On November 17, 2022, in remarks that went largely unreported outside of Jewish and Israeli media, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that the prevalence of antisemitic hate crimes in the United States is rising to a level of “national priority” as the Jewish community is “getting hit from all sides.”
Less than 48 hours later, the NYPD thwarted yet another imminent terror attack on a synagogue. Suspects Christopher Brown and Matthew Mahrer were stopped at New York City’s Penn Station on November 19 after authorities identified Brown as the culprit behind a series of Twitter threats. The men, one wearing a Nazi swastika armband, possessed a firearm, ammunition, and a hunting knife, police revealed.
Brown and Mahrer were reportedly radicalized after being exposed to white supremacist content on social media.
In a live stream on his Goyim TV website, Jon Minadeo II, founder of the neo-Nazi movement Goyim Defense League (GDL), that same day offered a prayer for “all the people that are suffering in jail for exposing the synagogue of Satan.” He added: “Much love to all those men that have stood up and fought against Jewish supremacy, and please keep them safe.” The video has thus far received some 4,000 views.
Founded in 2018, Jon Minadeo II’s GDL network is responsible for countless anti-Jewish events over the past few years, including harassing parents at a Jewish preschool in Florida, hanging a banner in California that stated “Kanye is right about the Jews,” and posing as Orthodox Jews to apologize for “lying” about the Holocaust and 9/11.
The white supremacist group ‘Goyim Defense League’ or GDL is suspected to be behind the atrocious protest. GDL is behind dozens upon dozens of antisemitic harassment campaigns across America. pic.twitter.com/Gp8RS1IKvy
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) July 24, 2022
The GDL has also endorsed the BDS movement’s Mapping Project, a list of Jewish institutions and entities in Massachusetts that are supposedly connected to the “colonization of Palestine” and the “harms that [it sees] as linked, such as policing, US imperialism, and displacement/ethnic cleansing.”
With another month to go until the end of 2022, the number of incidents attributed to the Goyim Defense League is already up by more than 300 percent since last year — but the media have seemingly failed to take notice.
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Troubling Rise in Antisemitic Incidents Linked to Goyim Defense League
According to the StopAntisemitism NGO, which has been tracking the activities of Jon Minadeo II and the Goyim Defense League, the network in 2022 committed at least 86 hate crimes against American Jews. By comparison: on average, the FBI tracks a total of 925 antisemitic incidents every year. Accordingly, the GDL would be responsible for almost 10% of all documented hate crimes targeting Jews.
In 2021, StopAntisemitism only reported 20 incidents involving the neo-Nazi group, suggesting a troubling rise in its popularity.
However, national media outlets have not reflected this development in their reporting. Indeed, over the past 11 months, a sample of 18 leading US news organizations, including The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Associated Press, published a mere 19 articles that made mention of the GDL — or 0.22 per hate crime.
The mainstream media’s refusal to dig deeper into the organization responsible for the rising tide of antisemitism comes as little surprise. As HonestReporting previously highlighted in a comprehensive study on this subject, Jews are the victims of more hate crimes per capita than all other minority groups in the United States. Nonetheless, anti-Jewish attacks receive disproportionately little media coverage, by a worrying margin.
In our February 10 report, we drew attention to how hate crimes perpetrated against Muslims receive the most news attention, even as such offenses have declined in recent years, which suggests a correlation between adequate reportage and the increased safety of minority groups.
Related Reading: HonestReporting Research Study: Comparing US Media Coverage of Hate Crimes Against Minorities, Including Jews
Dark Antisemitic Shadow
Every Thanksgiving, Jews across America express their gratitude for the safe haven that the United States provided to them and their ancestors, in line with George Washington’s famous 1790 letter guaranteeing that the US government “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
Yet this year, a dark antisemitic shadow looms over the celebrations. As antisemitism reaches a fever pitch throughout the United States, journalists must recognize the GDL’s leading role in inciting anti-Jewish violence.
Only by shining a light on hate crimes can we ensure that America remains “di goldene medine” (the golden country) for its 7.5 million Jews.
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