The Anti-Defamation League, branded now as just ADL, is getting a lot of attention after its CEO Jonathan Greenblatt bragged on Twitter:
I had a very frank + productive conversation with @LindayaX yesterday about @X, what works and what doesn’t, and where it needs to go to address hate effectively on the platform. I appreciated her reaching out and I’m hopeful the service will improve. @ADL will be vigilant and give her and @ElonMusk credit if the service gets better… and reserve the right to call them out until it does.
The tweet itself was smug, but in itself cannot explain the firestorm that followed, including Elon Musk saying ADL had been trying to strangle the company, had cost is half its advertising revenue, and threatened to sue ADL for defamation.
Greenblatt’s tweet unleashed a torrent of animosity that had been building, including among people (like me) devoted to fighting antisemitism. Now everyone is talking about ADL.
But I’ve been speaking out against ADL for a long time, as have some other people frustrated how ADL took a good purpose – fighting antisemitism – and weaponized it for leftist political purposes under Greenblatt, much as SPLC weaponized the fight against racism for leftist political purposes. Both ADL and SPLC wield enormous power to ruin lives and businesses through putting people on “hate” lists, and leverage those lists to try to deplatform people and censor lawful political speech. These “hate” lists also are huge moneymakers for both ADL and SPLC, driving massive donations to these wealthy organizations.
Greenblatt has turned ADL into a vast political bully on a myriad of political issues that don’t touch upon antisemitism. It’s offensive, and does great harm to the fight against antisemitism that the charge of antisemitism has been so broadened that it means anything leftists like Greenblatt don’t like.
I’ve been quoted in the the New York Post, Inside the fight for ADL, which some Jewish critics call a tool of Democrats, and Fox News, Anti-Defamation League launches review of education content after Fox News Digital investigation:
The ADL’s post about “Engaging Young People in Conversations about Race and Racism” contained “key elements of critical race theory,” Legal Insurrection founder Bill Jacobson said.The article discussed how the “flip side of white privilege is structural racism, which oppresses and marginalizes people of color through societal institutions like education, law enforcement, voting, employment and other systems” and encouraged teachers to show MTV’s documentary “White People” to students.”Those concepts are accepted as fact as a starting point rather than open to debate. There are no counter-arguments presented,” Jacobson told Fox News Digital about the lesson plans he reviewed. “These lesson plans … reflect how ADL has lost its way. It substitutes racial justice dogma and ideology for fact-based analysis. This is not education, it’s manipulation.”
Legal Insurrection also has published articles about ADL’s partisanship almost since the day Greenblatt took over, including this 2017 guest post, Anti-Defamation League Gets Partisan, and the Damage May Be Irreparable.
More than anything, I’ve talked, and talked, and talked about the ADL problem, particularly with Jonathan Tobin of Jewish News Syndicate, including this December 14, 2021, broadcast which mostly concerned my Cornell Law School problems, William Jacobson: Boycotted for Publishing the Truth
Jonathan has written multiple articles and invited me to multiple podcasts to discuss the ADL problem.
ADL is ‘mired in leftist ideology’ (September 22, 2022):
The revelation that the school curricula being distributed by the Anti-Defamation League as part of their anti-hate programs are filled with critical race theory teachings is shocking, says JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin.But when seen in the context of everything that has happened during the Jewish defense agency’s transformation in the last several years under CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, it’s hardly surprising, he notes.According to Tobin, the critical race theory indoctrination being spread by the ADL illustrates that the vital Jewish defense agency has “betrayed its mission,” because “woke leftist ideas that legitimate racialist attitudes are linked to Jew hatred.”He explains that the ADL is now “mired in leftist ideology in which it has bought into the BLM agenda of equity as opposed to equality.” By emphasizing ideas about race and privilege even though doing so “gives a boost to the lies about Israel being an ‘apartheid state,’” the ADL “undermines the interests and security of the people they’re supposed to be standing up for,” he says.He’s then joined by LegalInsurrecution.com’s William Jacobson who explains that critical race theory is based on the idea that the American system is “completely corrupted, and completely racist, and … needs to be torn down.” Its goals, he says, are “the exact opposite of the American civil rights movement,” and seek to racialize society almost in the same way as apartheid-era South Africa.More than that, he argues, it has become inextricably linked with anti-Israel and anti-Semitic ideas about Jews being white oppressors.As Jacobson notes, the ADL has embraced all this because “it fits in with their left-wing narrative.” The organization, he says, has remade itself into a “social justice organization” and become “a functional arm of the Democratic Party.” In doing so, “They’ve burned bridges to anyone who is right of center. And that’s not healthy for the fight against anti-Semitism.”Though the group still defines in terms of combating anti-Semitism, it has ceased to do so, becoming a mere part of the political back and forth in a divided society, in which they prefer to demonize former President Donald Trump and his supporters, he says.Moreover, by involving itself in efforts to censor free speech on the Internet, the ADL fails to realize that the same tactics can be used by leftist elites to target Jews and supporters of Israel, he adds.
Why did the ADL just defend discrimination against Asians? (July 6, 2023):
There’s more than hypocrisy involved in American liberal attitudes about Israel’s justiciary and their attacks on America’s Supreme Court. According to JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin, the contradiction between their belief that granting unlimited power to Israel’s high court is synonymous with democracy and their efforts to undermine the independence of the U.S. courts is a matter of partisanship and ideology. But such inconsistency, especially when the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings are limited in scope and defend the Constitution while Israel’s top judges believe their ideas about “reasonableness,” should be the basis for law, which itself is a threat to the future of democracy.Tobin is joined by law professor and LegalInsurrection.com founder William Jacobson to discuss the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions on affirmative action, free speech and curbing the power of the executive to cancel student debt for loans taken. Jacobson said that banning using race as a determining factor in college admissions is a direct rebuke of the effort to impose diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies throughout American society. Jacobson also described the court’s backing of the right of a conservative Christian to refuse to use her talents to design a gay wedding website as a defense of free speech, not discrimination.The two honed in on the willingness of Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League to defend discrimination against Asians, as well as their opposition to the exercise of religious liberty by Christians. Jacobson’s answer is that they are now wholly committed to progressive partisan political positions rather than backing the principles they had formally supported.“Follow the money,” said Jacobson. Their funding from corporations and groups backing leftist positions means “they might as well just be on the payroll of the Democratic National Committee.”
Jonathan and I even shared an entire webinar in February 2021 devoted to ADL, sponsored by The Jewish Leadership Project:
But wait, there’s more. I’ve also spoken on Breitbart Radio about ADL:
It will be interesting to see where the ADL-Twitter (X) dustup goes. But one thing is beyond doubt, Jonathan Greenblatt needs to go.
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