Sam Kestenbaum is a contributing editor and former staff writer for the Forward. Before this, he worked for The New York Times and newsrooms in Sana, Ramallah and Beijing. Contact him at kestenbaum@forward.com and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum and on Instagram at @skestenbaum.
On the day white nationalist leader Richard Spencer was scheduled to come to the University of Florida, the campus was on high alert. The governor had declared a state of emergency and hundreds of counter protestors had shown up. Classes were cancelled; the campus was swarmed with media and helicopters swooped overhead. At the center…
Richard Spencer, one of the country’s most prominent white nationalist, struggled to begin a much-hyped and controversial talk at the University of Florida amidst chants and boos from the crowd on Thursday afternoon. “I am speaking to you reasonably and rationally,” he said amidst hand claps and chanting. “You are not speaking. You are screaming……
The Neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer is encouraging flash mobs at minority and Jewish institutions near University of Florida to coincide with a scheduled speech by white nationalist Richard Spencer later today. Among the addresses posted by the neo-Nazi site were the local Chabad Center and the Institute of Black Culture. Neo-Nazi site the Daily…
In their early 20s, Sara and Clare Bronfman were looking for some direction in life, a way to focus and find fulfillment. The two youngest daughters of Jewish billionaire Edgar Bronfman Sr. signed up with a “self-help” program in upstate New York that they believed would transform their lives. But the sisters wound up sinking…
Florida Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency Monday in the lead up to a speech by white nationalist Richard Spencer at the University of Florida. The governor warned in an executive order that a “threat of a potential emergency is imminent” in Alachua County, where the university is located. University of Florida officials…
When 19-year-old Valentina Duarte entered the University of Central Florida this fall to begin studying film, she expected the typical challenges — integrating into campus culture, adjusting to the course load, finding new friends. Instead, she got a white supremacist welcome. “Keep your diversity,” posters plastered across the campus read. “We want identity.” A group…
Senator John McCain on Monday mentioned a Nazi slogan and warned Americans against buying into “half-baked, spurious nationalism” in what appeared to be a stark warning about the dangers of President Trump and white nationalism. Speaking in Philadelphia, where he was being honored with the Liberty Medal by the National Constitution Center, McCain said, “We…
Emily Codik had grown up hearing the tale: The night before Kristallnacht, her father’s family escaped Berlin and found haven in an unlikely place — Sosua, a remote beach town on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. There, the story went, they carved out a peaceful life for themselves, alongside many other Jews who…
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