Antisemitism and Support for Political Violence Chicago Project on Security and Threats and the ADL Report
October 19, 2023

A new national poll from ADL (Anti-Defamation League) and the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST) found that highly antisemitic Americans are three times more likely to support violence to achieve certain political goals compared to the general population.

The nationally representative survey of nearly 8,000 Americans, fielded by the NORC at the University of Chicago, probed the relationship between antisemitic attitudes, support for political violence and antidemocratic conspiracy theories. The survey was fielded from March 30 to May 5, 2023, using respondents randomly drawn from NORC’s AmeriSpeak panel of over 50,000 U.S. adults. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.5 percent. The study is the first to establish a clear relationship between antisemitism, political violence and antidemocratic conspiracy theories on both ends of the political spectrum in the United States today.

Americans who accept multiple particularly hateful anti-Jewish tropes express support for the use of violence to restore Donald Trump to the presidency three times more than the general population (15% vs. 5%). Likewise, they also support the use of force for political causes associated with the left, including abortion rights, minority voting rights, and preventing police brutality, about two times more than the general population.

While a relatively small segment of the American public – about 10 million adults – holds both high levels of antisemitism and express support for political violence for any of the causes we examine, this is more than the total number of Jews in America. The findings shed light on the role that those conspiracy-fueled hatreds play in threatening American democracy.

Click here to read the full report.