News

Online Neo-Nazi Hit List Shut Down After Forward Report

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By Lilly Maier October 19, 2016

Less than a week after the Forward broke the news about the existence of an online neo-Nazi hit list, the provider hosting the website suspended the account.

The page with the deceptively innocent name “Jews in Modern Society” listed names, photos and professions of almost 400 Jews from academia, social-activism, the financial world and left-wing politics.

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“That site violated our terms of service and was disabled,” David Saxton, a spokesperson for Yola, told the Forward.

Yola is a website builder and hosting company that is similar to Wordpress. Users can build a free website in a couple of minutes using the company’s templates.

Saxon wouldn’t give any additional information about how long Yola had hosted “Jews in Modern Society” before they shut it down this week.

Until recently, the mission statement of the site complained that “Jews have had over 100 years of unrestricted immigration into the USA. They now permeate Academic, Activist, Financial and Corporate institutions to the detriment of Western Society.”

A screenshot taken from “Jews in Modern Society.” Image by Screenshot

The online directory included publicly known Jews, like Democratic mega-donor, George Soros; the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt; Human Rights Watch Director Kenneth Roth, or Steven Julop, the mayor of Jersey City.

But they also listed lesser-known people, like an activist for Black Lives Matter (with the added explanation that she was raised Jewish), several British rabbis who are helping Syrian refugees, and even a woman who complained publicly that LEGO wasn’t culturally diverse enough.

Twitter suspended two accounts – “@ajoccidental” and “@skype_directory” – linked to the website or promoting its content before our original article appeared.

This summer, a Hitler-inspired “Trump Youth”-homepage was disabled two days after the Forward reported about it.

Lilly Maier is a news intern at the Forward. Reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter at @lillymmaier

Lilly Maier is a news intern at the Forward. She is a graduate journalism student at New York University, where she studies as a Fulbright scholar. She also holds a B.A. in Jewish history from the University of Munich. Contact Lilly at [email protected], read her portfolio, or follow her on Twitter.

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