Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Jewish Defense League, White Supremacists Booted Off Twitter

Twitter accounts associated with the far-right Jewish Defense League were swept up in a larger purging of white nationalists accounts as the social media site implemented new rules targeted “violent extremist” groups.

The Twitter accounts @JDLCanada, @jdldotorg, @JewishDefenceNY were all booted offline sometime on Monday, December 19.

Twitter announced in mid-November that beginning Dec. 18, it would consider account user behavior “on and off the platform” when deciding whether to close down an account, as part of an effort to “reduce hateful and abusive content.”

“You may not make specific threats of violence or wish for the serious physical harm, death, or disease of an individual or group of people,” states Twitter’s rule for “violent extremist groups,” which went into effect Monday.

“Alt-right” or white nationalist users kicked off Twitter on Monday include Jared Taylor, editor of the “race realist” American Renaissance; Brad Griffin of the League of The South; and Vanguard America, the white nationalist group whose membership included James Alex Fields, who drove his car through counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The Jewish Defense League was founded by the ultra-nationalist politician and writer Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1971. According to the FBI, the JDL has been involved in plotting and executing acts of terrorism within the United States. Since Kahane’s assassination in 1990, the group has fractured and has been dormant for years. Over the last months, though — amidst culture wars convulsing the nation — some acolytes of Kahane have sought to bring his ideas back into the mainstream. Members of the JDL have started showing up a street rallies again, sometimes violently sparring with other protestors.

Read more about the Jewish Defense League here and here.

Email Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.