Most Americans recognize that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as a far-Left, dark-money behemoth with assets of nearly a quarter-billion dollars. The once-respected Federal Bureau of Investigation is now viewed as being similarly politicized. Overall support for the agency has nosedived to only 37% among the general public and a meager 17% among Republicans.
Yet few Americans realize how closely the ADL works with the FBI to advance their leadership’s political interests. This is a dangerous collaboration wherein the increasingly radical group provides ideologically driven guidance to people with the guns. Right now, the FBI is pointing those guns at the political enemies of the far-Left.
The ADL’s work covers the usual Left-wing cause célèbres: fighting voting integrity measures, pushing for open borders policies and amnesty for illegal aliens, and vigorously defending the Black Lives Matter riots, to name a few. The group has now politically weaponized its charges of anti-Semitism, falsely smearing conservatives while excusing blatant anti-Semitism among its political allies. For example, the organization has groundlessly denounced Elon Musk, a powerful Libertarian voice, as an anti-Semite in a bald-faced effort to drain his social network, X, of advertising revenue. Yet, when now-Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) came to the defense of his uncle for anti-Semitic remarks he made in the 90s, the organization refused to condemn him.
Jonathan Tobin of Jewish News Syndicate traces ADL’s hard Left turn to its change in leadership from longtime leader Abe Foxman to Jonathan Greenblatt, a former staffer in the Clinton and Obama White House. Tobin writes, “Greenblatt has helped shift the ADL from its former stance as the nonpartisan gold standard for monitoring hate to being just another liberal activist group whose priority is helping the Democratic Party.”
Last month, The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, released an investigative report detailing an “Extremist Sitrep” email from the “ADL Law Enforcement” account to The Washington State Fusion Center, a collective of various law enforcement entities spanning from local to the FBI. The email advises law enforcement officers responsible for investigating domestic terrorists to focus their resources on the likes of Matt Walsh, Chris Rufo, and Libs of TikTok.
Much like the FBI’s infamous anti-Catholic targeting memo, the ADL email suggests that law enforcement agencies — people with guns and the power to imprison and financially destroy enemies of the state — should concentrate their efforts on non-violent citizens whose only “crime” is to have exercised their First Amendment freedoms in support of political viewpoints contrary to the authoritarian Left. The goal here is clearly to punish the “thought criminals” and force adherence to the dogmas of the state.
What’s the big deal about such an email problematic? Law enforcement agencies must get all sorts of memoranda, requests, and phony tips from every corner of the nation, right?
The problem here is that, according to former FBI agents, they are conditioned from the very beginning of their careers to be receptive to ADL propaganda. One of the first experiences of a new agent is an ADL-sponsored trip to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., The ostensible purpose of the trip is to impress on new agents that they bear a tremendous responsibility that should never be abused.
That lesson should be salubrious. But former agents tell me the trip’s real purpose is to prepare agents to be receptive to the onslaught of propaganda and rewards that the ADL will be sending their way throughout the coming years. At the very beginning of an agent’s career, the FBI is sending the clear message that the ADL is a trusted partner.
The ADL and FBI partnership only grows from there. According to the ADL’s website, “We educate annually an estimated 15,000 law enforcement personnel from local, state and federal agencies.” Moreover, “in 2021 alone, the ADL Center on Extremism (COE) provided law enforcement with critical intelligence about extremism over 1,300 times and tracked over 7,300 incidents of hate on our online, interactive H.E.A.T. map.” The ADL even operates a school for executive-level law enforcement officials:
In 2003, ADL founded the Advanced Training School, which has provided education on extremism and terrorism for senior law enforcement from more than 250 agencies across the U.S. This three-day course provides an examination of major types of extremist movements, case studies of recent terrorist acts presented by law enforcement leaders with firsthand experience, and guidance on the critical importance of protecting civil rights and liberties.
The very agency the Feds trust to educate them on matters of “extremism” is producing politically driven, far-Left reports on who counts as an extremist. Much like the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ADL writes and applies the definition they wish government to enforce. They take care to ensure that it predominately captures those opposed to their ideology, while excusing their political allies. Were these organizations to apply a neutral definition of hate or extremism, it would undercut the leftist narrative that MAGA extremists and their ilk are the most clear-and-present danger to the United States.
Beyond orientation, training, and propaganda, the ADL provides FBI personnel with awards. Since 2010, the ADL has been handing out “ADL SHIELD Awards” to FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors for investigative and prosecutorial successes. It’s a brilliantly subversive tactic. The awards cost the ADL next to nothing; in exchange organization receives a false veneer of legitimacy and builds a list of FBI executives and agents beholden to the ADL.
Conditioning FBI personnel to be receptive to ADL political propaganda and then doling out rewards to FBI leaders is beyond unseemly. With this incentive structure in place, is there any reason to doubt that the FBI would be more inclined to take in and act on slanted ADL material?
Small wonder that public confidence in the Bureau is at record lows. One obvious remedial measure would be to end the partnership between the ADL and the FBI. It’s time to draw a bright line between dark, far-Left operations and the most powerful law enforcement entity in the country and make sure it is not crossed.
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Mike Howell is Director of the Oversight Project at The Heritage Foundation.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.