Federal agencies are concerned that domestic extremists could use the coronavirus pandemic to attack Asians and Jews, according to a joint intelligence bulletin obtained by Yahoo News. That bulletin mirrors what organisations that monitor online hate content are also finding.

The bulletin, a joint effort of the Department of Justice, the National Counterterrorism Center and the Department of Homeland Security, is dated April 7.

The document says that domestic violent extremists – known as DVEs – “have sought to conduct, or conducted attacks citing the COVID-19 pandemic as a factor in the timing or motivation of their attacks.”

It additionally says that “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists,” or RMVEs, “who advocate for the superiority of the white race seek to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic to bolster their narratives and encourage attacks and hate crimes against minorities, including Jewish and Asian Americans. Some RMVEs claim government responses to the pandemic could crash the global economy, hasten societal collapse, and lead to a race war.”

Some members of Congress want such extremists to be treated like foreign terrorists, but a coherent domestic statute does not yet exist.

The internal document shows that extremists have been emboldened by the pandemic. “Conspiratorial narratives assigning blame for the pandemic to a Jewish conspiracy or China heightens the risk of retaliatory violence against Jewish Americans and Asian Americans,” it says. “Other DVEs have shared statements that law enforcement will be unable to prevent DVE attacks on minorities or quell riots.”

Anti-Semitism has been rising around the world throughout the course of the pandemic, which began in December. That rise has been apparent both domestically and internationally.

Iran was in the midst of a coronavirus outbreak that was killing its citizens by the hundreds, and the nation’s leaders in Tehran knew exactly whom to blame. “Zionist elements developed a deadlier strain of coronavirus against Iran,” declared a propaganda outlet there.

David Clarke, the former Milwaukee County sheriff who has become a far-right media darling, also had ideas about where the epidemic has come from. “Not ONE media outlet has asked about George Soros’s involvement in this FLU panic,” Clarke wrote in a Twitter message about the prominent Jewish billionaire who has long been a target of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

“He is SOMEWHERE involved in this,” Clarke told his 914,00 Twitter followers. The message was widely condemned but also widely shared, with about 1,200 retweets and 3,700 likes.

Global crisis tends to bring out anti-Semitism, and the coronavirus pandemic is no exception. According to a report on the coronavirus outbreak by SITE Intelligence, a private firm that monitors extremism, Jews are, along with people of Chinese origin, the top targets of extremist content relating to the pandemic. Some of these extremists believe that Israel created the virus, while others believe they can use the virus to hurt Jews.

“While anti-Semitism is a constant on the far-right,” wrote the report’s author, Rita Katz, “this tendency is no doubt exacerbated by the global status of the pandemic.” (Yahoo News)

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