A police vehicle is parked near the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, on January 16, 2022. Four people were held hostage at the synagogue by a gunman for more than 10 hours before being released. freedom, one of a series of anti-Semitic acts that took place last year.
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A police vehicle sits near the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, on January 16, 2022. Four people were held hostage at the synagogue by a gunman for more than 10 hours before being released. do, one of the anti-Semitism acts that took place last year.
Brandon Bells/Getty Images
The percentage of Americans who believe in some anti-Semitic joke has spiked in the past three years, according to the results of the Anti-Defamation League. survey published on Thursday.
ADL leaders say years of anti-Semitism rhetoric from former President Donald Trump, along with encouraged violent extremism and lax social media policies are to blame.
The The survey, which asked respondents to rate the truthfulness of 14 different traditional negative stereotypes about Jews, found that one in five American adults said they agree with at least six such views. That’s compared to about a ninth in 2019, the last time this survey was conducted.
The 2022 survey, conducted last fall of 4,000 respondents, found that about 70% agree with the statement “Jews stick together more than other Americans,” and more than half agree. with “Jews in Business Try to Hire Other Jews.” One in three respondents agree that “Jews don’t share my values” and about 26% agree with “Jews have too much power in the business world.”
ADL chief executive officer, Jonathan Greenblatt, said in a press conference: “What do these findings represent, what do they tell us and what creates such urgency is the fact that some a very large number of Americans have false, dangerous ideas about the Jews.” “While it is very encouraging that the vast majority of our country does not hold to these ideas, more than 50 million people is worrying and that means we have work to do.”
The organization has been assessing approval for these anti-Semitic jokes since 1964. Results from that initial survey showed a peak in anti-Semitism, showing that nearly one-third of American adults members then agree to six or more of the statements. The numbers for 2022 are the highest since 1992. The decades in between show relatively lower levels of trust in the anti-Semitism tropics. The ADL has expressed alarm at the sudden increase from about one-ninth of Americans’ faith in some anti-Semitism tropics in 2019 to one-fifth in 2022.
ADL’s separate data collection has found that the number of recorded reports of harassment, vandalism, and anti-Semitic violence has steadily increased since about 2015, in contrast to more recent rise in anti-Semitism.
Matt Williams, vice president of ADL’s Center for Anti-Semitism, says that researchers have found that People are being more honest about their biases than they were decades ago.
“So one of the things we can see is that people agree with the [tropes] than. Another thing we can say is that people are willing to admit that they agree with the [tropes] than. Both are cause for different kinds of concerns,” Williams said.
