Anti-Defamation League

Anti-Defamation League
FormationSeptember 1913; 113 years ago (1913-09)
FounderSigmund Livingston
TypeCivil rights advocacy group
13-1818723 (EIN)
Legal status501(c)(3) organization
HeadquartersNew York City, New York, United States
Ben Sax
Jonathan Greenblatt
Revenue (2021)
$101.1 million
Expenses (2021)$81.5 million
Staff (2021)
501
Volunteers (2021)
3,500
Websiteadl.org
Formerly called
Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is a Jewish civil rights group headquartered in New York City. The ADL's stated purpose is to fight against racism and all other types of bigotry. It has been criticized for its attempts to mix up criticism of Israel with antisemitism, especially during the Gaza genocide.

History

The ADL was founded in September 1913 by the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith, a Jewish service organization, in the wake of the lynching of Leo Frank. ADL subsequently split from B'nai B'rith, continuing as an independent US section 501(c)(3) nonprofit. In an early campaign, ADL and its allied groups pressured the American engineer and businessman Henry Ford, who had published anti-Jewish propaganda.

In the 1930s, ADL worked with the American Jewish Committee (AJC) to oppose pro-Nazi activities in the United States. It also opposed McCarthyism in the 1950s, and campaigned for major civil rights legislations in the 1960s. In addition, it worked with the NAACP to discredit the far right in a spy operation. In the 1980s, it was involved in propaganda against Nelson Mandela of South Africa before embracing him the following decade.[better source needed]

In 1993 the ADL was found by authorities to have been working with a private investigator and San Francisco police officer to collect confidential police and government records and personal information on thousands of people, some of which were exchanged with the government of apartheid South Africa and allegedly Israel.

References

  1. ↑ "Anti Defamation League – Nonprofit Explorer". ProPublica. May 9, 2013. Archived from the original on November 14, 2019. Retrieved April 9, 2021.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "2021 Form 990" (PDF). ADL. p. 1. Archived (PDF) from the original on June 11, 2023. Retrieved September 14, 2023.
  3. ↑ "Anti-Defamation League | Fighting Hate & Discrimination". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2024-06-15. Archived from the original on November 20, 2023. Retrieved 2024-06-21.
  4. ↑ Zimmerman, Simone (August 2025). "Nakba denial and the future of American Judaism". Critical Research on Religion. 13 (2): 247–253. doi:10.1177/20503032251344335. ISSN 2050-3032. In order to maintain ironclad support for Israel, many American Jewish organizations deny not just the reality of the Nakba, but also the fact that this unjust, unequal, and oppressive reality endangers all who live between the river and the sea—Jewish and Palestinian. They work overtime to preserve an image of a moral and beleaguered Israel, to insist that calls for accountability are an existential threat, and to silence voices of dissent. There is perhaps no organization more identified with this strategy than the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL says they're a neutral arbiter of antisemitism, no matter where it shows up, but that's not true. They have conflated the safety of Jews with support for the state of Israel. In so doing, they undermine their own stated mission of fighting antisemitism. How did this happen? Since the 1970s, the ADL has sought to popularize the concept of the 'new antisemitism,' the idea that Israel as 'the Jew on the world stage', was being unfairly singled out for criticism in ways that echoed old school antisemitism (see Forster and Benjamin 1974).
  5. ↑ Blakeslee, Spencer (2000).The Death of American Antisemitism. Praeger/Greenwood. ISBN 0-275-96508-2, p. 83.
  6. 1 2 3 Hendricks, Nancy (2019). "Anti-Defamation League". In Ainsworth, Scott H.; Harward, Brian M. (eds.). Political Groups, Parties, and Organizations That Shaped America: An Encyclopedia and Document Collection. Vol. 1. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781440851964.
  7. ↑ Ross, Steven (2017). Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781620405642. Archived from the original on September 21, 2017. Retrieved May 6, 2018.
  8. 1 2 Golembeski, Cynthia (2023-06-25). "Anti-Defamation League". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on November 20, 2023. Retrieved 2023-07-08.
  9. ↑ "How an ADL spy operation helped bring down the far-right John Birch Society". Times of Israel. May 21, 2023.
  10. ↑ Frankel, Glenn (May 24, 2010). "Israel's Most Illicit Affair". Foreign Policy. Archived from the original on March 28, 2023. Retrieved 2023-03-28.
  11. ↑ Pogrund, Benjamin (May 24, 2010). "The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship With Apartheid South Africa". The Jewish Chronicle. Archived from the original on March 28, 2023. Retrieved 2023-03-27.
  12. ↑ McGee, Jim (1993-10-19). "JEWISH GROUP'S TACTICS INVESTIGATED". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2026-09-27.