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Does Anti-Defamation League Leader Support Blanket Spying on American Muslims?

By on April 29, 2013 in News 17

ADL-Logo-BlueThis seems sketchy, but is he advocating blanket monitoring of America’s Muslim Community or is he simply discussing how such reactionary measures come about? The Daily Beast’s Ali Gharib feels that it is the former. Your thoughts?

The most staggering ambivalence about bigotry in Foxman’s Haaretz interview, though, wasn’t about Christians or even Palestinians; it was about American Muslims. Asked by his interviewer, Chemi Shalev, about anti-Muslim discimination, Foxman sought to rationalize it. First, he argued that incidents of anti-Semitism occur more frequently than those related to anti-Muslim bigotry, as if tracking bigotry is a game in which scores are kept. But then Foxman digs deeper.

Shalev: You don’t think that “Muslim-baiting” is much more acceptable in the mainstream media than, say, “Jew-baiting”? There is a Congressman now who is calling for the authorities to keep track of the entire Muslim community.

Foxman: I don’t think that’s Muslim-baiting. It’s a natural response.

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Who’s Watching Glenn Beck?

By on November 25, 2009 in News 9

Much like the Depression-era demagogue Father Charles Coughlin, the Fox News personality is promoting a mass movement. Should his bosses be pulling the plug? Tim Rutten asks this imponderable question in the Los Angeles Times:

For nearly a century, the Anti-Defamation League has stared unflinchingly into the dark corners of America’s social psyche — the places where combustible tendencies such as hatred and paranoia pool and, sometimes, burst into flame.

As a Jewish organization, the ADL’s first preoccupation naturally is anti-Semitism, but in the last few decades it has extended its scrutiny to the whole range of bigoted malevolence — white supremacy, the militia movement, neo-nativism and conspiratorial fantasies in all of their improbable permutations. These days, the organization’s research is characterized by the sense of proportion and sobriety that long experience brings.

That makes its recent report on the extremist groups and propagandists that have emerged since President Obama’s election — “Rage Grows In America: Anti-Government Conspiracies” — particularly notable.

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Rage Grows in America: Anti‑Government Conspiracies

By on November 18, 2009 in News 8

The Anti Defamation League goes all out to discredit popular Texas talk radio host and filmmaker Alex Jones:

With conspiracy talk-show host Alex Jones leading the way, one of the most disturbing trends in 2009 has been the resurrection and proliferation of some of the same anti-government conspiracy theories that so riled up domestic extremists in the 1990s. Such theories had been less popular in the 2000s, but Obama’s election gave anti-government conspiracy theorists a new focus for their efforts, a new light in which they could re-cast some of the old theories, and a willingness to come up with new conspiracies. More extreme than the “birther” conspiracy theory, these theories allege dark, violent designs on the part of the federal government.

Anti-Government Conspiracy Theories and Their Transmission

Though there are many conspiracy theories and numerous permutations, three are particularly entrenched among anti-government extremists:

  • Imposition of Martial Law. The federal government is plotting to declare martial law in the near future as a way to strip Americans of their freedoms and institute the New World Order.
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