The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was known by many as a charitable organization devoted to fighting hate groups, particularly those on the Far Right such as white supremacists and neo-Nazis. It was recently indicted for helping bankroll such groups. It allegedly did so as a fund-raising ploy, underwriting extremist activities which it then could cite in its mass mailings as shocking evidence of the organization’s need for more funding to counter those very activities.
If true, the damage done by the SPLC goes far beyond those covered in the indictment. The SPLC has always been virtually silent on the scourge of extremism coming from sources other than the Far Right - from, for example, the Red-Green alliance: the Far Left and Islamists. The SPLC’s systematically overstating the threats emanating from the Far Right has almost certainly served to further avert the public’s gaze from hate-filled assault on the nation emanating from other sources.
Sadly, other organizations supposedly committed to fighting hatred - while not funding Far Right hate groups to amplify their perceived importance, as the SPLC is accused of doing - have likewise focused on pernicious Far Right groups and downplayed other entities sowing hatred in America.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which exists to fight ethnic, religious and racial hatred, particularly antisemitism, is a case in point. Three days after the October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, the ADL released a report entitled “White Supremacist Leaders Applaud Hamas Violence Against Israelis,” documenting the celebratory spewings in online posts by several neo-Nazi and white supremacist leaders and groups. It offered no comparable reports on Islamists and leftists who, at the same time and in much greater numbers, were celebrating Hamas and vilifying Israel and Jews.
In subsequent months, the ADL’s online “Hate Symbols Database” offered 214 examples of symbols and the hate groups using them, all neo-Nazi, white racist and related groups. There were zero examples of antisemitic Islamist groups and their symbols then proliferating on campuses. As one observer noted in a televised report: “When the protests broke out at Columbia University and spread to campuses across the country, it was only natural for terrorist organizations to express their support. The flags, logos, signs, posters, patches, headbands and other paraphernalia of Hamas, Hezbollah and the [Popular] Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), are visible and have often gone viral on social media.” Likewise on prominent display on campuses but omitted from the ADL inventory of hate symbols were those exhibited by Far Left groups, such as stars of David crossed out or equated to swastikas.
Only belatedly, and when the displays of antisemitism from non-Far Right sources became too blatant and widespread for the ADL to continue ignoring, did it begin addressing seriously those sources.
Elements of Reform Judaism, including among its leadership, have been explicit in declaring their reluctance to call out Jew-hatred other than that of the Far Right. They have done so, for instance, in the context of the Reform Movement’s announcing several years ago its opposition to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism being codified in law. (As of November 1, 2024, forty-five nations had adopted the definition, including the United States, as well as thirty-seven state governments and ninety-six American county and city governments.) The Reform announcement particularly objected to elements of the IHRA definition related to Israel. Among the examples of attacks on Israel that the IHRA deems antisemitic are: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” and “Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”
Why would the Reform Movement oppose such attacks on Israel being labeled antisemitic? The Movement, in stating its opposition, refers to concerns about “potentially problematic punitive action to circumscribed speech, efforts which have been particularly aimed at college students and human rights activists.” In essence, it refuses to recognize as hateful a type of speech that typically comes from non-Far Right haters like “college students and human rights activists.” It further states that the IHRA definition’s Israel examples “must not divert attention from the more frequent manifestations of antisemitism, too often violent, emanating from new streams in the hate movements... streams primarily associated with the Far Right.”
While antisemitism from the Far Right has been growing, is dangerous and certainly shouldn’t be downplayed, it is simply untrue to assert Far Right Jew-hatred is responsible for “the more frequent manifestations of antisemitism.” This was an obviously absurd claim to any unbiased observer before October 7, 2023, and is even more obviously so today. Far Left antisemitism has penetrated much more into the American mainstream, achieving a deep and widespread presence in higher education as well as K-12 classrooms, in the media, among cultural elites, in unions, and even in the halls of Congress. Far Right Jew-hatred, however poisonous and dangerous and however much it may be gaining ground, remains comparatively marginalized. Yet those Reform leaders that embraced the critique of the IHRA definition, like the leaders of the ADL, have sought all too often to divert their constituents’ gaze from the hate emanating from sources other than the Far Right. In doing so, they, hardly less than the SPLC, have deceived and betrayed those they claim to be protecting.
The consequences of that betrayal cannot be overstated. One factor that has virtually always served to advance the spread of antisemitism has been that it is typically cost-free for its promoters. With American Jews lulled by major legacy communal institutions into complacency and inaction about the major contemporary drivers of antisemitism - an antisemitism that has become, perhaps most notably, a key shaper of today’s Democratic Party policies - the result is a dearth of pushback and an easing of the path for purveyors of that hatred. The scope of the resulting dangers should be obvious to all Americans, Jews and non-Jews alike.
