On October 1, FBI Director Kash Patel announced that the Bureau would no longer cooperate with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), one of the foremost private Zionist organizations in the United States. Patel declared, “That era is finished. This FBI formally rejects Comey’s policies and any partnership with the ADL.”

For decades the ADL has cultivated close ties with the US government and its police agencies. FBI directors, including James Comey and Christopher Wray, have been featured speakers at ADL conferences, and since 2000 the ADL has partnered with the FBI to train new agents on “civil rights” and “hate crimes.”

Moreover, the ADL, along with the entire network of Zionist organizations, aligned itself with the extreme right in the name of defending Israel, including by promoting the slander that opposition to genocide is “antisemitic.” Now these same forces, which include genuine antisemites, are moving against the ADL itself.

The FBI cut ties because the ADL had correctly described Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA (TPUSA) as a conduit for racism, white supremacy and Christian nationalism.

In the wake of Kirk’s assassination thousands of workers, students and teachers across the country who object to Kirk’s fascist policies and the effort by the ruling class, including both the Democrats and Republicans, to deify Kirk have been harassed, suspended or fired from their jobs or kicked out of school.

Until last week, the ADL’s “Glossary of Extremism and Hate” included an accurate entry on Kirk and TPUSA. It noted that since founding TPUSA:

• Kirk “moved further to the right and promotes conspiracy theories about election fraud and COVID-19.”

• He pushed “Christian nationalism: the idea that Christians should dominate the government and other areas of life in America.”

• Kirk’s “views have led him to attack the transgender community several times.”

• TPUSA “continues to attract racists.”

• Numerous TPUSA representatives have “made bigoted remarks about the Black community, the LGBTQ+ community and other groups.”

• While TPUSA leaders “say they reject white supremacist ideology, known white nationalist have attended their events.”

• Kirk “has created a vast platform for extremists and far-right conspiracy theorists” and “has raised millions from conservative donors and has played a significant role in [Republican] politics and elections.”

Not only this entry, but the entire “Glossary of Extremism and Hate” was deleted by the ADL under pressure from Elon Musk, Kirk’s followers, Donald Trump Jr. and other neo-Nazis.

Justifying its capitulation, the organization claimed on October 1 that “an increasing number of entries… were outdated” and that some were “intentionally misrepresented and misused.”

In a parallel statement, the ADL reaffirmed its “deep respect for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and law enforcement officers at all levels” and their supposed role in “protecting all Americans.”

In reality, the FBI exists, as Lenin explained in State and Revolution (1917), as a “special body of armed men” to defend capitalist rule, not to safeguard democratic rights. For decades the ADL has worked hand in glove with the FBI to surveil students, workers and Palestine solidarity activists. Throughout the ongoing genocide in Gaza the ADL, working with Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has smeared opposition to Zionism and genocide as “antisemitism.”

The ADL entry on Kirk was not “outdated.” The only social forces “misrepresenting” Kirk’s entry in the glossary are those who share Kirk’s reactionary ideology.

While Musk and Kirk pose as the ADL’s enemies, the organization’s real role has been to launder Zionism as a civil rights cause. The ADL insists that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, erasing the reality that Jewish people long predate Zionism as a political ideology.

The purge of the TPUSA entry and the glossary as a whole is the product of a years-long fascist campaign. Musk has relentlessly used his platform to promote racist, antisemitic, and fascist content. On September 30, his “America” PAC reposted a racist meme from a neo-Nazi account which just a day earlier had lamented the death of Hitler.

The next day, Musk declared, “The ADL is a hate group” and attacked the FBI for relying on ADL classifications in investigating TPUSA. Donald Trump Jr. joined in, characterizing the ADL’s inclusion of Kirk and TPUSA in the glossary as “Disgraceful.”

Prior to his death, Kirk joined neo-Nazis in denouncing the ADL as a “mass purveyor of anti-white hate” and spearheaded calls to #BanTheADL. Kirk, like Musk, Trump and the Republican Party at large, promote the “great replacement” conspiracy theory that inspired the El Paso, Buffalo and Christchurch massacres.

As the World Socialist Web Site warned in September 2023, the original #BanTheADL campaign led by Musk was “the spearhead of a broader effort to legitimize antisemitism, rehabilitate fascism, and intimidate all those who oppose it.”

The WSWS noted at the time that Musk’s attack was not limited to denouncing the ADL for criticizing his Nazification of Twitter. It was part of a conscious strategy of the far right to dismantle what even minimal liberal opposition exists to the normalization of fascist ideology.

This is not the first time the ADL has capitulated to fascists. When Musk gave a Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration earlier this year, the ADL under CEO Jonathan Greenblatt simply dismissed it as an “awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute.” Now, instead of confronting the whitewashing of Kirk’s, and the Republican Party’s, open antisemitism and white supremacy, the ADL has erased evidence of TPUSA’s racism.

The FBI’s break with the ADL comes just weeks after the Justice Department quietly removed a study from its website that confirmed far-right extremists were responsible for the overwhelming majority of political violence in the United States. It said:

Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism. Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists...

The removal of the study came in the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s assassination and on the eve of Trump’s September 25 National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, which branded all left-wing opposition, including “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” as “domestic terrorism.”

The removal of the TPUSA entry, the erasing of the DOJ study, and Trump’s executive orders and memorandums attacking “anti-fascism” are part of the same process: The state and its auxiliary organizations are clearing away even the most moderate obstacles to the legitimization of fascist politics.

Far from opposing the normalization of fascism, organizations like the ADL, which posture as defenders of civil rights, are collaborating with the state in Trump’s drive to establish a presidential dictatorship. In this way, the ADL, which supposedly exists to combat antisemitism, has, in service of the Israeli state and the genocide in Gaza, helped to strengthen the far-right and the revival of genuine antisemitism.