Report: Antisemitic incidents on the rise in California

Greater than 500 antisemitic acts focusing on Jewish folks, together with assault, vandalism and harassment, had been dedicated in California final yr, a rise of greater than 40% from 2021, underscoring a proliferation of hate crimes and extremism within the state, in keeping with a report launched Tuesday by the Anti-Defamation League.

The ADL additionally cited rising collaboration amongst extremist and white supremacist teams in a report detailing a variety of hate crimes and violence. California noticed a minimum of six murders by members of extremist teams in 2021 and 2022 — essentially the most within the nation — with three being linked to white supremacist teams, the report discovered.

The report on California comes after the Anti-Defamation League launched one other report, in collaboration with Tel Aviv College’s Heart for the Research of Modern European Jewry, that reveals antisemitic incidents are at a brand new excessive worldwide, with the upward pattern intensifying within the U.S.

In California, it discovered a minimum of 518 antisemitic acts had been dedicated in 2022, second solely to New York with 580 incidents. That determine is a 41% enhance from 2021, it mentioned.

“There is a frequent thread that connects each a part of California, north and south, east and west, and that is hate in all its varieties,” Oren Segal, vp of the Anti-Defamation League Heart of Extremism, mentioned at a information convention Tuesday. “Addressing the proliferation of extremism, antisemitism and hate will not be solely a profound problem, it is without doubt one of the challenges of our time.”

The civil rights group’s report, referred to as “Hate within the Golden State”, additionally discovered a rise in native white supremacist teams working collectively to unfold propaganda and strengthen their presence throughout California. It reveals how established teams such because the Proud Boys proceed to focus on native LGBTQ+ occasions, particularly drag queen story hours.

Supremacist or antisemitic teams such because the Goyim Protection League, Lively Golf equipment and the White Lives Matter community are among the many driving forces behind efforts in California to unfold white supremacy ideology and set up anti-LGBTQ+ protests, the report mentioned. Final yr, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 296 situations of white supremacist propaganda being distributed in California, a bounce of 91% from 155 situations in 2021.

It additionally particulars violence or harassment dedicated by supporters of QAnon, a baseless conspiracy idea that believed former President Donald Trump was waging a secret marketing campaign in opposition to enemies within the “deep state” in addition to a baby intercourse trafficking ring run by satanic pedophiles and cannibals. It discovered supporters of the group had been answerable for a minimum of three violent assaults in 2021 and 2022, together with the assault of Paul Pelosi, the husband of then-U.S. Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in San Francisco final yr.

Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener, a homosexual Jewish lawmaker from San Francisco, referred to as the report’s findings “completely horrifying.” Wiener mentioned he has been the goal of hate speech and demise threats.

“We need not see statistics to know that there was an explosion of hate and extremism,” Wiener mentioned on the information convention. “We’d like, as a matter of public security and public well being in California, to be very clear that we’re going to have a zero-tolerance coverage for this sort of extremist bigoted conduct.”

The Anti-Defamation League says it has recorded a minimum of 400 incidents the place native lawmakers throughout the nation had been harassed or threatened between 2020 and 2022, with 64 situations in California.

California lawmakers and officers are trying to deal with the pattern. Final week, the Civil Rights Division unveiled a statewide non-emergency hate crime hotline. The hotline, serving as an alternative choice to regulation enforcement, helps join individuals who expertise or witness hate crimes with numerous sources, together with authorized and psychological well being help.

Democratic Assemblymember Cory Jackson of Riverside, who authored a invoice that may create a hate crime intervention unit throughout the California Division of Public Well being, mentioned the extremism motion is gaining traction.

“This motion is nicely organized, is nicely funded, they usually have a sport plan, and they’re executing that sport plan,” he mentioned. “That is our alternative to creating certain that we do not take this flippantly.”