Content warning: This post includes an anti-Semitic direct quotation from a former member of a Nazi group.

2018 was the third-worst year on record for anti-Semitic incidences in the US.

That’s the good news in a report just released by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The bad news is that 2017 was worse. And that was a 57% jump over the 2016 numbers, which were also incredibly high. In other words, we’re in a period of anti-Semitism that mirrors the rise of Trumpism in the US and a global resurgance of hate.

Anti-Semitism is foundational to white power movements, the greatest threat to domestic security that the US faces. One former member of Atomwaffe, a Nazi terrorist group that operates in the US, said of his indoctrination into the group, “Jews were the number-one enemy. We would say the Jews are the virus, and the people of color, the homosexuals, they were the symptoms.” In contrast, anti-hate activists and scholars of hate recognize that anti-Semitism is the central problem. While forms of hate intertwine–a racist is almost always a misogynist, for example–anti-Semitism provides metaphors and models that other are borrowed by other forms of hate.

Above, PBS’ Frontline has produced four documentaries in its Documenting Hate series. Learn more about anti-Semitism in white power movements in New American Nazis, above.

It may be easy to ignore anti-Semitism if you aren’t Jewish, but we do so at our own peril, because other kinds of hate aren’t far behind.

Rebecca

PS. Thanks to my friend Renee for sharing the ADL report with me. If you are a Christian and aren’t following the ADL, please sign up to stay informed.