March 12, 2022
White supremacist activity is common and on the rise in the Keystone State.
Nowhere in the nation had more white supremacist propaganda in 2021 than Pennsylvania, according to an annual assessment published by the Anti-Defamation League.
That's why “fighting hate in Pennsylvania has never been more important,” said Andrew Goretsky, the regional director of ADL's Philadelphia branch.
The organization reported 473 instances of white supremacist propaganda being distributed in the state last year.
That's almost double what the ADL reported in 2020 and close to 100 more than the 375 cases reported in Virginia, the state with the second-highest levels of white supremacist propaganda.
Although Philadelphia is a majority minority city, it's far from immune to the statewide trend. There were 24 propaganda incidents in the city last year, more than anywhere else in the state.
Patriot Front, a national white supremacist group the ADL says is responsible for 82% of the propaganda incidents reported in the U.S. last year, has a particularly strong foothold in Pennsylvania.
In that group, white supremacists are required to meet a weekly propaganda distribution quota to maintain their membership.
Patriot Front held a rally in Philly on July 4, after which members were chased out of the city by residents and fled in a fleet of Penske moving trucks.
The group is an example white supremacists co-opting patriotic imagery and rhetoric as a way to make themselves more broadly palatable, something which has become more common in recent years, according to the ADL report.
But another vocal group in the region, the New Jersey European Heritage Society, hasn't made that switch.
In January 2021, a Philly resident found three members of the group putting antisemitic literature up around the National Museum of American Jewish History in Center City.
She filmed herself getting into a verbal confrontation with the trio and followed the group for a few minutes before they ran across a street to get away from her.
Antisemitic incidents are also becoming more common in Pennsylvania. They're up 150% from 2015, the York Daily Record reported.
It's hard to tell if Pennsylvania is really doing so much worse than the rest of the nation when it comes to white supremacy. Part of the reason the numbers may be so high in the Keystone State is that residents do a good job of reporting them when they occur.
Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Allegheny County, told the Daily Record that he believes there are many states where these incidents are underreported. But that doesn't mean white supremacy isn't a problem in his mind.
In the wake of the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history, Frankel and other Democrats introduced several bills to strengthen the state's hate crime laws.
But they didn't pass the Republican-controlled legislature then or when Frankel reintroduced some of them in January 2021. This is because some conservatives worry that strengthening hate crime laws could amount to restrictions on freedom of speech.
