Omissions and Inaccuracies in ADL’s “2021 Murder and Extremism” Report Led to Inaccurate Conclusions
News Press Release
February 23, 2022

Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton A. Klein and ZOA Director of Research & Special Projects Liz Berney, Esq. released the following analysis:

ZOA obviously agrees that white supremacists are bigoted and dangerous. But, as the recent Islamist hostage-taker at the Colleyville synagogue and the Black Lives Matter activist who attempted to assassinate a Jewish mayoral candidate demonstrated, we dare not ignore or downplay the severe threats from other quarters.  

Unfortunately, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) just issued a report downplaying other threats. ADL’s “Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2021” report touts up-front these misleading claims: “Most of the murders (26 of 29) were committed by right wing extremists”; “White supremacists killed more people in 2021 than any other type of extremist”; and “No high-casualty extremist-related shooting spree occurred this past year.”

Significantly, ADL’s report omitted the worst extremist attack in 2021 – the Wisconsin Christmas parade massacre, perpetrated by a radical Black nationalist who tweeted that he wanted to kill whites and promoted anti-Jewish hate.

If ADL had included the Christmas parade massacre in its report, Black nationalists would have been responsible for the overwhelming majority of ideologically-motivated extremist murders in 2021.

ADL has also omitted certain attacks to manipulate the conclusions of its prior reports. For instance, an ADL report omitted the Islamist terrorist murders of Jews at the Los Angeles El Al counter (and claimed that these murders were not Islamist terrorism), in order to downplay Islamist migrants’ terror attacks(See “ADL Report Underestimates/Downplays Islamist Migrants’ Terrorism, May 7, 2018.)

Interestingly, as the new ADL report’s “fine print” acknowledges, most of the “extremist” murders listed in ADL’s “Murder and Extremism in 2021” report were actually non-ideological “white on white” crimes. These included domestic violence (white supremacists or other whites killing family members or intervenors); white supremacists killing each other or rival white supremacist gang members; a drug-fueled horrific attack on a white maid; and a random killing of a white man on a pier. ADL also wrongly claimed that a murder was perpetrated by a “sovereign citizen” although it was actually a “Black on Black” crime; and wrongly claimed that another perpetrator was a “sovereign citizen” although the article ADL cited provided no evidence of this designation.

The only “ideological” (probably racially motivated) murders cited in ADL’s report are: one instance of a white supremacist murdering a Black couple; two instances of Black nationalists murdering white police officers, and a Muslim terrorist murdering a white female Lyft driver.

The ADL report’s “fine print” thus reveals that there were more racially-motivated extremist murders perpetrated against whites than the other way around. 

Of course, all these murders, both ideological and non-ideological, were horrifying. Ample attention needs to be paid to prevent murders from all quarters. Distorted reports don’t help matters.

The Omitted Christmas Parade Massacre: ADL’s report never mentions that radical Black nationalist Darrell Brooks drove an SUV into a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, zig-zagging in order to hit as many people as possible. Brooks massacred six innocent victims (all white, including an eight-year old child and an 81-year-old) and wounded another 62 innocent people, many critically. The Christmas parade killer’s motive is not a mystery. The NY Post and LawOfficer.com documented that Brooks’ social media posts called for violence against whites including elderly whites; spouted antisemitism; and parroted radical Black Lives Matter leaders and the anti-white ideology of the “Black Hebrew Israelites” (the belief of the murderers who murdered innocent Jews and another innocent worker at a Kosher store in Jersey City in 2020).

Brooks wrote: “So when we start bakk knokkin white people TF [the f—k] out, ion wanna hear it the old white ppl 2, KNOKK DEM TF OUT. PERIOD!!” Brooks also retweeted that people will “learn Hitler was right,” that Hitler “did the world a favor by killing” Jews, that the Jews are America’s “slave masters” and that “white Jews know that negroes are the real children of Israel.” Brooks also bragged that he was a “terrorist” and a “killer in the city,” in his rap songs.

Notably, Brooks perpetrated the horrendous Christmas parade massacre while he was out on $1,000 bail for another violent crime.

Additional Concerns About ADL’s Report:

  • Disappointingly, the ADL report’s “policy recommendations” do not call for the most effective measure to prevent murders: strengthening bail and the enforcement of criminal laws to keep violent criminals off the streets. Weak bail laws, defunding police, and police hesitancy (the “Ferguson effect”) have all contributed to a record 2021 crime wave.
  • The 29 murders discussed in ADL’s report are a tiny, unrepresentative fraction (0.001%) of the record high 21,570 murders that took place in the U.S. in 2021.
  • The ADL report omitted numerous other murders of police officers. For instance, there was no mention of Black Baltimore police officer Keona Holley, a mother of four children, who was murdered by two Black gunmen while she was sitting in her patrol car. The gunmen also shot an innocent Black man sitting in his car.
  • The ADL report only emphasized the danger of the existence of “more than 100” white supremacist gangs, while ignoring that there are more than 20,000 gangs of all varieties in the U.S. For instance, MS-13 has an estimated 10,000 MS-13 gang members in the U.S. (and 70,000 in the northern triangle). In August 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice announced an expanded indictment of MS-13 Los Angeles’ Fulton clique members for murdering 11 people, five of whom were hacked to death with machetes or knives. The gang required each prospective member to commit at least one homicide before becoming a full-fledged member (the Salvadoran initiation program). This sort of extremism surely should be in any report about murder and extremism in the U.S.
  • The DOJ also noted that the MS-13 gang “has been bolstered by an influx of young immigrants from Central America.” But notably, the ADL report’s “policy recommendations” do not call for strengthening immigration enforcement and stronger vetting of immigrants—important ways to reduce the number of violent gang members on the streets.
  • ADL’s report ignores “Black on Black” crime, to the detriment of its Black victims. John Ayala, the grandfather of 11-year-old Davon McNeil, who was shot dead during a 2020 Fourth of July celebration in Washington, D.C., explained, “Everybody’s just saying, they’re tired, tired of shootings in the community. Everybody’s running around here like they’re Uzi-toting, dope-sucking psychopathic killing machines. We’re protesting for months, for weeks, saying, ‘Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter.’ Black lives matter it seems like, only when a police officer shoots a black person. What about all the black-on-black crime that’s happening in the community?” (See video.) Isn’t what this bereaved grandfather described also extremism?
  • The ADL report portrays domestic violence as a particularly right wing phenomenon, thereby doing a disservice to other domestic violence victims. ADL speculates that white supremacists’ “attitudes towards women that range from traditionalist and patriarchal all the way to the outright misogyny common among alt right adherents . . . may have played a role in some or many of these deadly [domestic violence] incidents.” In fact, the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) states that “Domestic violence is prevalent in every community.” Further, NCADV reported that American Indian, Alaskan native and Black women experience higher rates of intimate partner physical violence than other groups.

We hope that the ADL will correct the omissions and other inaccuracies in their “2021 Murder and Extremism Report” to enable ADL to come to more accurate conclusions and recommendations. 

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