Hate, Extremism, Anti-Semitism In Sussex County In 2019: Report

SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ - A new report shines a light on potential incidents of hate, extremism and anti-Semitism in New Jersey this past year, and there were some in Sussex County.

In 2019, there were 216 incidents of hate, extremism and anti-Semitism in 112 towns in New Jersey, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

In Morris County, there were three reported incidents.

• Sussex, March 2019: Two bathrooms at High Point Regional High School were vandalized with swastika etchings and messages that read "Kill the Jews" and "Hitler was here."
• Green Township, June 2019: Individual sent doctored images with Nazi imagery to Jewish individuals.
• Franklin, Dec. 18, 2019: New Jersey European Heritage Association, an alt right group, distributed propaganda with the QR code for New Jersey European Heritage Association and propaganda that read: "No communism in America," "Defend our borders," and "Family & tradition our land our culture."

Overall, the figure for 2019 decreased from the 452 incidents reported in New Jersey during 2018. But the incidents were no less concerning, the report says.

In December,six people were killed in Jersey City in what Gov. Phil Murphy called a "hate-crime " and an act of domestic terrorism. One of the groups that's predominately mentioned in the report is the New Jersey European Heritage Association (NJEHA), which the ADL says is a small, New Jersey-based white supremacist group. "NJEHA espouses racism, anti-Semitism and intolerance under the guise of 'saving' white European peoples from purported imminent extinction," the report said.

The list follows a similar report published last year by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which said 18 hate organizations are based in towns throughout the Garden State, and the number is rising.

The occurrences in New Jersey identified in the ADL report were among the 4,015 examples of extremist and anti-Semitic incidents that happened nationwide in 2019. The figure reported for 2019 is up almost 32 percent from the 3,052 incidents reported in 2018, according to the ADL.

Thanks for reading! Learn more about posting announcements or events to your local Patch site. Have a news tip you'd like to share? Or maybe you have a press release you would like to submit or a correction you'd like to request? Send an email to russ.crespolini@patch.com

Subscribe to your local Patch newsletter. You can also have them delivered to your phone screen by downloading, or by visiting the Google Play store.