The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State by Emmaia Gelman

Discussion Questions

• What kind of organization is the ADL (political? ethnic? a state agency? something else?) and how does it fit into the larger U.S. political landscape?
• What information is surprising, and more importantly, why is it surprising? What are the mechanisms that create the idea of what’s normal, what’s expected?
• If everyone writes down definitions for one or two key terms in this history — race, racism, antisemitism, hate, liberalism, Zionism, anti-Zionism — does everyone write the same thing? What are the points of divergence, and where do they come from?
• What are the convergences between the ADL’s politics and white/Christian nationalism? How deep and essential are they, or how circumstantial and fleeting?
• How do you see the ADL shifting throughout its history, and what do its shifts respond to?
• What interventions are needed in politics, popular knowledge, grassroots power, etc. in order to change how the ADL is positioned in U.S. politics?

Supplementary Materials and Resources

Yoav Shamir, dir., “Defamation” (film), Yoav Shamir Films, 2009

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Gerald Horne, “Who Lost the Cold War? Africans and African Americans,” Diplomatic History 20, no. 4 (1996): 613–26 | Read on JStor

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Shane Burley and Naomi Bennett. “Examining the ADL’s Antisemitism Audit.” Jewish Currents, June 17, 2024.

In mid-April, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released a report tallying the total number of antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2023. The annual audit highlights 8,873 instances of antisemitic “harassment, vandalism and assault”—a 140% increase from the organization’s 2022 numbers, and the highest since the organization began tracking such incidents in 1979. The report was quickly picked up by Axios, The Seattle Times, and various local TV stations, among other outlets, and often uncritically cited as evidence that the movement for a ceasefire in Gaza is a wellspring of rising antisemitism. “The ADL . . . tracked 1,352 anti-Israel rallies where antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric was observed after October 7,” wrote Nicole Chavez in CNN’s summary of the report, which also focused on the ADL’s count of 922 allegedly antisemitic incidents on college campuses.

The ADL has not been shy about pushing this narrative: Just after it released the audit, the organization joined calls by congressional Republicans for law enforcement to shut down campus Gaza solidarity encampments. “President Shafik must invite NYPD back on campus or Governor Kathy Hochul should direct the National Guard to protect our kids,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt posted on X in late April in response to Columbia’s ongoing encampment. Greenblatt and the ADL have insisted that the encampments are hotbeds of antisemitic vitriol, undermining Jewish safety and building on an unprecedented spike in antisemitism since October 7th—a spike they say is substantiated in statistical reports like the audit. | Keep reading

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Emmaia Gelman, “Astroturf Antisemitism Watchdogs,” Jadaliyya – جدلية, April 13, 2024

A wave of intensified repression has engulfed university campuses since Israel launched its genocide in Gaza in October. To frame discussion of Israeli colonialism and Palestinian freedom as “anti-Jewish hate,” these efforts unite a diffuse set of tactics: megadonors, corporate advertising, lawfare, civil rights complaint—and astroturfing, meaning they work through dozens of small, opaque organizations simulating a grassroots movement. The result is a new ecology of antisemitism watchdogs that is reshaping the terrain of US political, academic, and cultural life. But their playbook is familiar from other battles against the right, and so are the possibilities for resisting their assaults. | Keep reading

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