T. Belman. I found this report alarming. But I wanted to understand how they defined “white supremacists” in order to understand the report. The report cited a number of mass killings including “deadly white supremacist shooting rampages in Parkland, Pittsburgh, Poway and El Paso, ” So I looked into these incidents and found that the purpetrators were haters. They hated Jews and blacks and immigrants, generally speaking. Who would accuse the Spuad as being white supremacists because they are haters.
In another ADL report, “White Supremacists Continue to Spread Hate on American Campuses” dated June 2019, the ADL conflated nationalists with white supremacists. Thus if you promote Nationalism over Globalism or American workers first, you are a white supremacist. If you are for a restricted immigration policy, you are a white supremacist. If you want to maintain our culture, you are a white supremacist.
I don’t trust the ADL one iota.
Rise in far-right violence, racist propaganda over past two years tied to Virginia rally, says report, which traces fallout among extremists
9 August 2019,
JTA — White supremacists have committed at least 73 murders since the far-right rally two summers ago in Charlottesville, Virginia.
That figure comes from a report released Thursday by the Anti-Defamation League that says 39 of the killings were “clearly motivated by hateful, racist ideology.”
The violence of the Unite the Right rally has led to an increase in white supremacist activity, according to the report, which is titled “Two Years Ago, They Marched in Charlottesville. Where Are They Now?”
“The violence on the streets of Charlottesville has kindled two major tracks of white supremacist activity,” the ADL said. “The first is the rampant dissemination of propaganda designed to promote their views and attract attention. The other, more troubling track is a broader series of violent attacks in the two years since Unite the Right.”
Among those attacks were the shootings at a Parkland high school, the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the Poway Chabad and Saturday’s attack at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.
According to the report, the recent attacks are part of a four-year resurgence in white supremacist activity and activism driven in large part by the rise of the “alt right.”
The Unite the Right rally in August 2017, which left one counter-protester dead, drew far-right extremists from at least 39 states and presented approximately 50 different extreme-right movements, groups and entities, according to the report. The Center on Extremism has identified 330 of the roughly 600 white extremists from the event. Most were from the eastern US, but others came from Alaska, California, and Washington, and countries including Canada, Sweden and South Africa.
More than a dozen Unite the Right attendees have been convicted and sentenced for crimes related to violence committed during the rally, most notably James Alex Fields Jr. of Ohio, who was sentenced to two life sentences plus 419 years for deliberately driving his car into a crowd of protesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens more.
The US military discharged several active duty Marines who were connected to Unite the Right for espousing anti-Semitic and racist views online and for connections to neo-Nazi groups. Other participants lost jobs as a result of the rally, including at least one demonstrator who worked in the aerospace industry.
Others are battling civil lawsuits at state and federal levels over accusations that they promoted violence.
The report also traces the trajectory of the last two years for leaders of the rally, including several that now lead their own white supremacist groups. Some of the leaders have faced lawsuits as well as domestic and international travel bans.
Most of the white supremacist groups and individuals who attended Unite the Right remain active today, according to the report, which said that there does not appear to be a desire among participants to organize a similar event.
Some of the participants have celebrated Charlottesville, with at least one sporting a tattoo commemorating the protest, while others have worked to distance themselves to reduce the risks of individual exposure, public backlash, legal repercussions and negative media coverage. Most participants view Charlottesville as a significant milestone and an important unifying event for the far-right movement.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer of 76, was an avowed anti-Muslim and an ethnic-Norwegian supremacist. I don’t know that he defined his views as white-supremacist per se. These ideological positions provided him with the rationale for his murders. However, numerous psychologists and psychiatrists who examined him and who testified at his trial reported that mental illness was the underlying motivation, combined with personal resentments toward his parents and older sister, and rage at society because he had failed in business. I watched much of his trial live on the Norway Local website, and it was very revealing about the actual motivations of a mass murderer, which are usually quite different from his ideological rationales.
Despite his professed anger at Muslim immigrants to Norway, most of the people Breivik murdered were white “indigenous Norwegians like himself.
The ADL claims that white supremacists have killed 73 people since Charlottesville, “of which 39 were motivated by white supremacist ideology.”What about the other 34 murders? Were they nonideological in character? Why does the ADL say these murderers were white supremacists?
The Parkland murderer was an emotionally disturbed youth who murdered whites and non-whites indiscriminately. This makes it unlikely that white supremacist ideology was his motivation.
As I’ve noted before, the Charlottesville white supremacist convicted of murder may well have acted out of justifiable self-defense after he was pelted with stones and prevented from leaving the rally peacefully. Had he not been a white supremacist, it is highly unlikely that he would have been convicted of anything, or much the less been given life with no possibility of parole.
Ted is 100% correct that the ADL is a now a political arm of the Democratic party, and has ceased to be a nonpartisan spokesman for all Jews regardless of political affiliation. Its reports are not to be trusted.
@ Joe Spier:
Mr. Spier, I don’t understand: a hater who hates illegal immigrants is not necessarily white – this hater could be a person who made a huge effort to immigrate legally. For instance – he may hate Hispanic illegal immigrants, although he is an Hispanic himself! He is not a white supremacist.
I think Ted is both logically and politically correct. The ADL has an agenda, and is not trustworthy.
Ted, I don’t understand your comment that you “looked into these incidents and found that the perpetrators were haters.” Did you expect any not to be? While not all haters are white supremacists, all white supremacists are haters. If a hater targets Jews or blacks or Hispanics or other than white people is he not by definition a white supremacist?