People waving Nazi swastika flags argue with conservatives during a protest outside the Tampa Convention Center, where Turning Point USA’s (TPUSA) Student Action Summit (SAS) was being held, in Tampa, Florida, US July 23, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Marco Bello
Antisemitic Americans are more likely to to support violence to achieve their political goals as well as antidemocratic and conspiratorial beliefs compared to the general population, according to a new survey.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Threats (CPOST) on Thursday released a survey, titled “Antisemitism and Support for Political Violence,” which found a strong correlation between antisemitism, support for political violence, and antidemocratic conspiracy theories on both ends of the political spectrum.
The survey was unveiled amid a global surge in antisemitic incidents following the Palestinian terror group Hamas’ ongoing terror onslaught against Israel, with numerous demonstrations erupting of activists defending Hamas and denouncing not only the Jewish state but also the Jewish community.
Americans on the political right who accept anti-Jewish tropes are three times more likely than the general population to approve of violence to restore Donald Trump to the US presidency, according to the ADL/CPOST findings. Meanwhile, antisemitic Americans on the left are similarly much more likely than their fellow countrymen to endorse violence to achieve their own political goals, such as preventing restrictions on abortion, protecting voting rights for minorities, and preventing what they describe as police brutality.
The survey of 8,000 Americans, conducted earlier this year, also showed that 33 percent of antisemites would support partitioning the country between Red/Republican and Blue/Democratic states, compared to 16% for the rest of the country. A similar number of antisemitic Americans (31%) support ignoring the US Constitution, compared to 13% for the rest of the country.
“There’s a dangerous nexus between the increase in antisemitism across society and the deep distrust of longstanding democratic norms, institutions, and processes,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement discussing the survey’s findings. “This is not limited to one party or ideology — we found support for political violence on the far left and the extreme right. Belief in antisemitic tropes and support for political violence go hand-in-hand.”
CPOST director and University of Chicago political science professor Robert Pape added, “Our joint CPOST/ADL report is the first to reveal concrete evidence that the toxic threats of rising antisemitism and support for political violence are not only rising in our country but are also linked in disturbing ways.”
Pape said as well that “working to prevent antisemitism and political violence are not separate challenges. The more we all work together to diminish one, also diminishes the other.”
The new survey adds to the ADL’s previous reports examining the relationship between political extremism and antisemitism.
In August, the organization released a study shining a light on far left political parties in Europe that promote “claims that Jewish cabals control politics and media; Holocaust trivialization; equating Israel with the Nazi regime; and the false charge that accusations of antisemitism are used to silence criticism of Israel.” Such messaging was found in leftist movements in France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Germany, where Israel-centered antisemitism “is a major contributor to the normalization of antisemitism, making it difficult to combat the phenomenon in general.”
In the US, college campuses have become hotbeds for Israel-focused antisemitism and support for terrorism. The group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), for example, expressed on at least 10 occasions during the 2022-2023 academic school year admiration for Leila Khaled, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a US-designated terror group, according to a recent ADL report. Khaled is known for previously hijacking two planes.
Other SJP chapters at the University of Texas, Dallas, New York University Law School, and the University of Massachusetts posted violent images containing PLFP’s logo and guns. In January, the University of Chicago’s SJP chapter honored Khairy Alqam — who murdered seven Israeli civilians exiting a synagogue in Jerusalem — in a collage titled “Honoring the Martyrs.”
Meanwhile, propaganda activities by US white supremacist groups soared by nearly 40 percent last year, the ADL found.
One group called the Goyim Defense League (GDL) has been especially active in organizing rallies across the US and distributing violently antisemitic messages. In February, GDL crashed the Daytona 500 speedway race, holding up signs that said, “Henry Ford was right about the Jews” and “Communism is Jewish.” That same month, one of its activists, 41-year-old Canadian citizen Robert Wilson, flashed an antisemitic message onto the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
White supremacists are also reaching new audiences through music streaming platforms, the ADL’s Center on Extremism reported last September.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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