Has the Anti-Defamation League‘s success in identifying and stigmatizing anti-Semitism been the model that America and the West have followed in identifying and destroying racism and those that espouse it?
In other words, following the Holocaust, have Jews led the way in the West in forbidding public discourse that notices and comments critically upon group differences? Has the Museum of Tolerance over the past 20 years outdone the ADL?
The ADL has gone after “powerless and impotent” anti-Semites for little reason other than to intimidate and to make criticism of Jews as a group off-limits to criticism from non-Jews. In 1994, the ADL got into in a neighbors dispute in Denver and was successfully sued for defamation.
The ADL has encouraged Jews to report anything they thought was anti-Semitism and in response, the ADL, if it took the reports seriously, would publicize the offense and get politicians to condemn it and file lawsuits and do anything they could to stop anti-Semitism before it hurt Jews. Politicians were happy to play along because it made them immune to trouble from like-minded organizations, it made them look like civil rights supporters, and who could be opposed to that? Other groups took note of the ADL’s success and encouraged their members to feel like victims and to protest against any perceived injustice and to march and to boycott when necessary. They weren’t usually as successful as the Jews because they weren’t Jewish (aka smart and competent), but they’ve still created an America where you can’t publicly criticize any group but white Christians without getting condemned for bigotry and having your life and career ruined. Some groups, such as gays, are more powerful and competent at punishing enemies than others but no group is more powerful and competent at ending careers for criticizing them than Jews.
The ADL has many positions that seem to have nothing to do with fighting bigotry. For instance, “The ADL supports Comprehensive and DREAM Act legislation that would provide conditional permanent residency to certain illegal aliens of good moral character who graduate from U.S. high schools, arrived in the United States as minors, and lived in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill’s enactment.” (Wikipedia)
In short, the ADL, a secular leftist organization, pursues what it believes are the Jews’ group interests (cloaked in a crusade against bigotry) and these interests include multi-culturalism for America as well as keeping Christianity, gun ownership and the right-wing on a tight leash.
