted two California men, Ian Benjamin Rogers and Jarrod Copeland, on charges related to an alleged plot to destroy the Democratic party headquarters in Sacramento with incendiary devices. According to communications between the two men, they were animated by grievance over Donald Trump’s loss of the 2020 election, and planned to conduct their attack after President Biden’s inauguration on…

July 09, 2021 By David Andrew Weinberg On June 30th, Egypt’s government launched the region’s largest book fair, under the patronage of President Abdel Fattah El Sisi and inaugurated by Egypt’s prime minister with seven of his cabinet ministers in attendance. Despite the issue being flagged in the past, it is disappointing that a broad array of antisemitic books continue to be exhibited among the materials hosted at Egypt’s state-run book fair this year, including…

July 09, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 Police say scores of members of a white supremacist group marched in Philadelphia over the weekend, clashing with pedestrians and setting off what were believed to be smoke bombs at one point. The group of 11 militiamen who ended up in an hours-long standoff with police in Massachusetts on Saturday morning espouses a conspiracy-based, anti-government agenda that combines sovereign-citizen beliefs with those of the Moorish Science Temple. A rabbi is…

1. Nicholas Fuentes is a white supremacist leader, organizer and podcaster who seeks to forge a white nationalist alternative to the mainstream GOP. Nicholas Fuentes first gained widespread notoriety in 2017 when he left Boston University after he reported receiving “threats” tied to his attendance at the white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. In the aftermath of Charlottesville, Fuentes found a niche within the alt-right movement…

July 08, 2021 Screengrab from a booklet posted on website of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University From June 18-23, 2021, the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) at the Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University held a conference entitled “Challenging Apartheid in Palestine: Reclaiming the Narrative, Formulating a Vision,” which featured dozens of prominent anti-Israel academics and activists from across the world. CIGA is…

July 06, 2021 Lil Nas X performs onstage at the BET Awards 2021 in Los Angeles on June 27, 2021. Photo credit: Getty Images   After the BET Awards—an annual awards ceremony which celebrates the achievements of Black artists and entertainers—aired on June 27, 2021, Nation of Islam (NOI) members were among those who voiced criticisms of the event, responding with their familiar anti-LGBTQ, antisemitic and conspiratorial rhetoric. Their accusations were directed at both the…

July 01, 2021 On January 6, 2021, a violent mob of right-wing extremists stormed our nation’s Capitol. Approximately 22 percent of the 500 people facing charges related to the insurrection had ties to extremist groups and movements including white supremacists, anti-government extremists, Proud Boys and QAnon conspiracy theorists. We know that some elements of the insurrection were pre-planned online, and more alarming facts have come to light as insurrections have been arrested and…

June 30, 2021 This blog post is the second in a series of three articles that will explore the unique challenges audio content moderation poses for platforms creating audio-focused digital spaces. The first article in this series focused on the choices around recording audio for the purpose of content moderation in audio only digital social spaces. This article will discuss how platforms can choose to review audio for content moderation. The third article will cover cautionary tales from…

June 28, 2021 Ozone Wallace during a March 2021 YouTube podcast with the New Black Panther Party (NBPP)   ADL’s Center on Extremism has linked Othal Toreyanne Resheen Wallace (also known as: O-Zone Wallace), the man arrested and accused of fatally shooting Daytona Beach Officer Jason Raynor on June 23, to several extremist groups. On June 26, following a 56-hour manhunt, multiple law enforcement agencies were involved in the arrest of Wallace just outside of Atlanta,…

June 24, 2021 The cover image of Al Qaeda's article, "What is Behind the Normalization with Israel, the Mysteries of the Term and ِthe Dangers of its Machinations," shows a figure bearing the flags of Israel, the European Union, and the United States giving orders to bodies of news organizations, social media, finance, the United Nations, Hollywood and government. The notion that Israel and the West secretly control international organizations and the news media is a common antisemitic…

June 22, 2021   By David Andrew Weinberg ADL recently completed a review of current Egyptian elementary, middle, and high school textbooks as part of a series of articles examining the state of antisemitic content in state-published Middle East curricula.  Although Egypt’s latest textbooks do contain some positive material about Jewish people, that content is directly contradicted by other, much more problematic lessons in the curriculum. Egypt is the Arab state with…

June 21, 2021 In June 2020, Facebook announced that it had taken down hundreds of groups and pages on its platform associated with the violent anti-government boogaloo movement, one of several major purges of extremist material by Facebook that year to address extremists’ use of its platform. Despite efforts by the boogaloo movement to camouflage itself to retain a Facebook  foothold, the social media company’s efforts were largely effective, and after the deplatforming, it…