Research finds white supremacy propaganda on rise in U.S.

New York, U.S. | Xinhua | U.S. white-supremacist groups continued in 2021 to distribute propaganda at a historically high rate, part of what some experts call “an increasingly panicked reaction to growing diversity in America,” The Washington Post last week cited a recent report.

The Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) research found 4,851 reported cases of white-supremacist propaganda in 2021, including racist, antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning) items.

That was down 5 percent from 2020 but way up from 294 cases in 2017, when the anti-hate organization began observing a rise in white-supremacist activity, according to the report. ADL researchers found 1,206 incidents of propaganda in 2018 and 2,714 in 2019.

The ADL found a 27 percent increase in distributions of antisemitic propaganda, with 277 incidents in 2020 and 352 in 2021, including stickers outside a California synagogue proclaiming “Hitler was right” and dozens of drops across the country of fliers blaming Jews for the coronavirus.

Carla Hill, the report’s author and associate director of the ADL Center On Extremism, said white-supremacist activity and organizing took off in the past decade as racists became “more and more desperate, losing the chance to have America be White. And 2017 was the pinnacle point.”

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Xinhua