Report: Incident Of Extremism In Point Pleasant

NEW JERSEY – A new report shines a light on potential incidents of extremism in New Jersey this past year. One of those acts happened in Point Pleasant, according to the report.

In 2019, there were 216 incidents of hate, extremism and anti-Semitism in 112 towns in New Jersey, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Read more: Hate, Extremism, Anti-Semitism In 112 NJ Towns In 2019: Report

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 (the incident is one of 216 listed below). Read more: Gov. Murphy: Jersey City Attack Was 'Hate-Crime;' Video Released

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. Read more: Hate Groups In NJ: Map Shows Rising Total Of Racist Organizations

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.

Here is what happened in Point Pleasant, according to the report:

• Point Pleasant, 7/22/19 New Jersey European Heritage Association, an alt right group, distributed propaganda that that read: "Keep America American" and "Deport them all."

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.