Extremism, Anti-Semitism In Ohio: 156 Incidents In 2019

CLEVELAND — In 2019, there were 156 incidents of extremism and anti-Semitism in Ohio, according to the Anti-Defamation League. That's more than double the number of incidents in 2018.

The occurrences in Ohio 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.

Here is a collection of the incidents in Ohio that the non-governmental organization included in its registry:

Date of incident: October 2019

• Location: Beachwood
• Description: Someone spray painted a swastika in the bathroom of an office building. This followed two incidents of the Daily Stormer Book Club distributing anti-Semitic propaganda denying the existence of the Holocaust.

Date of incident: Dec. 21, 2019

• Location: Lodi
• Ideology: Right wing (white supremacist)
• Description: "Patriot Front, an alt right group, distributed propaganda that read: "Better dead than red," "Reject poison," "Money does not rule you," and "Not stolen conquered."

Date of incident: Nov. 7, 2019

• Location: Columbus
• Ideology: Right wing (white supremacist)
• Description: "Patriot Front, an alt right group, dropped a banner from an overpass over Ohio State Route 315 near Henderson Road. The banner read: "Better dead than red."

Date of incident: March 11, 2019

• Location: Cleveland
• Ideology: Right wing (white supremacist)
• Description: "Daily Stormer Book Club, an alt right group, posted anti-Semitic fliers at Case Western Reserve University that read: "All hate crimes are hoaxes."

The Anti-Defamation League tracks the incidents through news and media reports, government documents (including police reports), victim reports, extremist-related sources and the Center on Extremism investigations, according to a “Frequently Asked Questions” section on the ADL’s website.

The Anti-Defamation League’s interactive map includes information on incidents involving anti-Semitism, white supremacist propaganda, white supremacist events, extremist-police shootouts, terrorist plots and attacks and extremist murders.

Along with providing the first-of-its-kind interactive and customizable map detailing extremist and anti-Semitic incidents around the nation, the ADL also provides information on the annual quantity of white supremacist propaganda that gets spread throughout the country.

The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism reported 2,713 cases of circulated propaganda by white supremacist groups in 2019, compared with 1,214 cases in 2018.

Oren Segal, director of the League’s Center on Extremism, pointed to the prominence of more subtly biased rhetoric in some white supremacist material, emphasizing “patriotism.”

By emphasizing language “about empowerment, without some of the blatant racism and hatred,” Segal told the Associated Press, white supremacists are using a “tactic to try to get eyes onto their ideas in a way that’s cheap, and that brings it to a new generation of people who are learning how to even make sense out of these messages.”

The Anti-Defamation League, which was founded in 1913 to combat anti-Semitism as well as other biases, describes its mission as “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.”

You can find the complete interactive map on the ADL’s website.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.