The Anti-Defamation League has surveilled leftwing activists and “regularly tracks, profiles and sends threat assessments of individuals” it perceives as a problem, according to an internal email obtained by the Guardian.
The May 2020 email was sent from ADL’s head of security to chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt and unspecified employees of the Jewish group, which labels itself the “leading anti-hate organization in the world”. A self-styled civil rights organization, it plays an outsize role in shaping public sentiment and national policy around antisemitism, but it has been plagued by controversy in recent years over its attacks on Israel critics and social justice groups.
The memo shows the ADL collected information on a Black Indianapolis activist, Tatjana Rebelle, who worked on Deadly Exchange, a national campaign against an ADL-backed program to send US police officials for training with the Israeli military.
The memo is the latest evidence that the ADL has spied on, surveilled or tracked its opponents on the left and right. In 1993, the ADL faced multiple lawsuits and an FBI investigation over a nationwide intelligence network it developed over the span of several decades with an investigator on its payroll, Roy Bullock.
Bullock was alleged to have infiltrated or kept files on the United Auto Workers union, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, neo-Nazi groups, Mother Jones magazine, the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP and many more. He also allegedly sold personal information on US politicians and others to the apartheid South African government at the ADL’s behest. The ADL initially backed the apartheid regime, labeling Nelson Mandela’s party “totalitarian, anti-humane, anti-democratic, anti-Israel, and anti-American”.
In the wake of the far-right’s deadly 2017 Charlottesville rally, the ADL, which also tracks white supremacy, claimed it did not “directly” track leftwing groups. However, it put up a post on its website around that time encouraging police to surveil and infiltrate anti-fascist groups.
The ADL has also argued against stopping arms shipments to Israel to prevent their genocide from continuing…
They hate the right, but they also hate people against fascism. Because Israel keeps doing a lot of fascist shit.
Well this isn’t going to generate/reinforce any anti-semitic conspiracies is it. 🤔
/s
Huh, their approach is arguably quite defamatory. How about that.
It might be a bit on the nose, but “Rebelle” is a fucking badass name for a human rights activist! 👌✊
Also, fuck the ADL and the apartheid regime they work for.
