Anti-Semitism is on the rise.
On Saturday, 11 Jews were killed in a Pittsburgh synagogue, allegedly by a man who has been charged with federal hate crimes, a man with a documented history of posting anti-Semitic rants and conspiracy theories on far-right social networking website Gab.
While law enforcement has not confirmed the motive for this shooting, the assailant had concentrated his energy on one particular set of conspiracy theories. According to reports of his Gab account, he echoed conspiracy claims from extremists that George Soros, the Jewish billionaire philanthropist, was secretly funding a caravan of an estimated 4,000 Honduran migrants making its way to the United States-Mexico border.
The Pittsburgh attack was the deadliest known attack on Jewish people on American soil according to advocacy organization Anti-Defamation League (ADL). But it was also one in a long line of anti-Semitic incidents, which are on the rise in the US. In 2017, the most recent year for which complete data is available, the ADL found that incidents of anti-Semitic hate (including vandalism as well as violent crime) had increased a staggering 57 percent from 2016, the highest increase on record.
[For more on this story by Tara Isabella Burton, go to https://www.vox.com/identities...h-synagogue-shooting]
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