Tag: adl

‘That Era Is OVER’: FBI Ends ADL Partnership After TPUSA ‘Extremist’ Designation

The FBI is ending its partnership with the left-wing Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Director Kash Patel announced on Wednesday. The move comes after the organization got busted labeling Turning Point USA as an “extremist” group.

“James Comey disgraced the FBI by writing ‘love letters’ to the ADL and embedding agents with an extreme group functioning like a terrorist organization and the disgraceful operation they ran spying on Americans. That was not law enforcement, it was activism dressed up as counterterrorism, and it put Americans in danger,” Patel said in a statement. “That era is finished. This FBI formally rejects Comey’s policies and any partnership with the ADL.”

As John Lott Jr. recently noted in these pages, the ADL — a self-professed “anti-hate organization” — regularly mislabels left-wing violence as “right-wing,” while at the same time downplaying (or outright ignoring) real leftist violence.

Despite these reported issues, Comey had no problem heaping praise on the ADL and its partnership with the FBI under his tenure. According to Fox News, the recently indicted former director spoke at the ADL’s National Leadership Summit in May 2017, during which he “declared his and the FBI’s ‘love’ for the organization.”

“We are not only educating ourselves, we are working with the ADL to build bridges in the communities we serve,” Comey reportedly said. “For more than 100 years, you have advocated for fairness and equality … And for all of that, we are grateful. As a law enforcement and national security agency, yes. But also as Americans. As humans.”

The ADL has faced extensive backlash in recent days after the group got caught classifying TPUSA — the organization founded by recently assassinated conservative thought leader Charlie Kirk — as an “extremist” group. Per Fox News, “TPUSA’s backgrounder page on the ADL website falls under the ‘Center of Extremism’ tag and describes the conservative group as having ties to ‘a range of right-wing extremists and has generated support from anti-Muslim bigots, alt-lite activists and some corners of the white supremacist alt-right.’”

In response to public blowback, the ADL took down its “Glossary of Extremism and Hate” on Tuesday, acknowledging in a statement that “an increasing number of entries in the Glossary were outdated” and that it “saw a number of entries intentionally misrepresented and misused.”

“At ADL, we always are looking for how we can and should do things better. That’s why we are moving to retire the Glossary effectively immediately,” the ADL wrote on X. “This will allow ADL to explore new strategies and creative approaches to deliver our data and present our research more effectively.”

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ADL Regional Director Calls for Government-Regulated Online Censorship

The Anti-Defamation League’s David Goldenberg is demanding a broad overhaul of how speech is governed on the internet, calling for both government intervention and intensified corporate censorship. In a recent appearance, Goldenberg, who heads the ADL’s Midwest operations, expressed frustration over what he sees as declining efforts by tech firms to suppress online content he deems hateful.

Citing Meta’s rollback of its fact-checking team in the United States, he argued that platforms must be forced to take action. “You have a platform like Meta that just gutted its entire fact-checking department…And so what we need to do is we need to apply pressure in a real significant way on tech platforms that they have a responsibility, that they have an absolute responsibility to check and remove hateful speech that is inciteful.”

Goldenberg advocated not just for voluntary moderation, but for legislative and regulatory measures, both at the federal and state level, that would compel platforms to act as speech enforcers. He pointed to efforts in states like California as examples of where local governments are already testing such models.

His concern centers around what he perceives as an ecosystem of radicalization made easily accessible by today’s digital infrastructure. He warned that extremist ideologies no longer require obscure forums or dark web communities to spread. “It used to be you had to fight going into the deep dark web… Now… it’s easier and easier to be exposed in the mainstream,” he said.

Framing the online environment as a catalyst for violence, Goldenberg argued that free access to controversial viewpoints must be curtailed. He called for social media companies to take a stronger stance by excluding users whose views fall outside accepted boundaries, adding that regulation should enforce this responsibility.

He zeroed in on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a critical piece of legislation that shields platforms from legal liability over user-posted content. “Congress needs to amend Section 230, which provides immunity to tech platforms right now for what happens,” Goldenberg said. He dismissed comparisons between modern platforms and telecommunications companies, referencing past remarks by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg about how phone providers were not liable for threats made over calls. Goldenberg’s view was blunt: “These tech platforms are not guaranteed under the Constitution. They’re just not.”

From his perspective, private companies should be free to “kick people off, to de-platform,” and if they fail to do so voluntarily, they must be pressured or regulated into compliance. He described accountability as a mechanism for shaping behavior, stating, “Accountability is a tool that can be incredibly effective in changing behavior.”

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The ADL Wasn’t Founded to Fight Antisemitism. But To Do PR.

Over a hundred years ago a lawyer stopped by a Chicago vaudeville theater to see a show. The ethnic comedy on display offended him so much that he helped create the ADL.

Both the ADL and antisemites like Candace Owens like to link the organization to the Leo Frank case in which a Jewish man in the South who was lynched after being falsely accused of the murder of a young girl, to make the ADL seem more important.

But the ADL actually had its origins in the B’nai Brith’s ‘National Caricature Committee’ and preceding organizations such as the ‘Chicago Anti Stage-Jew Ridicule Committee’ whose mission was to fight ‘ethnic comedy’ featuring Jews.

Often being performed by Jews.

The ADL was not founded as a civil rights organization, let alone an anti-lynching group, but, as an anti-defamation group. Hence the name the ‘Anti-Defamation League’. Its founding charter began by complaining that “a tendency has manifested itself in American life toward the caricaturing and defaming of Jews on the stage” and declared that the “immediate object of the League is to stop…the defamation.”

In the 1900s and 1910s, vaudeville was booming, and successful ‘comedians’ could record their own phonograph records, cartoons were also taking off and silent movies added another form of entertainment. And about the easiest way to get laughs was with ethnic comedy: Germans, the Irish, blacks, Swedes, Italians and Jews were among the many stereotypes to appear on stage.

While we tend to take free speech, including offensive speech, for granted, this was an era where multiple censorship boards, local ones like those in major cities, and ‘voluntary’ national ones, along with local and federal law enforcement, not to mention church groups, could decide whether movies would be released and whether theaters would be allowed to put on a show.

Catholics, the Irish, Germans and Jews deployed pressure groups to get the theaters to stop demeaning them. The NAACP had been at it well before the B’nai Brith launched the ‘National Caricature Committee’ at the initiative of Sigmund Livingston, a member of the German Jewish lodge, who saw an offensive show in Chicago, and Adolf Kraus, a B’nai Brith leader trying to take the local Chicago efforts of the ‘Chicago Anti Stage-Jew Ridicule Committee’ nationwide.

The ‘Chicago Anti Stage-Jew Ridicule Committee’ was not even the most awkwardly worded ethnic comedy pressure group name, that honor likely went to the elongated ‘Society for the Prevention of Ridiculous and Pervasive Misrepresentation of the Irish Character’. The ‘National Caricature Committee’ streamlined the name and the ‘Anti-Defamation League’ streamlined it further. Today the ADL and the NAACP prefer their initials over their awkward full names.

But the much more awkward thing about the ADL was how much of its focus was spent on ‘shande’ politics, policing the wrong kind of Jewish people who were seen as causing antisemitism. Much of the material that the ADL and allied groups objected to was coming from Jewish comedians, theater owners and movie studios. While most of the targets are entirely (and probably deservedly) forgotten, they included future mainstream stars like Fanny Brice who was accused of contributing to “the recrudescence and continuance of the spirit of Anti-Semitism in America”.

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Judge Rejects Anti-Defamation League’s Third Attempt to Halt $25M Defamation Suit

The Gateway Pundit reported on disabled Navy veteran John Sabal’s defamation suit against the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

Sabal, who organizes patriotic festivals and has never been arrested, alleges that the ADL defamed him when it published his name in the ADL Center on Extremism’s “Glossary of Extremism and Hate.”

The Glossary ONLY names 295 people, many of them notorious terrorists such as Osama bin Laden, Timothy McVeigh, Dylann Roof, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, ‘an al Qaeda member and the mastermind of the 9/11 terror attack,’ the Glossary reminds us.”

On March 31, 2025, The Honorable Reed O’Connor, Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division, rejected the ADL’s latest efforts to stop Sabal’s suit.

Judge O’Connor quoted well-known case law in his ruling, stating that the mere fact that a disgruntled litigant intends to inevitably appeal does not create an exceptional case warranting a mid-suit appeal, and the law depended on by the ADL in its motion is “not a vehicle to question the correctness of a district court’s ruling or to obtain a second, more favorable opinion.”

“The ADL’s latest effort to delay John Sabal’s defamation suit has failed, as the court denied the ADL’s attempt for a mid-suit appeal and stay of proceedings based on a claim that Sabal is a public figure.  In keeping with fine federal court tradition, this case will still be heard as scheduled in July,” said Warren V. Norred, of NORRED LAW.

The ruling marks the third strike for the ADL’s defense team, which has now attempted and failed to stop the suit on three occasions.

In his four-page ruling, Judge O’Connor wrote, “For the foregoing reasons,  the court denies Defendant’s Motion to Certify an Immediate Appeal (ECF No. 66).  Because the Court does not certify an immediate appeal, the Court also denies Defendant’s Motion to Stay depending an appeal.”

This case has been ongoing for over a year, and discovery has concluded.  NORRED LAW was asked to step in after the ADL sought summary judgment and was unsuccessful.

Judge O’Connor’s order on that motion carefully evaluated Mr. Sabal’s complaint, dismissed his claims regarding injurious falsehood, upheld his claim that the ADL defamed him by including him in its “Glossary of Extremism and Hate,” and suggested that he is a “dangerous, extremist threat, and even a criminal.”

Judge O’Connor also preserved Sabal’s claim regarding the ADL’s report, “Hate in the Lone Star State.”

A trial date has been set for July 16, 2025.

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ADL’s Stats Twist Israel’s Critics Into Antisemites

Media outlets continue to print headlines about antisemitism based on Anti-Defamation League statistics known to be faulty and politicized. In doing so, they grant undeserved credibility to the ADL as a source.

Producing statistics helps the ADL to claim objectivity when they assert that antisemitism is increasing dramatically, prevalent in all fields of society, and emanating from the left as well as the right. Those “facts” are then used to justify policy recommendations that fail to respond to actual antisemitism, but succeed in undermining the free speech rights of Palestinians and their supporters, including those of us who are Jews.

While it frames itself as a civil rights organization, the ADL has a long history of actively spying on critics of Israel and collaborating with the Israeli government (Nation, 1/31/24). (FAIR itself was targeted as a “Pinko” group in ADL’s sprawling spying operation in the ’90s.)

Though it professes to document and challenge antisemitism, it openly admits to counting pro-Palestinian activism as antisemitic: In 2023, the ADL changed its methodology for reporting antisemitic incidents to include rallies that feature “anti-Zionist chants and slogans,” even counting anti-war protests led by Jews—including Jewish organizations the ADL designated as “hate groups.”

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ADL slams Elon Musk after billionaire makes series of Nazi puns defending Trump rally salute: ‘The Holocaust is not a joke’

The Anti-Defamation League slammed Elon Musk after he posted a series of Nazi-related puns on X when defending his gesture at an inauguration rally for President Trump that many claimed was a Nazi salute.

The ADL, a New York-based organization fighting antisemitism, said Musk had gone too far when trying to mock those targeting him over the salute, which the organization said was an “awkward gesture” rather than a Sieg Heil.

Following the backlash online, Musk went on a rant Thursday morning posting several inappropriate puns referencing top Nazi officers and Holocaust architects, including Rudolf Hess, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler.

“Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations!” Musk wrote on X. “Some people will Goebbels anything down!

“Stop Gőring your enemies! His pronouns would’ve been He/Himmler!” he added. “Bet you did nazi that coming.”

Musks’ comments were flagged by ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, who condemned the statements on the Tesla CEO’s X platform.

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ADL pushed BMG to drop Roger Waters by threatening to weaponize company’s Nazi past

The Grayzone has obtained a private letter authored by ADL director Jonathan Greenblatt threatening to weaponize the Nazi past of the BMG music company unless executives terminated a major deal with Roger Waters. BMG has publicly denied Israel lobby influence on its decision to nix Waters’ contract.

When the Berlin-based BMG music company terminated its business relationship with Roger Waters, the Pink Floyd co-founder claimed the decision was spurred by a concerted Israel lobby-directed campaign to financially retaliate against his outspoken support for Palestine. The Grayzone has obtained a threatening private letter sent by Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt to BMG executives which confirms the musician’s accusation.

“Given the fact that your parent company, Bertelsmann Group, has made laudable and necessary efforts to repair its Nazi past,” the ADL director warned in his June 16, 2023 letter, “it would be deeply unfortunate to have those efforts continue to be tarnished by such hurtful and injurious conduct.”

In an interview with The Grayzone, Waters described the ADL’s menacing missive as the culmination of a months-long intimidation campaign which began well before the October 7 attacks in Israel. The ADL’s push resulted not only in the termination of the company’s deal to release the new 50th anniversary recording of “The Dark Side of the Moon,” he said, but in the departure of BMG’s CEO as well.

“As far as attacks on me by the ADL and and all the rest of the lobby are concerned, the jury has been out for a long time, but it’s not out anymore,” Waters commented to The Grayzone. “The contention that I’m an antisemite because I’ve stood up against the attempted genocide of the indigenous people of Palestine is dead in the water. The people of the world have seen through the wall of hatred and tissue of lies.”

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Anti-Defamation League Launching Hollywood Watchdog to Monitor Anti-Semitism in Entertainment

The Anti-Defamation League — the left-wing political organization whose mission increasingly appears to be censoring conservatives and other non-leftists who disagree with its agenda  — is launching a new institute that will serve as a Hollywood watchdog to monitor for anti-semitic stereotypes in entertainment.

ADL leaders said the Los Angeles-based institute will work with industry leaders as well as other nonprofit organizations, including the left-wing Common Sense Media.

“It’s not uncommon to see Jews in movies and television, but it is most common to see Jews boxed into stereotypes and tropes that create a narrow — and often negative — impression of the Jewish people,” ADL CEO and national director Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement issued Tuesday.

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Are Americans More Antisemitic Than They Were Four Decades Ago?

At the end of 1980, under the headline “Survey Finds Sharp Rise in Anti-Semitic Incidents,” The New York Times reported that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) had counted “377 cases of assaults and vandalism…against properties” that year, plus “112 bodily assaults or harassments.” By comparison, the ADL had reported “129 property incidents” in 1979. But Nathan Perlmutter, then the organization’s director, “said that part of the 1980 increase might have reflected improved procedures introduced this year in collecting and evaluating information.”

That sort of caveat is conspicuously missing from this year’s ADL audit and from the Times story about it. “The number of antisemitic incidents in the United States last year was the highest since the Anti-Defamation League began keeping track in 1979,” the Times reports. But there is a difference between “the number of antisemitic incidents in the United States” and the number counted by the ADL, whose annual tally relies on reporting by “victims, law enforcement, the media and partner organizations.”

In addition to actual changes in antisemitic incidents, the ADL’s numbers are apt to be affected by changes in reporting behavior and in the organization’s efforts to collect information. Those factors don’t mean the ADL’s narrative of rising antisemitism in the United States, which is supported by recent survey data, should be dismissed out of hand. But they do complicate the picture in ways that the ADL and the Times fail to acknowledge, especially when it comes to the implicit claim that anti-Jewish bigotry is more prevalent today than it was four decades ago.

Per capita, the ADL counted more than five times as many antisemitic incidents in 2022 as it did in 1980. It does not follow that Americans are five times as likely to hate Jews as they were 43 years ago.

The ADL’s survey data do not support that inference. In 2022, it reports, 20 percent of Americans at least “somewhat” believed “six or more anti-Jewish tropes,” compared to 29 percent in 1964 and 20 percent in 1992. That number has gone up and down over the years, and it rose by 82 percent, from 11 percent to 20 percent, between 2019 and 2022.

During the same period, the number of ADL-reported antisemitic incidents rose by 75 percent, which is consistent with the premise that the organization’s tallies reflect a real trend. But these two sets of numbers do not always track each other so neatly. Between 1992 and 1998, for example, the measure of antisemitic attitudes fell by 40 percent, while the number of incidents that the ADL counted fell by just 7 percent. Between 1998 and 2002, when survey-measured antisemitism rose by 42 percent, the number of reported incidents dropped by 3 percent.

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ADL Defends Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis: They “Don’t Attack Jews or Jewish Institutions”

The Anti-Defamation League, the leading pro-Israel lobbying group in America, published a Q&A defending Ukraine’s neo-Nazi groups on the grounds that they “don’t attack Jews or Jewish institutions.”

In an article titled, “Why is Putin Calling the Ukrainian Government a Bunch of Nazis?” the ADL interviewed David Fishman, professor of Jewish History at The Jewish Theological Seminary, to explain why Ukraine’s neo-Nazis aren’t so bad.

“There are neo-Nazis in Ukraine, just as there are in the U.S., and in Russia for that matter. But they are a very marginal group with no political influence and who don’t attack Jews or Jewish institutions in Ukraine,” Fishman said.

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