A week ago the Times of Israel reported that the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) produced what’s been called a “’murder hit list’ of 36 ‘leaders’ of the alt-right and so-called ‘alt-lite’ movement.”1

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Besides well-known alt-right leader Richard Spencer and others like him, the ADL listed Gavin McInnes, Jack Posobiec, Mike Cernovich, Milo Yiannopoulos and Lucian Wintrich.2 Basically, either people who have supported Donald Trump or reporters/filmmakers who disagree with liberal ideology.

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(Check out the video below. Here’s the thing, you don’t have to like Gavin or agree with HOW he communicates but free-speech is paramount in our society and accusing people who rub you the wrong way, of things like anti-Semitism or extremism, isn’t helpful and won’t stop anything. In fact, if anything, it emboldens people who ARE extremists.)

Officials at the ADL said the lists were important to help understand and track the movements and ideologies they represent, given the “growing prominence of hate groups in the US under President Donald Trump.”3

“In the past year, members of the alt right and alt lite have been increasingly at odds with each other, even as they hold public rallies to promote their extreme views,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said. “We want people to understand who the key players are and what they truly represent.” 4

According to Jonathan Greenblatt, former Special Assistant to Barack Obama, in the last year, the alt right has gone from relative obscurity to being “one of the United States’ most visible extremist movements,” (thanks to the unchecked rhetoric used during the 2016 presidential campaign). But, while keeping an eye on racist groups is a good idea, the ADL is painting with a broad brush that allows them to call any conservative movement leader in America today, a white supremacist and anti-Semite…which is simply not true.

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One need simply look at the names on that list. For instance, Lucian Wintrich, the openly gay (and yet conservative) grandson of a Nazi occupation survivor (his grandfather, a Jew, fled the Nazis in Poland and came to America penniless)- how is he a racist, anti-Semite and right-wing extremist? HOW?

Not willing to be targeted and go quietly, Mike Cernovich responded via Twitter5:

 

The actions of the ADL are no different than the claims they are making against the right and most certainly are not helpful in any way. We will monitor this story and update you as more information becomes available.

Sources and References

  1. Conservative Firing Line, July 19, 2017.
  2. Conservative Firing Line, July 19, 2017.
  3. Conservative Firing Line, July 19, 2017.
  4. Conservative Firing Line, July 19, 2017.
  5. Conservative Firing Line, July 19, 2017.