KKK Flyers Circulated Through New Hope

BUCKS COUNTY, PA — There were eight incidents of extremism and anti-Semitism in Bucks County in 2019, according to information recently provided by the Anti-Defamation League. Two of those incidents occurred in New Hope.

The occurrences in Bucks County were among the 4,015 examples of extremist and anti-Semitic incidents that happened nationwide in 2019. The figure reported for 2019 is up almost 32 percent from the 3,052 incidents reported in 2018, according to the ADL.

Here are the Bucks County incidents the non-governmental organization included in its registry:

Incident type: Anti-Semitic Incident - Harassment

• Location: Newtown
• Date: May 2019
• Description: Jewish high school student victim of ongoing anti-Semitic harassment at school

Incident type: Anti-Semitic Incident - Vandalism

• Location: Newtown
• Date: May 2019
• Description: Swastikas were spray-painted on the road at Tyler State Park

Incident type: White Supremacist Propaganda

• Location: New Hope
• Date: Sept. 19
• Description: New Jersey European Heritage Association, an alt right group, distributed propaganda that that read: "Reclaim your nation reclaim your heritage," "Nationalism not globalism," "Troops to the borders," and "Import the third world become the third world."

Incident type: Anti-Semitic Incident - Vandalism

• Location: Doylestown
• Date: October 2019
• Description: Swastika vandalism discovered in a boys bathroom at a middle school.

Incident type: White Supremacist Propaganda

• Location: Bensalem
• Date: Oct, 25, 2019
• Description: New Jersey European Heritage Association, an alt right group, distributed stickers that read: "Anti-racist is code for anti-white," "Isn't it time you took your own side?" and "Deport them all."

Incident type: Anti-Semitic Incident - Harassment

• Location: Furlong
• Date: November 2019
• Description: Jewish individual received anti-Semitic iMessages that included images of swastikas.

Incident type: White Supremacist Propaganda

• Location: Morrisville
• Date: Dec. 7, 2019
• Description: New Jersey European Heritage Association, an alt right group, distributed fliers that read: "Nationalism not globalism" and "America for Americans."

Incident type: White Supremacist Propaganda

• Location: New Hope
• Date: Dec. 18, 2019
• Description: New Jersey European Heritage Association, an alt right group, distributed propaganda that read: "Diversity means no white countries," "They hate you for being white," "Reject white guilt," and "Love your race."

The Anti-Defamation League tracks the incidents through news and media reports, government documents (including police reports), victim reports, extremist-related sources and the Center on Extremism investigations, according to a “Frequently Asked Questions” section on the ADL’s website.

The Anti-Defamation League’s interactive map includes information on incidents involving anti-Semitism, white supremacist propaganda, white supremacist events, extremist-police shootouts, terrorist plots and attacks and extremist murders.

Along with providing the first-of-its-kind interactive and customizable map detailing extremist and anti-Semitic incidents around the nation, the ADL also provides information on the annual quantity of white supremacist propaganda that gets spread throughout the country.

The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism reported 2,713 cases of circulated propaganda by white supremacist groups in 2019, compared with 1,214 cases in 2018.

Oren Segal, director of the League’s Center on Extremism, pointed to the prominence of more subtly biased rhetoric in some white supremacist material, emphasizing “patriotism.”

By emphasizing language “about empowerment, without some of the blatant racism and hatred,” Segal told the Associated Press, white supremacists are using a “tactic to try to get eyes onto their ideas in a way that’s cheap, and that brings it to a new generation of people who are learning how to even make sense out of these messages.”

The Anti-Defamation League, which was founded in 1913 to combat anti-Semitism as well as other biases, describes its mission as “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.”

You can find the complete interactive map on the ADL’s website.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.