Hate, extremism on the rise in Illinois ‘sobering,’ Anti-Defamation League report finds

Lee Zoldan remembers the 2017 attack on her downtown synagogue every time she walks in the building.

“Those windows were broken. Nazi stickers were placed on those doors,” the Chicago Loop Synagogue president recalled Tuesday. “The windows were replaced. The stickers were removed. But the invisible scars remain.”

Years later, the same hate and extremism that shook Zoldan’s congregation has only grown in Illinois, a new report by the Anti-Defamation League shows.

Antisemitic incidents and white supremacist propaganda doubled in Illinois last year, the watchdog group’s “Hate in the Prairie State” report shows. Statewide hate crimes have risen 80% since 2020, it continued.

Hateful messages spreading via social media and divisive political rhetoric have helped prompt the rise, city and state officials and nonprofit leaders said during a news conference detailing the report at the downtown synagogue.

“Hate has been mainstreamed,” said ADL Midwest Director David Goldenberg. “It requires a whole-of-society approach.”

The recent rise might be in part fueled by higher rates of reporting, Goldenberg said.

“I also think just more incidents are happening,” he added.

A “loss of civil discourse” and an emerging emphasis on brash, “bombastic” political rhetoric have also contributed to the rise, he said.

The report detailed dozens of incidents targeting an array of minority groups and institutions across Illinois.

In July last year, a man shattered windows and wrote slurs at the UpRising Bakery in Lake in the Hills before an all-ages drag show, the report said. The attack ultimately led months later to the bakery’s closing.

In November, swastikas were spray painted on 16 headstones at a historic Jewish cemetery in Waukegan. Two months later, a man threw a Molotov cocktail at a Peoria Planned Parenthood health center, causing an estimated $1 million in damage and forcing the center to close for months, the report continued.

Schools have faced bomb threats for sexual education classes, hospitals have been harassed for treating COVID-19 patients and elected officials have received phony writs of execution from suburbanites inspired by conspiracy theories, it said. The report also flagged exposed ties between some law enforcement and extremist groups, an increase in white supremacist propaganda distribution, reported antisemitism from the Chicago-based Nation of Islam and growing anti-government extremism.

The report offers a different view of the heartland state that prides itself on welcoming others, Chicago Urban League President Karen Freeman-Wilson said.

“It is a story that is borne (out) by statistics and data, that we are not as open as welcoming, as willing to embrace people from different ethnicities, races, religions, faiths and sexual orientations as we purport to be,” Freeman-Wilson said.

The news of heightened hate and extremism is “sobering,” said Paul Luu, CEO of the Chinese American Service League. The group supports victims after hate incidents and provides training to young people and workers, he said.

He praised the passage of a law signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker in August that makes anyone in Illinois who shares personal identifiable information about another person to harm them civilly liable in court.

“We cannot end hate by ignoring it,” Luu said.

Social media plays a key role in enabling hate and extremism to widely and quickly spread, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said. Someone might be able to reach 20 people passing out hateful propaganda on a Chicago street corner, Raoul said.

“But I post something online, there’s already an algorithm out there to feed it to people who have already read hate speech, and it’ll reach thousands of people,” he continued.

Raoul highlighted efforts to investigate social media’s potential harm alongside other state attorneys general. His office secured a grant to train law enforcement to better report hate incidents and is working with federal authorities to investigate reported hate and extremism, he said.

It has also prosecuted several recent high-profile hate crimes, including threats made against former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, he added.

When asked if incidents of hate and extremism have continued to rise this year, Goldenberg said the ADL’s 2023 data has not yet been analyzed. However, the total number of incidents across the Midwest is on track to hit a new high mark, he added.

“I can tell you also that we have seen increases in the number of hate crimes here in the city of Chicago. And I also think, to be critical, I don’t think we put enough resources,” Goldenberg said. “CPD doesn’t currently have the necessary resources to respond to these incidents and continue to track and monitor them.”

Hate crimes doubled in Chicago in 2022, according to CPD data. The same police data set shows hate crimes have so far decreased since this year March.

CPD and the Chicago Commission on Human Relations plan to soon launch a pilot program that will create more opportunities to report hate crimes, commission chair Nancy Andrade said. The program will use trusted community groups to make it easier for people who may distrust authorities or need cultural and linguistic support to report incidents, Andrade said.

An ordinance proposed in the City Council by Ald. Debra Silverstein, 50th, in September seeks to overhaul Chicago’s hate crime legal code. The legislation, now co-sponsored by all 50 aldermen, would add a wider definition for noncriminal “hate incidents” and facilitate more police reporting and training.

To further fight rising hate and extremism, the state should mandate hate crime reporting and training for law enforcement agencies, Goldenberg said. Social media platforms need to be held accountable, he added.

However, the trends leading to the increases have long been in motion and are leading to more extremism and hate across the country, he said.

“There is no single solution to put this nasty genie back in the bottle” Goldenberg said.

He urged people who experience hate incidents to report them at the group’s website, ADL.org.