The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that was indicted for allegedly funneling donor funds to members of white supremacist groups, updated its antisemitism resource on Thursday, adding “weaponization” to its list of examples of prominent antisemitic narratives.
In July, the list included “the anti-immigrant ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory,” “the demonization of LGBTQ+ people,” “male supremacy,” “anti-diversity, equity and inclusion” and “instrumentalization.” The updated resource replaced the latter with the more widely-used term “weaponization.”
The updated terminology accuses the “hard right” of treating Jews “not as individuals, but as tools to serve a political agenda.”
“Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, this dynamic has dramatically intensified,” the center’s guide states. “Political actors have increasingly deployed accusations of antisemitism to silence pro-Palestinian voices, especially on college campuses, freezing billions in university funding, detaining and attempting to deport legal residents for constitutionally protected speech and calling for the impeachment of federal judges who ruled against those deportations.”
It cites, as examples, the Trump administration freezing university funding over antisemitism on campuses, and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) fast-tracking the Antisemitism Awareness Act, “legislation that would mandate that the Education Department adopt a definition of antisemitism that critics, including many Jewish organizations, warned would effectively criminalize criticism of Israel.”
The center has faced backlash for only providing guidance on far-right antisemitism and not including examples of Jew-hatred coming from the political left, anti-Israel groups or Muslim groups. Its resource on Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam includes a section called “ties to the far right,” which links his group’s antisemitism to “certain white supremacist groups.”
