ADL: Incidents In Marblehead, Leominster Part Of Rise In White Supremacist Propaganda
MARBLEHEAD (CBS) -- A Market Basket employee in Leominster was seen Tuesday scraping away remnants of a sticker on a light post that read, "Not stolen, conquered." The sticker was one of between 50 and 75 different Neo-Nazi signs that were posted around Leominster in the last week, said Mayor Dean Mazzarella.
"I noticed, out in front of City Hall, there was a six-by-eight inch sticker," Mazzarella said.
Roughly 60 miles away in Marblehead, two fliers found posted on Temple Emanu-el Monday morning called the Holocaust "fake news." Rabbi David Meyer told WBZ-TV, "This congregation will not be bullied into fear."
Robert Trestan, the executive director of the Anti-Defamation League's New England office, said these two incidents did not happen in isolation. "2019 is showing us that there has been a dramatic spike, an increase in white supremacist propaganda across Massachusetts. We have already seen in the first 6 months of this year, more than we saw in all of 2018," he said.
According to Trestan, the ADL discovered the fliers posted in Marblehead were also posted on Jewish institutions in Nebraska, Texas, and Washington. "It is coordinated...A lot of these organizations connect with their members online. Somebody puts out the initiative, the order, and people are out there carrying it out."
Trestan worries the rise in these type of incidents could lead to an escalation in the kind of actions hate groups are willing to take.
"We need to be vigilant, without being intimidated," he said.
Mazzarella agreed, "They can't tear down our community, we'll tear them down and we'll tear down their propaganda."
