The five demonstrators stayed for roughly an hour but did not try to step onto temple grounds, a Temple Emanu-El spokesperson said in a statement emailed to the Observer.
“We will continue to stay vigilant and work in concert with our community partners at the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas, the Anti-Defamation League and the FBI, and keep our security on high alert,” read the statement, which is also posted to the synagogue’s Facebook page. “In the coming days, we will provide an update on Temple’s ongoing security efforts.”
If you’re thinking to yourself, “Wow, it sure seems like antisemitic incidents are happening more frequently,” you’re not wrong. The Anti-Defamation League found that in the month after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, such incidents spiked by 316% nationwide compared with the previous year.A handful of neo-Nazis, including Ronald Murray and someone who looks a lot like another I recently identified named Barry Young, were spotted outside the Temple Emanu-el synagogue in Dallas. pic.twitter.com/pEAb9TR8Ky
— steven monacelli (@stevanzetti) November 25, 2023
Stacy Cushing, regional director of ADL Texoma in Dallas, told the Observer that Saturday’s neo-Nazi event was alarming and disturbing.
“It is never a good day when we see that happening anywhere,” she said.
Antisemitic incidents had already been increasing in the country long before the Israel-Hamas war. Last year saw the highest number of these occurrences since the ADL began keeping tabs in 1979.
Although there are many reasons that would account for an uptick in antisemitism, Cushing said it coincides with the eruption of conflict in Israel. There’s also the spread of hateful content and mis- and disinformation on the web.
Another recent ADL report shows that Texas is indeed a hotbed for hate: We were the state with the most white supremacist propaganda in 2022.
Still, Dallas isn’t necessarily a standout when it comes to antisemitism. As of Wednesday afternoon, the ADL’s HEAT Map (Hate, Extremism, Antisemitism, Terrorism) noted one such incident in Dallas in 2023 compared with 16 in Houston.
The ADL’s Texoma region, which includes North Texas and Oklahoma, counted 110 antisemitic incidents in 2022 versus 36 the year before, Cushing said.
“What we saw on Saturday is no different than, unfortunately, what we've seen in other cities across the country,” she said.
Dozens of hate and anti-government groups call the Lone Star State home; the Southern Poverty Law Center tracked 72 of them in 2022."There has been such a solid foundation of antisemitism in this country throughout our history." – Dr. Alon Milwicki, SPLC
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Alon Milwicki, a senior research analyst with the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, noted other antisemitic occurrences around North Texas. Several cities have been subjected to distribution of flyers by hate groups like the Goyim Defense League and incidents of swastika carvings in Denton, Frisco, Plano and Dallas.
Last month, a viral TikTok video showed a group in Nazi garb at a Torchy’s Tacos in Fort Worth, he pointed out. And the shooter at the Allen outlet mall in May “was a full-fledged neo-Nazi.”
Week to week, Milwicki said, some of the most consistent cases he logs are antisemitic vandalism, graffiti and swastika drawings. It could be a sketch on a park bench in some cases; in others, a storefront. At times it’s “just some idiot teenager” who doesn’t fully grasp the messaging’s heinous context, but in other cases, the culprit’s motivation could be more nefarious.
“It doesn't necessarily mean that there's a concerted Nazi effort there; it just could be one person's perspective,” Milwicki said. “That doesn't make it any less scary, it doesn't make it any less problematic. That doesn't make it any less ignorant. That doesn't make it any less terrifying — doesn't make it any less racist.
“What it does do, I think, is necessitate greater emphasis on education,” he continued.
Part of that education could include teaching how to vet sources of information, said Milwicki, who once taught at a community college. He recalled that a student mentioned a website that supposedly “discredited” Martin Luther King Jr. The website looked legit at first, but scrolling to the bottom revealed that it was “powered by Stormfront,” the white nationalist online forum.
Ignorance can be fixed, Milwicki said, but hate is much harder to address. Making the situation even more difficult, there’s been an attack on education in Texas and elsewhere in recent years.
Conservative activists and politicians have sought to whitewash history lessons about topics such as racism. Former President Donald Trump, who is pursuing a second term, has promised to take aim at “radical left” colleges supposedly “dominated by Marxist Maniacs [sic] and lunatics.”
Whether people realize it or not, Milwicki said, such references to “Marxism” perpetuate antisemitic tropes. The same is true for arguments surrounding the so-called deep state, such as accusations that George Soros, a Holocaust survivor and billionaire investor, secretly controls the government and economy.
While we’re undoubtedly witnessing a marked rise in antisemitism in the U.S., Milwicki said it has been festering for some time.
“You cannot have such an explosion, whether it's in the last two months or the last six years, without such a solidly firm foundation of antisemitism already existing in this country,” he said. “You cannot go from zero to 10 in such a short time. You can't. There has been such a solid foundation of antisemitism in this country throughout our history.”
