Antisemitism

Antisemitic hate groups seek to racialize Jewish people and vilify them as the manipulative puppet masters behind an economic, political and social scheme to undermine white people. Antisemitism also undergirds much of the far right, unifying adherents across various extremist ideologies around efforts to subvert and misconstrue the collective suffering of Jewish people in the Holocaust and cast them as conniving opportunists.

TOP TAKEAWAYS

Antisemitism is a central feature of the white power movement, with Jewish people cast as all-powerful manipulators who use Black people and other marginalized people to challenge white social and political dominance.

Throughout 2023, antisemitism persisted as a serious threat to Jewish communities. The year was marked both by an increase in antisemitic harassment, vandalism and violence as well as by concerted efforts by the federal government and community organizations to confront these threats. The number of active antisemitic hate groups remained relatively stagnant compared to the previous year; their activities, however, continued to affect communities across the country.

While many of the groups the SPLC monitors are antisemitic, we reserve this designation specifically for those that focus their hatred most intently on Jewish people – including Holocaust deniers, who either deny that such a genocide took place or minimize its extent. These groups (and individuals) often cloak themselves in the sober language of serious scholarship, call themselves “historical revisionists” instead of deniers and accuse their critics of trying to squelch open-minded inquiries into historical truth.

We also include the Nation of Islam in our antisemitism category. Since its founding in 1930, Nation of Islam has been notorious for its antisemitism, often blaming a Jewish conspiracy for various social and economic issues perceived to be harming Black communities. In a public address in February 2023, the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan claimed Jews use their power to dominate Black people: “Just look at what these people control … these demons. At every door that leads to power, they have a sentry on watch.”

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KEY MOMENTS

In September 2023, Goyim Defense League, Blood Tribe and several other neo-Nazi groups organized the “March of the Redshirts” in a suburb of Orlando, Florida. Roughly 50 individuals marched through Altamonte, Florida, chanting “Jews will not replace us,” “Jews get the rope” and “Heil Hitler” while waving swastika flags. Additionally, several Goyim Defense League leaders are facing legal charges for their antisemitic activities in Florida and Georgia. This includes founder Jon Minadeo, who was found guilty of littering in West Palm Beach, Florida, and sentenced to 30 days in jail after he distributed antisemitic flyers.

In February 2023, the Nation of Islam hosted its annual Saviours’ Day event in Chicago that was marked by Farrakhan’s escalating antisemitic rhetoric. In his keynote address, “The War of Armageddon Has Begun,” Farrakhan warned attendees about “Jewish power” and urged his supporters “to take on the synagogue of Satan” to prevent Jews from destroying the country. In some parts of the speech, Farrakhan appeared to justify Hitler’s violence against the Jewish people and suggested Jewish people may once again burn in ovens as punishment for their “wickedness.”

In response to this rising threat of antisemitism, the Biden administration released the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism in concert with a number of civil society organizations. 

Following the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians and Israel’s subsequent bombing of Gaza, antisemitic incidents in the United States surged. Violence in Israel and Palestine have historically led to spikes in antisemitism and Islamophobia in the United States and around the world. This increase included a White Lives Matter California demonstration on a highway overpass with signs that read, “No More Wars for I$rael” and others directing people to watch an antisemitic film that defends Hitler and blames Jews for both World Wars. In another incident, an individual declared, “I am Hamas” while making death threats to people standing outside a kosher restaurant in Los Angeles.

WHAT’S AHEAD

As the violence in Israel and Palestine continues, the rates of antisemitism will likely remain high. Antisemitic hate groups and figures recognize this conflict as an opportunity to further mainstream their antisemitic worldview and other extremist ideas. Antisemitic hate groups will likely continue to attend anti-Israel demonstrations and incorporate anti-Zionist rhetoric into their broader propaganda and recruitment efforts. The number of hate groups that deny and obscure the historical facts of the Holocaust will most likely remain relatively static in 2024. The number of Nation of Islam chapters will also likely remain consistent, while the organization’s lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League may embolden increased antisemitic rhetoric and activity in the coming year. 

BACKGROUND: ANTISEMITISM AND HOLOCAUST-DENIAL CONSPIRACIES

Antisemitism supports the belief that Jewish individuals are a separate race, making it a form of racism in itself. Harmful stereotypes uniformly portray Jewish persons as deceitful and predatory.

In Eric K. Ward’s article “Skin in the Game,” published in 2017 by Political Research Associates, he explains that antisemitism gave the movement a new theoretical basis for claims of white supremacy. “Antisemitism,” Ward explains, “is a particular and potent form of racism so central to [white] supremacy that Black people would not win our freedom without tearing it down.”

White supremacist adherents of antisemitism contradictorily portray Jewish persons as simultaneously inferior and all-powerful – often by propagating myths of “globalist” agents with equally great, yet undue, financial influence who uphold a collective goal of subverting white, European cultures and nations. Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ+ individuals are often portrayed as tools of this grand subversion. Such groups as the Nation of Islam use antisemitism in a similar capacity, claiming Jewish people caused slavery, Jim Crow laws, sharecropping and other forms of Black oppression.

While the Nation of Islam also has a history of homophobic rhetoric, they are one of the most active disseminators of antisemitic materials and have a history of contributing to antisemitism both within and outside the Black community. Compiled by the Nation of Islam’s Ministry of Research, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews is a foremost antisemitic book. Khalid Abdul Muhammad – a top official within the Nation of Islam – used the book as a source for his infamously antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ+ speech at Kean College in 1993.

Nation of Islam’s activity is harmful and counter to the deep history of alliance between Jewish people and Black Americans during the Civil Rights Movement and today is an example of efforts to drive a wedge between would-be allies.

Louis Farrakhan has claimed that Jewish people are Satan and are attempting to kill him “non-violently, with radiated seed.” Farrakhan has also falsely claimed that pedophilia and sexual perversion have spread due to the Jewish influence in Hollywood. Both Farrakhan and Khalid Abdul Muhammad have also used the word “bloodsucker” to dehumanize Jewish people, claiming they are “bloodsuckers of the poor.” Holocaust deniers form another segment of groups and individuals whose ideology bolsters the antisemitism that permeates many hate groups. Adherents to this small segment of the far right seek to validate antisemitism and undermine the experiences of Jewish people by distorting the historical facts of the Holocaust or outright denying it ever happened.

Holocaust deniers spread such falsehoods as the claim that Jewish people died from disease, starvation and other indiscriminate challenges rather than a systematic genocide orchestrated and executed by the Nazi Party during its occupation of Europe during World War II. Holocaust deniers falsely claim that the gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps were used for recreation and delousing prisoners – and even that they were built after World War II. Holocaust deniers also exaggerate minor discrepancies in reported Jewish casualties and deaths during the Holocaust as evidence of sweeping historical fallacies. 

Adherents to this ideology often mask these claims behind the guise of pseudo-intellectual “historical revisionism.” Holocaust deniers who attempt to pass themselves off as “revisionists” are more committed to their political aims than to academic principles of reinterpreting historical events as new sources come to light. As noted by historian Gordon McFee: “‘Revisionists’ depart from the conclusion that the Holocaust did not occur and work backwards through the facts to adapt them to that preordained conclusion. Put another way, they reverse the proper methodology […] thus turning the proper historical method of investigation and analysis on its head.”

While Holocaust denial once existed as a loose collection of antisemitic narratives, the first hate group dedicated solely to the spread of this ideology was the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), formed in 1978 by Willis Carto. The organization remains active today under director Mark Weber. After being ousted from IHR, Carto founded The Barnes Review and American Free Press, both of which are active SPLC-designated hate groups. These remain tightly interwoven with newer Holocaust denial groups, including the Committee for the Open Debate of the Holocaust and Clemens and Blair publishers.

ANTISEMITISM ACROSS THE CONTEMPORARY FAR RIGHT AND MAINSTREAM

While the number of groups the SPLC has listed under the antisemitism category remains small, the narratives and rhetoric these groups and individuals have long espoused permeate much of the far right as bigoted groups and individuals have sought to portray Jewish people as manipulative and deceitful.

Most publicly, rhetoric, flyers, blog posts and memes from neo-Nazi hate groups often feature Holocaust denial to attack Jewish people. Similarly, members of the Ku Klux Klan draw on the tenets of Holocaust denial that were largely introduced to the ideology by David Duke, former Imperial Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. These attempts at denying the facts of history seek to cast Jewish people as the conniving architects of a  (ZOG), a conspiracy theory claiming that Jewish people control the U.S. government. Importantly, antisemitism has long been a facet of the Ku Klux Klan.

Belief in ZOG and denial of the veracity of the Holocaust are also ideological underpinnings of the white nationalist movement. Greg Johnson, the editor-in-chief of the white nationalist publishing company Counter-Currents, credits David Irving as instrumental in his conversion to white nationalism. Additionally, flyers from such groups as the New Jersey European Heritage Association claim that movements for racial equity and social justice including Black Lives Matter are controlled by Jewish-funded organizations.

The influence of Holocaust denialism spreads far beyond the increasingly murky boundaries of far-right ideologies. Just one week into Trump’s term, his administration issued a statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day that omitted any mention of Jewish people and antisemitism. This came just months before Trump alleged that there “were very fine people, on both sides” at the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where members of the far right chanted, “Jews will not replace us,” and the Nazi slogan “blood and soil.”

White nationalist Nick Fuentes used antisemitism in a “Stop the Steal” rally in Atlanta in November 2020, when he claimed “global special interest groups” were responsible for Trump’s election loss. Fuentes pushed a coded conspiracy that the system is corrupt and more specifically that Biden will be used as “a tool by the same global interests who have very sick plans for [Trump supporters], your communities and your children.”

This narrative powers some of the QAnon conspiracy theories that motivated Trump-supporting rioters to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Some QAnon supporters claim that a secret cabal of Jewish people controls the world and sexually abuse and traffic Christian children for their blood, an antisemitic trope based on “blood libel.” Trump pointedly refused to denounce the conspiracy theory when questioned about it in an August 2020 press conference and again during a televised town hall in his campaign for reelection.

During the attack on the Capitol, which was incited by Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud, numerous antisemitic slogans were on display. One protester who breached the Capitol wore a sweatshirt that read, “Camp Auschwitz” and “work brings freedom.” Another rioter was spotted wearing a shirt emblazoned with “6MWE,” which stands for “6 million wasn’t enough,” implying that more Jewish people should have died in the Holocaust.

Throughout 2021, prominent figures on the right such as U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and then Fox News host Tucker Carlson compared mask mandates to the Holocaust and the COVID-19 vaccine to “Nazi experiments.” On Jan. 23, 2022, Robert Kennedy Jr. compared measures to contain the virus to Nazi-era restrictions instituted as part of a genocidal campaign. In response, the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum issued a statement that his exploitation of “the tragedy of people who suffered, were humiliated, tortured and murdered by the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany” was a “sad symptom of moral and intellectual decay.”

In recent years, antisemitism has led to a deadly shooting at a Jewish market in Jersey City, New Jersey, another mass killing at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a hostage-taking at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas. In 2023, the Pittsburgh shooter was found guilty on 63 charges and sentenced to death.