More Deceit from the ADL

Credit Image: © Michael Brochstein/ZUMA

Major political and media figures argue that white supremacists are the biggest domestic terrorism threat to the United States. The Anti-Defamation League and its “Center on Extremism” (COE) are among the most powerful institutions pushing this view. However, its latest report on “Murder & Extremism in the United States 2021” shows only how absurd that view is. As we will see, of the 19 cases it cites, only one makes its case; the rest refute it.

The entire report is detached from reality. The first “key finding” is that “extremists regularly commit murders in the service of their ideology, in the service of a group or gang they may belong to, or while engaging in traditional, non-ideological criminal activities.”

Who are these “extremist” killers? The report offers no definition, but the ADL’s “Center on Extremism” does:

Extremism is a concept used to describe religious, social or political belief systems that exist substantially outside of belief systems more broadly accepted in society (i.e., “mainstream” beliefs). . . . Extremism can also be used to refer to the radical wings of broader movements, such as the anti-abortion movement or the environmental movement. Not every extremist movement is “bad.” The abolitionist movement is one example of an extreme movement that had admirable goals, but most extremist movements exist outside of the mainstream because many of their views or tactics are objectionable.

This is circular. Extremists are objectionable because they are outside the mainstream. They are outside the mainstream because they are objectionable. Does this make them more likely to be murderers? Vegans are “extreme.” How often do they kill people? There are many strange subcultures, but that doesn’t make them violent. The ADL even admits there can be “good” extremists.

Jews are about 2.4 percent of the American population, and their religious views are “outside the mainstream.” Does that make them potentially murderous extremists? Maybe they are “good” extremists.

So, what did 2021 add to the extremist crime wave that threatens American democracy? The ADL must be awfully disappointed to have to admit that “domestic extremists” killed only 29 people in 19 separate incidents. To put this in perspective, the CDC reports that in 2020, there were 24,576 murders. This year, 156 people were killed in shootings just over Memorial Day weekend.

The ADL report claims that 26 of the 29 murders “were committed by right-wing extremists,” two by “Black nationalists, and one by an Islamist extremist — the latter being the first such killing since 2018.” The report says there are new threats, “including QAnon adherents, people associated with the toxic masculinity subculture of the ‘manosphere’ and anti-vaccination movements.” The ADL’s enemies list seems to grow every year.

It’s important to note that if someone whom the ADL thinks might be a “white supremacist” killed someone — for any reason at all — it was a case of right-wing extremism and therefore a cause for alarm.

Unlike in some years’ reports, the ADL lists all 19 “extremist” incidents, so we can see just how mendacious its analysis is. Here they are:

1. December 27, 2021 — Lyndon McLeod was a white Denver man who killed five people and wounded a police officer, who then killed him. This was the deadliest incident, and the ADL claims McLeod was “an adherent of the toxic masculinity culture of the ‘manosphere.’” One of his victims was half-Mexican and one was a light-skinned woman who called herself a “proud Indigenous artist,” but there is no evidence race had anything to do with the killings.

McCloud knew four of his five victims and had even made it clear that he might kill them because he thought they had wronged him. As the supervisor of Denver’s Major Crimes Division explained, McLeod killed people with whom had “personal relationships, business relationships.” The one victim he didn’t know was a young white woman who worked as a hotel clerk, whom he killed when he was already on the run from the police.

The ADL/COE report made much of McLeod’s views about “hypermasculinity.” Ten years before his rampage, he threatened co-workers with a gun. Vice calls him a “minor figure in the ‘manosphere.’”

Vice has reported on “killer incels” — men who can’t get girlfriends — and refers to a “murky overlap between the manosphere and the far-right,” but Vice says McLeod apparently had no problem getting girlfriends. It adds, however, that he was so unstable that people who knew him “were not at all surprised” to learn what happened. The real question may be why he was on the loose. In any case, it is absurd for the ADL to call this “extremist” terror.

2. November 5, 2021 — Jessica Worsham, a white woman, shot and killed a white police officer, Lena Marshall, who was responding to a 911 call because Worsham refused to leave someone’s home. She was in a custody battle with her ex-husband, and the ADL report says she “was apparently angry with local government and law enforcement, in part because she feared authorities would take her children.” Her ex-husband says she was mentally ill.

Worsham had said she would go down “in a blaze of glory” if police interfered with her. It is ridiculous to claim that her vaguely anti-government views are politically relevant or make her an “extremist.” She also claimed she was psychic and had put a hex on the courthouse and a curse on a local judge. Does that make her a right-wing “extremist”?

3. October 29, 2021 — Braedon Chesser, whom the ADL calls “an adherent of the anti-government boogaloo movement and a member of a small militia group called the Sons of Liberty,” killed his wife, who had filed for divorce. He also shot it out with police, wounding a white officer. He then killed himself.

Some of those involved with the boogaloo “movement” are anti-police and have even tried to ally with Black Lives Matter, but none of that matters. This killing was strictly personal; there was nothing political about it at all.

4. October 24, 2021 — Jason Neumann, who was reportedly a member of the “Aryan Circle” prison gang, killed Wade Pierce. The victim was a white man, though the ADL does not tell you that. The killer had reportedly been arrested 20 times before. This was a crime by a white gang member against a white victim, which appears to have had no political motive at all.

5. September 29, 2021 — “Jeffrey Allen Burnham allegedly embarked upon a killing spree,” reports the ADL, “shooting a friend of his mother in Cumberland, then traveling the next day to Ellicott City and killing his brother and his brother’s wife.”

Mr. Burnham is white and all his victims were white. He apparently believed his brother, a pharmacist, knew something about a plot to give people poison COVID-19 vaccines. He turned himself in to the police, claiming he was “forced” to kill.

The ADL calls this right-wing extremism because the anti-vax movement has “a distinctly right-wing tone.”

6. August 29, 2021 — Imran Ali Rasheed (whom the Daily Beast calls a “Texas Man”) killed Lyft driver Isabella Lewis, who appears to have been a white woman or a light-skinned Hispanic. He then drove to a police station, opened fire, and was killed by the police. Press reports said Mr. Rasheed may have been inspired by foreign terrorist organizations, such as ISIS or Al-Qaeda, judging from a note he left in the car. The FBI investigated Mr. Rasheed from 2010 to 2013, but decided he posed no threat.

7. August 20, 2021 — The ADL says that Aidan Ingalls, an 18-year-old white man, killed himself after he shot a white married couple “in a seemingly random attack” near the South Haven beach in Michigan. The husband died; the wife survived. Ingalls had swastikas on his gun, had previously been investigated in 2018 for planning an attack on a school, and the ADL adds that “evidence found in that case included internet searches by Ingalls on white supremacist topics.”

Police arrested him for the 2018 school-attack scheme, and a judge sentenced the then 15-year-old to mental health counseling. Evidently the counseling didn’t work. “Unfortunately, what took place Friday was not a shock to a lot of us,” said Sheriff Dan Abbott after the 2021 shooting.

According to press reports, “Ingalls had written a sort of ‘hit list’ in the journal [he kept], listing over two dozen names, including classmates, teachers, celebrities, and President Donald Trump.” Only the ADL seems to think this was a right-wing political extremist murder.

8. August 17, 2021 — Othal Wallace, a black man, shot police officer Jason Raynor, a white man. Officer Raynor had asked Mr. Wallace, who was sitting in his car, if he lived in the nearby apartment. The confrontation was caught on camera.

THREAD (1 OF 2): A $100,000 reward is now available for anyone who can help authorities locate the man who shot one of our officers in the head earlier this evening.

The man we’re looking for is located in the video below. His name is Othal Wallace. He’s 29 years old. pic.twitter.com/hYHNqVLg8C

— Daytona Beach Police (@DaytonaBchPD) June 24, 2021

Mr. Wallace will be tried in April next year. He claimed to be a member of the New Black Panther Party, which both the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center call a hate group. It is anti-white and anti-Semitic. He was also a former member of the Not F***ing Around Coalition, a black militia group that staged armed marches in 2020. This appears to be an anti-white racial killing.

9. August 9, 2021 — Matthew Taylor Coleman, a white man, killed his young children. He had texted his wife that he was having “crazy thoughts” that he wished would go away.

Rolling Stone and the ADL claim he was motivated by QAnon, a nebulous “movement” based on a belief that President Donald Trump would arrest his enemies and destroy the Deep State. Mr. Coleman reportedly told federal authorities that QAnon “enlightened” him. He also said he killed his children because they had “serpent DNA,” and that he was receiving “signs and visions” about what he had to do to save the world. He clearly had mental problems.

10. August 3, 2021 — Shawn Lichtfuss, a white man, “snapped” during an argument with his wife and choked her to death. He then called a friend, said he was sorry for what he did, and turned himself in to police.

“Lichtfuss has a white supremacist past that includes vandalizing three synagogues with white supremacist graffiti and distributing handmade pro-Nazi fliers,” said the ADL. These things happened more than 20 years ago. His views had nothing to do with killing his wife, who was white.

11. June 26, 2021 — Nathan Allen drove a stolen truck into a building and shot two black people. He deliberately spared whites. He kept a handwritten notebook called “The Allen Diaries,” an allusion to The Turner Diaries by William Luther Pierce of the National Alliance, in which he reportedly wrote about the superiority of the white race. He was happily married, had a PhD, and no criminal history. His family and friends were shocked by what he did.

This is the only case in which a white man appears to have murdered blacks for racial reasons.

12. May 30, 2021 — Victor Thompson, a white man with a long criminal record, killed Darren Salaam, a black man. Mr. Thompson may have ties to the white prison gang the Aryan Brotherhood. However, the prosecutor suggested that the shooting was over a drug-deal debt Salaam owed him. Even the ADL had to conceded that “though the slain man was Black, police speculate there may have been a dispute over drugs.”

Mr. Thompson may not be fond of blacks, but prosecutors evidently didn’t think this was a racial murder.

13. May 21, 2021 — Natural Wise Joseph, a black man, killed Lashon Turner, another black man, outside a pawn shop. At trial, he claimed “Natural Wise Joseph” was his “strawman name,” and that he wouldn’t participate in court proceedings. This is a common tactic for Black “Moorish” groups and “sovereign citizens,” but Mr. Joseph eventually pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. The ADL conveniently left out the race of both the killer and his victim and called this a “right-wing extremism” murder.

14. May 16, 2021 — John Hilt and James Murphy, both white, killed James R. Kenney, also white. The ADL itself says: “[Kenney] was, according to authorities, a member of the Southwest Honkeys, a white supremacist prison gang. Hilt and Murphy are reportedly members of Family Values, a rival white supremacist prison gang. They were allegedly angry at Kenney due to previous encounters.” The killing had no political motivation.

If a Blood shoots a Crip is that a sign of dangerous black nationalism?

15. May 12, 2021 — The ADL writes: “[F]our alleged members of the New Mexico Aryan Brotherhood were involved in a shootout among themselves inside a vehicle. Three of the people involved, Michael Edward Sanchez, Brandon Torres, and James Fisher, died of gunshot wounds. The lone survivor, Richard Kuykendall, has been arrested, though so far only on a weapons charge.”

The Washington Post ran a story about the shooting. Why was this national news, any more than a Crip shooting other Crips would be national news? Again, the killings had no political motive.

16. April 20, 2021 — Stephen Havrilka, who reportedly has white supremacist tattoos, beat a hotel maid to death. The ADL doesn’t mention that she was white. Mr. Havrilka was found speaking gibberish, praying, and acting erratically. It took five people to subdue him. He reportedly has 19 previous felony convictions, and has been ruled incompetent to stand trial. A clinical psychiatrist found that he was not “capable of engaging in a lucid and productive conversation or to think clearly.”

It’s doubtful Mr. Havrilka could even understand “far right” ideas, let alone act on them. It seems, in the local sheriff’s words, that he’s just an “animal.”

17. April 13, 2021 — Brandon Engelman, reportedly a member of the “Fresnecks, a local white supremacist street gang,” shot and killed a man. The ADL does not mention the victim’s name. It was Pacer Dewayne Hampton, who appears to have been white. Authorities say there may have been a long-running dispute between the two men.

18. April 2, 2021 — Noah Green, a black man, rammed his vehicle into several Capitol Police officers, killing William Evans, who was white. The ADL notes that “there is evidence that he may have suffered from mental illness,” a consideration it doesn’t give to some of the white criminals in its report. The report does not, however, disguise his affiliation with the Nation of Islam. This was a clear case of black nationalist violence, but it quickly faded from national attention.

19. January 19, 2021 — A white man named Joseph “Doc” Rose killed Myquel L. Middlebrook, a 22-year-old black man, after an argument “over a social media post.” Mr. Rose has white supremacist tattoos, including a swastika on his face. He and two women were in a hotel room with Middlebrook. The men got into an argument, Mr. Rose pulled out a gun, Middlebrook reportedly yelled, “Go ahead and shoot me!” and Mr. Rose shot him.

It is hard to picture a black man sharing a room with a white man with a swastika on his face, and even the ADL doesn’t seem to know what to make of what happened. The local paper has the most detailed — but confusing — coverage of the shooting, and never mentions a racial motive for the killing.

Mr. Rose apparently wants to shock people with tattoos, but this does not seem to be a political crime. He pleaded guilty to murder and was not charged with a hate crime.

Nathan Allen, who killed two blacks, is the only person in this report who seems to have been driven by political and racial motives. Two cases appear to have been anti-white killings by blacks. The other 15 are pathetic stories of career criminals, frustrated failures, and mentally disturbed people. To call this collection of crimes evidence of “right-wing extremism” and to imply that they demonstrate the danger of “white supremacism” is mendacious.

This isn’t the first time American Renaissance has analyzed a laughable ADL report, but this year’s is even worse than usual. The ADL nonetheless concludes by urging support for the “PROTECT” plan, which calls for more money to fight “domestic terrorism” and control of content on the internet.

The report doesn’t even include the Waukesha Massacre. Darrell Brooks, who is black and who openly expressed hatred of whites, drove a car into a parade of white people, killing six and injuring dozens more. The ADL would surely have highlighted this case if the races had been reversed.

This report is an embarrassment. It is an almost random collection of 19 crimes followed by a call for more repression. But don’t blame the ADL. It’s a pressure group with an ax to grind. Blame the politicians and journalists who take this nonsense seriously.