AFTER COMBING THROUGH THE ADL’S DATA, it became clear to us that this reassessment couldn’t provide a clear picture of American antisemitism in 2023, because the audit does not sufficiently differentiate by degree and often does not share enough information to determine whether incidents are clearly antisemitic. Still, our analysis yielded some helpful takeaways.
After our reassessment, the ADL’s data still shows that organized white nationalism was responsible for more incidents in 2023 than every year since 2017, and that there is a clear correlation between antisemitism and anti-LGBTQ organizing (we found that over 350 incidents of the 813 coded as “anti-LGBTQ” last year were also coded as antisemitic or associated with white nationalist groups).
It also shows that some people do wrap antisemitic views in the language of Palestine solidarity—for example, on November 22nd a man yelled “Free Palestine” while throwing a rock at an Orthodox Jewish man in Williamsburg, a type of encounter that shows up occasionally in the data—but that very few of the verifiably antisemitic items tracked actually took place at rallies and events organized by prominent Palestine advocacy groups.
Far more frequently, anti-Zionist rhetoric that was also antisemitic appeared at actions by white nationalist groups: For example, on October 28th, the far-right National Justice Party (NJP) held a rally that featured signs with slogans such as “No More Jewish Wars.”
On the whole, when we examined the unambiguous cases of antisemitism, we found that the most frequently identified sources—noted in nearly 1,200 incidents—were groups that are part of the white nationalist movement, such as the NJP, Patriot Front, the Goyim Defense League (GDL), Blood Tribe, and White Lives Matter.
However, the more time we spent with the ADL’s antisemitism audit, the clearer it became that the dataset itself is severely structurally limited—and may significantly undercount right-wing antisemitic incidents. One fundamental problem is the way that the audit’s data is separated from other categories on the H.E.A.T. Map: White nationalist incidents that don’t explicitly name Jews are tracked as White Supremacist Propaganda or White Supremacist Events but not as Antisemitic Incidents, leaving them out of the audit.
There’s a strong case to be made that all such incidents should also be included in the audit, even if they do not include explicit antisemitism. (Our cursory survey of those other datasets did turn up explicitly antisemitic incidents that should have appeared in the audit based on the current methodology, like an instance of Patriot Front passing out flyers with the Nazi slogan “blood and soil” and references to antisemitic websites, as well as a handful of overtly anti-Jewish events hosted by the virulently antisemitic GDL.)
As activist Erik K. Ward has argued, antisemitism is not just a feature but the “theoretical core” of modern American white nationalism; advancement of their cause is necessarily the advancement of an ideologically committed, antisemitic political project. If we added the additional White Supremacist Propaganda and White Supremacist Events entries that were not originally included in the antisemitism audit to the ADL’s overall count, it would bring the total number of antisemitic incidents to 15,564.
Since we found that most alleged antisemitic incidents in the Palestine solidarity movement lacked merit, the legitimately antisemitic Palestine-related incidents would appear as mere statistical noise when compared with the stunning growth of organized white nationalism.
But even this radical revision of the ADL’s methodology wouldn’t address the basic constraints of measuring American antisemitism through a straightforward tally of individual incidents. By failing to weigh incidents according to reach and impact, and mostly ignoring structural or political factors, the audit erases the difference in significance between random, uncoordinated incidents and those tied to a public movement to spread antisemitism.
White nationalist leader Nick Fuentes, known for his admiration of Adolf Hitler and his antisemitic rants against “Talmudic Jews,” is today one of the most influential far-right leaders in the country, with over 300,000 followers on X. Nevertheless, Fuentes’s name appears only once in the antisemitism audit. The ADL’s data is much more poised to capture random swastika graffiti and stray anti-Zionist comments than dangerous Christian nationalist movements like Fuentes’s “Groypers,” and is thus unable to connect individual experiences of antisemitism with the larger systemic forces perpetuating these ideas.
Ultimately, this haphazard approach—as well as the mode of data collection, which favors certain kinds of incidents and does nothing to ensure that it produces a representative sample—renders the audit unable to speak meaningfully to the prevalence or impact of antisemitism in the U.S. It remains an open question whether a sufficiently sophisticated methodology might produce a more reliable picture, and thus aid the task of combating antisemitism. But it is abundantly clear that the ADL’s audit and its uncritical representation in the media do not serve those aims.
(Emphasis original.)