OMG ADL, STFU & GTFO

The Anti Defamation League has chosen to side with totalitarianism.

Yesterday afternoon I got a text from a dear friend with whom I frequently commiserate about the state of our world:

“I wanna fucking beat the shit out of jonathan greenblatt.”

Crass as it may be—and, particularly for any lawyers in the crowd, we are in no way endorsing the beating of Anti Defamation League President Jonathan Greenblatt, and [redacted] was being purely satirical and is actually a pacifist, OK your honor—my friend had excellent reasons for his rage.

This week, as the Trump administration pushes forward with its most unambiguously fascist project to date — the detention and deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a green card-holding pro-Palestinian student dissident who, by the White House’s own admission, is not being targeted for having actually committed a crime — the ADL, which Greenblatt has led for more than a decade, released the following statement:

We firmly believe there should be swift and severe consequences for those who provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations, incite violence in support of terrorist activities, or conceal their identities in order to harass and intimidate Jewish individuals and institutions with impunity.

We appreciate the Trump Administration's broad, bold set of efforts to counter campus antisemitism — and this action further illustrates that resolve by holding alleged perpetrators responsible for their actions.

Obviously, any deportation action or revocation of a Green Card or visa must be undertaken in alignment with required due process protections. We also hope that this action serves as a deterrent to others who might consider breaking the law on college campuses or anywhere.

There’s a lot to unpack here. The first is “christ almighty, fuck you ADL.”

But the more important question that Greenblatt’s statement raises is: What happens when a deeply flawed but historically significant civil rights institution becomes an enthusiastic cheerleader for the same strain of fascism it’s professed to be fighting against?