Police in Berlin on Thursday searched the home of prominent conservative political commentator and former university professor Norbert Bolz over a social media post he wrote in 2024 that contained a Nazi-era slogan. On Thursday morning, officers arrived at Bolz’s home and questioned him about a post on X that featured the Nazi-affiliated expression, “Deutschland erwache!” (“Germany, awake!”). Bolz confirmed his authorship of the post, avoiding the seizure of his laptop, he told POLITICO.  “The friendly police officers gave me the good advice to be more careful in the future. I’ll do that and only talk about trees from now on,” Bolz sarcastically commented in a separate post on X. Bolz is a regular commentator for WELT, a sister publication of POLITICO in the Axel Springer Group. A Berlin public prosecutor confirmed that police carried out a search in connection with an investigation into the “use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations.” Bolz had shared a post from the left-wing newspaper taz that read, “Ban of the AfD and a petition against Höcke: Germany awakens,” and added ironically: “A good translation for “woke”: Germany awake!” The German case comes after U.K. authorities arrested “Father Ted” co-creator Graham Linehan on suspicion of inciting violence with a series of social media posts about transgender people, amid a wider debate over hate speech laws and free expression in the U.K. and other European countries. In February at the Munich Security Conference, U.S. Vice President JD Vance lambasted European leaders, arguing that free speech was increasingly under threat on the continent, though the Trump administration has itself also clamped down on some commentary posted on social media.

The EU should swiftly pull funding from organizations that fail to uphold its values, and do more to tackle hate speech, France, Austria and the Netherlands urged in an informal document seen by POLITICO. Citing a surge in antisemitic and racist incidents following the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 and the war in Gaza, the three countries call on Brussels and national capitals to “redouble their efforts to combat racism, antisemitism, xenophobia and anti-Muslim hatred” and ensure that “no support is given to entities hostile to European values, in particular through funding.” The document lays out proposals to tighten financial oversight and expand the EU’s criminal and operational response to hate crimes. It calls on the European Commission to fully apply existing budget rules allowing for the exclusion of entities inciting hatred, and to make beneficiaries of programs such as Erasmus+ and CERV (Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values) sign pledges that they will respect and promote EU rights and values. The document comes just one day before a European Council meeting in Brussels at which EU leaders are expected to discuss support to Ukraine, defense, and also housing, competitiveness, migration, and the green and digital transitions. According to a draft of the Council conclusions obtained by POLITICO, national leaders are expected to stress that EU values apply equally in the digital sphere, with the protection of minors singled out as a key priority. Beyond funding, the document demands tougher measures against online and offline hate speech. It also urges Europol to launch a project looking at hate crimes and calls for education and awareness programs on tolerance and Holocaust remembrance through Erasmus+ and CERV.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk sparked a cacophony of condemnations and grief from leaders across the political spectrum. But missing from the din was the voice of a unifying political leader calling for calm. No one appeared well positioned to play the soothing role that has fallen in the past to presidents and the nation’s faith leaders. “I’m looking, but I can’t claim that I can identify that person,” former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels told POLITICO. Daniels, a Republican from a more genteel time in American politics, was not alone in his assessment of the bleak landscape. Bill Daley, former President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, said in an interview that President Donald Trump “is the only one who can do it, because he represents everyone.” Rep. Don Bacon, the iconoclastic Nebraska Republican, told a reporter he hoped the president would step up to the challenge, adding, “But he’s a populist, and populists dwell on anger.” In a video statement recorded from the Oval Office late Wednesday, Trump denounced the violence on a Utah Valley University campus that led to the death of the 31-year-old conservative fixture. The president, who survived two attempts on his own life, spoke of the scourge of “demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.” But he also laid blame at the feet of the “radical left,” who he said compared Kirk to “Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals.” Trump has either actively refused or begrudginly — and then only briefly — embraced the role of consoler- or uniter-in-chief. He has routinely demonized his opponents on social media and threatened to withhold federal dollars from causes with which he ideologically disagrees. His previous rhetoric has included boasting he could stand “in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” without losing voters and he recently ordered the National Guard to patrol cities whose Democratic leaders he argues let crime get out of control. For some, Trump himself is part of the problem. As president, he has the power to ease an already tense situation — or inflame it. “There is a violent undertow, and we have to be very careful about unleashing it,” said William Barber, an influential pastor and civil rights activist who co-chairs the Poor People’s Campaign, which advocates for the nation’s lowest-income residents. It was founded by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. He suggested perhaps one person alone can’t fill the role of cooling the temperature. “Does the president have a responsibility at this moment? Yes,” Barber added. “But I’m saying that in our history there has never been one person. So it’s the president, pulpits and politicians that hold key leadership positions that must step into this moment.” Asked whether he could be the country’s lead uniter, a White House spokesperson highlighted the following portion of his Wednesday night remarks: “Tonight, I ask all Americans to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died. The values of free speech, citizenship, the rule of law, and the patriotic devotion and love of God. Charlie was the best of America, and the monster who attacked him was attacking our whole country. An assassin tried to silence him with a bullet, but he failed because together we will ensure that his voice, his message and his legacy will live on for countless generations to come.” And asked how he would like his supporters to respond to Kirk’s assassination, Trump told a reporter, “He was an advocate of nonviolence. That’s the way I like to see people.” But to another question he replied, “We have radical left lunatics out there and we just have to beat the hell out of them.” Few know how to sew back together a civic fabric that seems irreparably torn. “There’s no one trusted broadly enough to play that role,” said Mike Ricci, former Speaker Paul Ryan’s communications director. Ricci crafted Ryan’s remarks in the minutes after Rep. Steve Scalise was shot at a congressional baseball game practice in 2017. “And in the absence of that kind of voice, it just leaves people retreating more into their own camps: They’re more likely to share what Megyn Kelly says about it than they are the president.” Trump still has room to seize the mantle, said Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush’s former spokesperson. Back when the former president climbed a pile of rubble in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, Fleischer said, “We were still a polarized nation where many Democrats thought President George Bush was an illegitimate president because of the Supreme Court ruling in the recount. What changed everything was the fact that America was attacked and our nation rallied.” “I don’t agree that it’s impossible for leaders to bring people together, because I saw it happen,” he added. Indeed, FBI Director Kash Patel, a MAGA faithful, attended the anniversary ceremony Thursday alongside New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, an establishment Democrat, in a sign that a few moments and places remain to bridge the partisan divide. Former presidents looked to offer their own way forward for the nation using the only megaphone they had: social media. “Violence and vitriol must be purged from the public square,” Bush said in a statement through his presidential center, and Obama posted,“This kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy.” Former President Bill Clinton vowed to “redouble our efforts to engage in debate passionately, yet peacefully.” But no one can quite find the words — or the credibility or moral authority — to quell the molten anger of this American moment, an anger that shows no signs of receding ahead of the pivotal midterm elections next year. Trump is as much an ailment to the body politic as he is a symptom. Declining trust in politicians, a fragmented and siloed media, and decades of waning social and religious institutions are all colliding. There’s no Rev. Billy Graham to speak to broad swaths of the faithful and call us to Americans’ better angels. The Pope — an American — hasn’t yet addressed Kirk’s death, though U.S. bishops did, urging for a national reckoning that rids “us of senseless violence once and for all.” “Billy Graham … spoke as someone who had something to offer to everyone, as opposed to someone who was speaking on behalf of a tribe— and that’s what we’ve lost,” said Michael Wear, Obama’s former faith outreach adviser. At its core, Wear said, the killing of Kirk — and the lack of a unifying leader to emerge in its aftermath — reveals something about American politics in 2025. “Politicians used to be valued by their most strident supporters for their ability to speak and persuade others who were not among their core supporters,” he said. “Now, the common definition of a good politician is someone who excels at channeling and mobilizing anger among their core supporters against an enemy.” Shia Kapos contributed to this report.

French prosecutors said Friday that foreign interference is behind a wave of apparently provocative acts — from stunts targeting Muslims to antisemitic graffiti — that have struck Paris in the last two years. Pig heads were found outside nine mosques on Tuesday, shocking the Paris region. “Several of the pig heads had the inscription ‘MACRON’ written in blue ink,” the prosecutor’s office said earlier this week. Prosecutors have not yet publicly named a state actor as being responsible for the various incidents, but the cases echo tactics previously attributed to Russian networks seeking to exploit social fractures in Europe. Foreign interference is “something we must take into account, and that we do take into account, since in making an assessment of this type of acts that have taken place in the Paris area since October 2023, we have nine cases,” Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told BFMTV on Friday. “It started with the blue Stars of David,” Beccuau said, referring to an incident that saw the symbols daubed on building walls in the French capitals’s 14th district in October 2023 — and was later linked to pro-Russian interference. “Then came the ‘red hands,’ then splashes of green paint,” she said about attacks that targeted the Paris Holocaust memorial in 2024 and 2025. Earlier this month, pro-Russian posters were discovered on several pillars of the Arc de Triomphe, showing the image of a soldier with the caption, “Say thank you to the victorious Soviet soldier.” Beccuau said investigators have identified similar patterns in the modus operandi of individuals of Eastern European origin arriving for a short period of time in France to carry out these acts. “Sometimes they take photos of what they have done, and send the photos beyond the borders to sponsors,” she said. “Some of the sponsors have been identified … so we are fully able to be convinced that these acts are operations of interference.” Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, French authorities have accused Moscow of spreading disinformation and orchestrating symbolic provocations designed to sow mistrust in institutions and deepen religious or political tensions. Clea Caulcutt contributed to this report.

Former Polish Health Minister Adam Niedzielski was hospitalized on Wednesday after being assaulted in the eastern city of Siedlce, in what authorities say was an attack linked to his role in shaping the country’s pandemic policies. “A few hours ago, I was the victim of a brutal attack,” Niedzielski said after the assault. “I was beaten by two men shouting: ‘Death to traitors to the homeland.’ I got punched in the face and then kicked while lying on the ground. The whole incident lasted several seconds, and then the perpetrators fled,” he added. Police confirmed late Wednesday that two men in their 30s were detained in connection with the incident. The suspects are expected to be questioned on Thursday. Authorities said more details about the suspects and the circumstances of the attack would be released after questioning concludes. The assault took place outside a restaurant in central Siedlce, the police said. Witnesses reported that the attackers loudly criticized the government’s Covid-era decisions before physically confronting the former health minister. Following the assault, Niedzielski was briefly admitted to the Provincial Hospital in Siedlce and discharged the same day with no serious injuries. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk condemned the attack Wednesday evening, vowing that the perpetrators would go to jail. “No mercy,” he said. Niedzielski, who led the health ministry from 2020 to 2023, was a central figure in implementing restrictions and vaccination campaigns that remain divisive among parts of the public. Commenting on the attack on Wednesday, Niedzielski said it was “the result of tolerating hate speech,” but also of the decision of Polish Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński of depriving him of protection, “despite numerous threats” he had previously received. “I hope that this situation will cause reflections on all sides of the political scene that we are already on a slippery slope. Passivity will only condemn us to further escalation,” Niedzielski said.

BERLIN — Extreme-right groups in Germany are increasingly targeting LGBTQ+ people as part of a systematic effort to gain popularity and win new recruits. Right-wing extremists have mobilized against Pride events scheduled for this summer, planning counter demonstrations that purport to celebrate traditional, heterosexual relationships. It’s a message, experts say, that is drawing a growing number of young Germans to the extreme right. In the eastern German town of Bautzen, organizers of a local Pride parade set to take place in August are preparing for a large counter demonstration of right-wing extremists, many of them teenagers. “Man and woman. The true foundation of life,” reads an online post advertising one of the protests. Organizers of the Pride event, which celebrates Christopher Street Day (CSD) — a commemoration of the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City that became a catalyst for the international gay rights movement — say participants face threats and intimidation.  “The threats are much harsher online because of the supposed anonymity,” said Lea Krause, one of the CSD parade organizers in Bautzen. “But it’s tough on the street too, simply because you’re face to face with people. And they know exactly who you are, and you also know who they are.” German federal police say CSD events — of which there are some 200 scheduled across Germany during the spring and summer — are increasingly targeted by neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist groups. Since the middle of last year, “new youth groups have emerged in the right-wing scene” that target the CSD events, Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office said in an emailed statement. A CSD parade in the Bavarian city of Regensburg planned for July had to be rescheduled due to threats against its organizers. In the small eastern German city of Wernigerode, a 20-year-old man allegedly threatened to open fire on the local CSD event. Police later found ammunition at the suspect’s house, according to media reports. At a CSD parade in June on the outskirts of Berlin, police said they prevented a violent attack on participants amid a counter-demonstration planned by a right-wing extremist group. During last year’s CSD parade in Bautzen, nearly 700 right-wing extremists gathered to disrupt the celebration, which drew about 1,000 people amid a heavy police presence. Many of the counter-demonstrators were minors, according to a report from regional domestic intelligence authorities. “I’ve had enough, enough of this Pride month, enough of all the rainbow flags hanging everywhere: on schools, town halls, even in the German armed forces,” Dan-Odin Wölfer, a member of the extreme-right group organizing the counter-demonstration in Bautzen this year, said in an online video. The month, he went on, “doesn’t belong to the rainbow. It belongs to us. It belongs to the people who built this country, who stand up, work and fight every day for their families, for their homeland. We are proud of our country.” Krause, the CSD event organizer in Bautzen, said she’s confident the police will be able to protect this year’s march, but feared extreme-right violence on the sidelines. Traveling to and from the event alone or in small groups, she said, “is of course dangerous.” THE EXTREME RIGHT’S ALTERNATIVE PRIDE The targeting of Pride events is part of a larger wave of radicalization within German society that is particularly affecting the country’s youth, authorities say. Extreme-right crimes surged by nearly 50 percent last year, according to police figures. “We have to realize that in society as a whole, and among a share of young people, we see a shift to the right and an increase in the acceptance of violence,” Holger Münch, the head of Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office, told reporters when presenting the crime statistics in May. At the same time, Germany’s far right is increasingly turning its focus to gay pride, rebranding Pride month as Stolzmonat, with a focus on the traditional family and national pride. “Stolzmonat is an alternative that seeks to consciously counter the forced change … setting an example of traditional values, family ties and stability in uncertain times,” reads a statement on the website of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. Domestic intelligence authorities there classify the party branch as extremist. The targeting of Pride events is part of a larger wave of radicalization within German society that is particularly affecting the country’s youth, authorities say. | Clemens Bilan/EPA “For a long time, the German far right focused on migration, Islam, EU skepticism and the coronavirus,” said Sabine Volk, a researcher at the Institute for Research on Far-Right Extremism at the University of Tübingen. “But in the aftermath of the pandemic, we have seen an increased focus on queer-phobia, anti-LGBTQ+ discourse and, since last year, protest activities.” Such discourse is particularly effective at radicalizing young men who don’t start out identifying with right-wing extremist ideology, Volk said. Recruiting often happens within seemingly apolitical organizations, including at combat sports and mixed martial arts clubs. “If organizations are not clearly attributable to the far-right spectrum, that seems to make them more attractive to young people who are not necessarily attracted to a party, but to a shared experience,” Volk said. In those settings, extreme-right activists often begin radicalizing young people by promoting what they portray as traditional values. Organizers of the extreme-right counter-demonstration in the eastern German town of Bautzen, for instance, say the event is about upholding “the family as the core of our community” and “respect for the natural order.” Krause, Bautzen’s CSD event organizer, said she expected the counter-demonstration to be bigger this year. At the same time, she believes the CSD parade itself will draw many more participants. “It is very nice to see that some people in Bautzen really want to go through with this,” Krause said. “We are very, very brave and empowered to keep on going.”

PARIS — French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau is taking heat for what critics say was a slow response to the killing of a man who appeared to be targeted for his Muslim faith. Aboubakar Cissé, a 23-year-old Malian, died after being stabbed dozens of times on Friday while worshiping at a mosque in southern France. The local prosecutor said that the attacker had filmed the stabbing, during which he shouted “I did it … your shitty Allah,” multiple French media outlets reported. Retailleau, a popular right-wing politician who is running to lead France’s conservative political party Les Républicains, responded on X about six hours hours later to express “solidarity with the Muslim community.” He attended two campaign events over the weekend and only then traveled to meet with local investigators and religious leaders in La Grande-Combe on Sunday. Retailleau has been quicker to visit the sites of other violent attacks after they occurred. Less than a day before Friday’s mosque attack in La Grande-Combe, for example, he went to Nantes after a high school student fatally stabbed a 15-year-old classmate and wounded others. That attack took place around noon; Retailleau was on site within seven hours. The interior minister defended his delayed visit to the site of the attack on the Muslim man by citing the ongoing investigation and lingering uncertainties surrounding the case. On Tuesday, he hit back at those criticizing him for turning tragedies into political grist. “I do not accept that such serious and painful issues should be exploited by parties or associations that profit from a family’s misfortune. These methods are shameful, and I will not allow myself to be intimidated or exploited,” he said on X. The minister’s critics, however, say the lack of urgency points to a double-standard — a claim that government spokesperson Sophie Primas tried to bat down at a press conference on Monday — especially considering how quickly Retailleau traveled to the scene during a recent stabbing that President Emmanuel Macron had described as an act of “Islamist terrorism.” That stabbing, which was committed by an Algerian national who was described as having a “schizophrenic profile,” took place at 3:40 p.m. The interior minister’s trip to the site of the attack was confirmed less than two hours later. Aboubakar Cissé, a 23-year-old Malian, died after being stabbed dozens of times on Friday while worshiping at a mosque in southern France. | Teresa Suarez/EPA “When you see the time it took for the Interior Minister to respond … it gives the impression that French people of the Muslim faith have no place in our country,” said Ludovic Mendes, a National Assembly member from Macron’s centrist group who recently authored a report on Islamophobia in France. Retailleau’s detractors add that his fiery remarks criticizing Muslim headscarves — he shouted “down with the veil” at a recent rally — fuel what Mendes describes as “ordinary racism” in France at a time when official statistics show that anti-Muslim hate crimes are rising. Reports of such incidents were up 72 percent from January through March this year compared with the same period in 2024, according to interior ministry figures. Retailleau also was criticized from within his own political camp. Xavier Bertrand, the conservative president of the northern Hauts-de-France region and a supporter of Retailleau’s party leadership run, told BFMTV he was “firmly convinced” that the interior minister should have visited the attack site “straight away.” “When a man is savagely murdered in France because he is a Muslim, we have to fight that … our outrage cannot depend on the circumstances,” Bertrand said. The suspected attacker fled the scene and remained at large for three days before surrendering to authorities in Italy on Monday. Prosecutor Abdelkrim Grini said that while hate was considered the most likely motive, other scenarios are still being examined. The assailant’s lawyer, speaking to reporters in Italy, said his client had not “said anything against Islam or Mosque” and was “confused” by the accusation that his acts were motivated by hate. Elena Giordano contributed to this report.

MAGDEBURG, Germany — Just a few hours after a Saudi man drove his car into a crowded Christmas market in this eastern German city in December, killing several and injuring hundreds more, a 13-year-old Syrian boy was in an elevator across town when an adult neighbor grabbed him by the throat. The attack happened “because of people like you,” the man allegedly told the boy, who had come to Germany as a refugee. The Magdeburg Christmas market attack helped reshape the campaign ahead of Germany’s Feb. 23 election, putting migration front and center and prompting top politicians to vow to drastically reduce the number of asylum seekers entering the country. But it has also had very real consequences for immigrants and people of color. The attacker in Magdeburg was an anti-Islam activist who sympathized with far-right ideas, but extreme-right groups have focused on one detail: that he is an immigrant from Saudi Arabia. Since the attack, immigrants — or those perceived as immigrants — have been subject to a fresh wave of violence and racist abuse. “People are very worried,” said Aras Badr, an anti-discrimination adviser who works for a network of immigrant organizations, known as LAMSA, in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, where Magdeburg is located. “Many people are now considering leaving … and it’s exactly what the right-wing extremists here hope to accomplish.” Since the Christmas market attack, organizations that document hate crimes have seen a big increase in violent assaults on migrants. In the six weeks following the market attack, Mobile Opferberatung, a nonprofit organization that works with victims of hate crime — including the 13-year-old Syrian boy — documented 20 such cases, including 15 cases of assault. It’s a considerable rise over the same period in previous years, and experts warn that there could be many more such cases, as they often go unreported. “For everyone else who belongs to this group, who looks a certain way, who speaks German with an accent, it is a signal: ‘That can happen to me too,’” said Antje Arndt, a project leader at Mobile Opferberatung. The spate of attacks in Magdeburg comes at a time when mainstream politicians are taking an increasingly tough line on migration in response to a series of high-profile crimes blamed on immigrants. Last month, an Afghan man authorities said had a history of mental illness, was accused of attacking a group of pre-school children in a park in Bavaria with a knife, killing one child and a man who was trying to protect the group. That attack shocked Germans and prompted Friedrich Merz, the conservative candidate for chancellor, to take a much harder line on migration, vowing to turn asylum seekers away at the border should he come to power. Merz also moved to accept the support of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to push through tougher migration measures in parliament, breaking a longstanding taboo by weakening the postwar quarantine of the far right. Migrants’ rights activists say growing anti-immigration sentiment in Germany is having a palpable effect on the ground. In Magdeburg, the Christmas market attack appears to have spurred a series of extremist revenge attacks. Badr’s organization, LAMSA, documented 30 incidents involving racist attacks and discrimination in the month following the attack, he said. Normally, the organization documents five or six cases per month. In recent weeks, migrants in Magdeburg have allegedly been spat on, punched in the face, and in once case, sent to the hospital with loose teeth, migrant groups have reported. They’ve had racist epithets flung at them in public transit, swastikas spray-painted on their front doors and letters dropped in their mailboxes telling them to go back to where they came from. The local domestic intelligence agency has classified the AfD’s state branch as an extremist organization. | Silas Stein/Getty Images Saxony-Anhalt, like much of the former East Germany, is a stronghold for the AfD. The party is at 31 percent support in the state, according to polls, while on the national level the party is at 22 percent. The local domestic intelligence agency has classified the AfD’s state branch as an extremist organization and AfD campaign posters in the state call for “a country that remains a homeland” — a not-so-subtle call to rid the country of immigrants. At the AfD’s kickoff campaign rally in the state, party leader and chancellor candidate Alice Weidel vowed to carry out “large-scale repatriations” of immigrants — or as party members euphemistically call it, “re-migration.” “A lot of people feel frightened in general because of far-right extremism,” said Matthias Quent, an expert on far- and extreme-right movements at the Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences. But, he added, those feelings are compounded for immigrants because they get the impression that “there seems to be a broad coalition throughout all political parties to say that migration in general is a problem.” In Magdeburg, the 13-year-old boy’s family filed a report with the police, according to Mobile Opferberatung, and officers were able to identify his attacker. The police did not respond to a request for comment. In the days that followed the Christmas market attack, far-right and extremist groups quickly moved to exploit anti-migrant sentiment. Some 2,000 right-wing extremists took to the streets in Magdeburg the day after the attack, marching behind a giant banner that read “RE-MIGRATION.” Days later, the AfD held an event of its own, at which a crowd of supporters chanted, “Deport! Deport!” Badr said some migrants have chosen to leave the area — and many more want to leave — given the ever-harsher climate. “The right-wing extremists want ‘re-migration,’” he said. “And I think here in the east, in Saxony-Anhalt or in Magdeburg, they’ve already partially succeeded.”

European Union guidelines on hate speech will now be folded into Digital Services Act enforcement, the European Commission said on Monday, formalizing a voluntary code agreed with tech platforms in 2016. The code of conduct on countering illegal hate speech online+ clarifies how to deal with material that could incite violence or hatred under the EU’s landmark content moderation regulation. While the code isn’t mandatory, the Commission will view companies’ compliance with it as “a substantial reference point” when “doing enforcement actions,” a Commission official told a Monday press briefing, speaking on condition of anonymity to speak freely. Under the code, online platforms agree to review two-thirds of takedown requests within 24 hours and better transparency over hate speech, the Commission said in a Monday press release. It also sets out a “clear methodology” for “monitoring reporters” – which can be civil society groups or public authorities – to flag problematic material and assess platforms’ responses, another Commission official told the same press briefing. The 2016 code was signed by Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, X, TikTok, Google’s YouTube, Microsoft’s LinkedIn, Snapchat, Rakuten, Dailymotion, Jeuxvideo.com, Viber, and Twitch. The signatories had requested that it be turned into a formal measure, the first Commission official said. All of the companies have recommitted to the code, according to the press release. The takedown rate of content with illegal hate speech has grown to 60 percent from about 28 percent when the code was launched, the official said. There is no EU-wide definition of hate speech, but member countries are required to criminalize certain types of speech against racial, ethnic, or religious groups. Some countries have gone further to add gender identity or sexual orientation. The code follows Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement earlier this month that the company would end a fact-checking program to restore free expression on its platform. This will start in the U.S. with no immediate plans to do the same in the EU. Zuckerberg also told a podcast interview this month that “misinformation, and hate speech, I think, are the ones that got politicized” as efforts to clamp down on them had gone too far. The Commission also plans to formalize a separate code of practice on disinformation in the coming months at companies’ request. That should be finalized soon to allow it to apply by July, the first Commission official said today.

Jonathan Greenblatt is the CEO and National Director of the Anti-Defamation League. An intractable virus of hate that has ebbed and flowed through the centuries, antisemitism has plagued Jews in virtually every country around the world. And in the aftermath of the horrific Oct. 7 attacks, it has found startling new staying power. For careful observers like me, the harassment, assaults and vandalism against Jewish communities over the past 15 months have provided a confounding coda to one of the deadliest attacks on Jews since the Holocaust. And today, we have new data, which provides a better understanding of the ideas and beliefs that may be providing grist for these disturbing trends. Marking the 10th anniversary of the Anti-Defamation League’s Global 100 Survey, which was first conducted in 2014, we set out to ask participants from 103 countries and territories around the globe the same questions once more. Resulting in the world’s most extensive survey on antisemitism ever conducted, we found that as of the end of 2024, about 46 percent of the world’s adult population held elevated levels of antisemitic beliefs. This means that in the last decade, the number of adults with elevated antisemitic attitudes has doubled to a staggering 2.2 billion people. Nearly one out of every two adults worldwide now endorse the majority of the 11 antisemitic tropes we presented them with — tropes such as “Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars,” or “Jews are more loyal to Israel than their home country.” And only 48 percent of those polled recognized the Holocaust’s historical accuracy — that number dropped to 39 percent among those aged 18 to 34, 27 percent of whom haven’t heard about the Holocaust at all. Simply put, this data reveals a stark failure to pass on the memory and lessons of the Holocaust to younger generations — the very future of our world. We’ve reached a critical tipping point, and it’s time to sound every alarm. We all saw the harassment of Jews on college campuses. We saw the appalling yet increasingly normalized display of Hamas and Hezbollah flags in cities like New York, Sydney and Toronto. Still, it was shocking to find that nearly one quarter of respondents worldwide expressed favorable opinions toward the Palestinian terror group Hamas. In regions like the Middle East and North Africa, 76 percent of respondents believed most of the survey’s 11 antisemitic tropes to be true. Troublingly, around half the respondents in Asia, Eastern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa held high levels of antisemitic attitudes as well. And while the Americas, Western Europe and Oceania had relatively lower levels of antisemitic attitudes, we found that around one in five adults still harbored these sentiments.   This data needs to be a wake-up call. Antisemitism isn’t an abstract issue — it’s a threat that manifests in violence, hatred and the erosion of social cohesion. We’ve seen this even in countries with the lowest levels of antisemitic attitudes, including in North America and Western Europe, in the many horrific antisemitic incidents perpetrated by a small, vocal and violent minority. The ugly incident that took place in the Netherlands just months ago, in the city where Anne Frank once hid from Nazis, is an all-too-real example of this phenomenon. Yet, amid these alarming findings, the survey also identified avenues for possible and urgent change. Encouragingly, 57 percent of respondents recognized that hate toward Jews is a serious problem in the world. But that’s just a start. Governments and leaders worldwide need to take a stand against antisemitism and all forms of hate. Words of condemnation are no longer enough. We need robust hate crime laws that punish bigoted conduct, while also providing tangible protections for vulnerable communities. For instance, legislative protections for Jews and targeted Holocaust education for young students can help mitigate the harmful effects of these rampant anti-Jewish attitudes. Additionally, in order to mitigate the ever-present threat of antisemitism and protect Jewish communities, governments, international organizations and NGOs should adopt and implement the Global Guidelines for Countering Antisemitism. Safety is a most basic right. We also musn’t forget that when it comes to understanding antisemitism in any country, antisemitic attitudes are just one piece of the puzzle. The full picture must take societal attitudes, as well as government actions, the state of public discourse, religious freedom and more into account. Only by looking at these different aspects together can we really grasp the environment that Jewish individuals are living in globally, and work toward creating a safer, more inclusive reality. The world is watching our response to this growing crisis. If we fail, the future will be one where hate and extremism are no longer pushed to the fringes but embraced by the mainstream. Let’s make this the last record of hate we ever have to break.