"An attack on any House of Worship is an attack on all people of faith"
In wake of the murderous attack on innocent parishioners at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin yesterday, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish NGO, expressed its sympathies tothe grieving families and expressed its solidarity with the greater Sikh community. "An attack on any House of Worship is an attack on all people of faith," said Rabbi AbrahamCooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, adding, “While the investigation of the murderous hate crime is still underway, it is clear that this was an act of adomestic terrorism, not merely a random act of criminality.”
The alleged shooter had apparently been involved in a subculture of white supremacy and Nazi hate that denigrates people of color, Jews, and other minorities. According to theself-described online "independent" music site, Label 56 (described by The Southern Poverty Law Center as a White Supremacist website), Wade Michael Page had been a member of someof the most prominent white supremacist bands including, Max Resist, Aggressive Force, Blue Eyed Devils and Youngland, a group from Orange County, California. He was also the leaderof the band End Apathy as recently as 2010. End Apathy still has an active Myspace site http://www.myspace.com/endapathyband and features a number of songs including, Self Destruct and Submission andUseful Idiots and pictures of Wade Page playing the guitar and singing. The last login was in February 2012 and features over 1200 "friends" (see visuals above).
Each year the Wiesenthal Center’s Digital Terrorism and Hate Project (DTH) releases a report based on approximately 15,000 problematic Web sites, social networking pages, forums andnewer online technology games and apps. The interactive report presents the latest trends of how terrorist and hate groups manipulate and leverage internet technologies. In thisyear’s report, real time information will be available to law enforcement, government agencies, and policymakers via a password-sensitive app designed for use on both Apple OS andAndroid smartphones. While cyberhate is on the rise, a recent police survey found that fewer than half of all law enforcement agencies (47%) have a social media policy and the DTHapp seeks to give these agencies a leg up in stemming this troubling trend.
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The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO atinternational agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).
