White supremacist propaganda reached historic levels across the United States last year, with Massachusetts recording the fifth-highest number of incidents, despite a year-over-year decrease in such racist activity, according to an annual assessment from the Anti-Defamation League.
Across the country, there were 7,567 incidents of racist, antisemitic, anti-LGBTQ, and other hateful messages in 2023, which represented a 12-percent increase from the previous year. That averages out to about 20 incidents a day and marks the highest total since the ADL began tracking such data in 2017, according to a statement released Tuesday by ADL New England.
In Massachusetts, the ADL recorded 339 incidents of white supremacist propaganda last year, down from 465 incidents in 2022. But the numbers are still a far cry from 2017, when there were just 11 incidents in Massachusetts. Last year, only four states had more white supremacist propaganda activity than Massachusetts: Virginia, Texas, California, and New York.
“We remain concerned about the high levels of white supremacist propaganda incidents in Massachusetts which have grown exponentially in recent years,” said Ron Fish, the ADL’s New England interim regional director, in a statement.
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The incidents last year included police on Martha’s Vineyard asking for the public’s help after signs promoting a white nationalist group appeared around the town of Oak Bluffs, a popular summer destination for Black families.
During the summer, West Brookfield residents reported receiving antisemitic messages that were believed to have been sent by a neo-Nazi extremist group, officials said.
In Westfield, residents there awoke one October morning to find fliers from the Nationalist Social Club, or NSC-131, tucked into plastic sandwich bags weighted with small gray rocks and left in their driveways.
That same month, NSC-131 members also protested outside Governor Maura Healey’s Arlington home, chanting anti-immigrant slogans. The group reportedly also held demonstrations in Woburn, Marlborough, Framingham, and Quincy in 2023.
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The Southern Poverty Law Center labels NSC-131 a “neo-Nazi group based in New England” that doesn’t “cloak their white supremacist views.”
The data for the ADL assessment, according to that organization, includes the distribution of racist, antisemitic, and anti-LGBTQ+ fliers, stickers, banners, graffiti, posters, and laser projections by members of white supremacist groups.
“The decrease in white supremacist propaganda distribution in Massachusetts demonstrates the outsized impact small groups of individuals can have through activities like fliering,” said the ADL in the statement announcing the assessment’s results. “While groups like Patriot Front distributed less propaganda overall in the region, they staged large highly-visible protests in the Northeast and in other parts of the country in 2023.”
All told, 137 communities in the state were home to an incident of white supremacist propaganda. The most active groups here were Patriot Front, which was connected to 257 incidents, Aryan Circle, which was connected to 59 incidents, Nationalist Social Club, which was connected to 12 incidents, and Goyim Defense League, which was connected to six incidents.
Nationwide, antisemitic propaganda increased by nearly a third, rising to 1,112 incidents last year, according to the ADL. The assessment said that there were 164 anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda incidents by white supremacists in the United States last year, which represents a 141 percent increase year-over-year.
Danny McDonald can be reached at daniel.mcdonald@globe.com. Follow him @Danny__McDonald.