Faith-Based Daily Awareness Post 21 September 2023

These updates are shared to help raise the situational awareness of Faith-Based organizations to best defend against, and mitigate the impacts from all-hazards threats including physical security, cybersecurity, and natural disasters.

White Supremacist Groups Spread Propaganda in Connecticut, Ohio, and Maryland and Hold Protest in Minnesota

Over the past several days, there have been reports of white supremacist groups disseminating hate-filled propaganda, in the form of flyers, in one community in Connecticut, at least one community in Maryland, and six communities in Ohio. The flyers contained or referred to other materials online, such as on the groups’ websites, that featured anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ+, and other racist and hate-filled messages. Two different groups conducted the activity in Connecticut and Ohio, one based in New England and the other in Texas, and are not reported as having coordinated their actions beforehand. The perpetrator in Maryland has not been identified. In that case, it was also noted the perpetrator(s) spray painted a swastika on a Jewish cemetery. For this activity, it was also noted it occurred in the days leading up to one of the most important religious holidays on the Jewish calendar: Yom Kippur.

Additionally, in a Minnesota community a group of white supremacists conducted a protest on a pedestrian bridge over a highway, displaying banners with messages like “White Unity Is Strength.”

Additional details about these events can be found in Radical Reports, WJZ CBS News Baltimore, and WCPO ABC 9 Cincinnati.

Analyst Comments:

This latest activity is part of an alarming trend of rising extremism in the U.S., which includes heightened activity by those who espouse hateful ideologies focused on race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, and more. This activity includes white supremacist propaganda like the type recently spread in the Connecticut, Maryland, and Ohio communities, with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reporting there’s been a 38 percent increase in white supremacist propaganda incidents nationwide last year compared to 2021. With the U.S. already in a heightened threat environment, these and other activities that are intended to spread hate could help trigger the next attack, potentially against a certain religious group and possibly at a house of worship. Therefore, faith-based organizations should be vigilant and exercise extra precautions. This is especially true around the time of important religious holidays, as the recent events happening around Yom Kippur (and Rosh Hashanah) demonstrate.

The recently released Protecting Houses of Worship: Perimeter Security Considerations from CISA, which was discussed in yesterday’s Daily Awareness Post, is one new resource faith-based organizations can utilize to help prevent and mitigate hostile events. It outlines low- to no-cost solutions to help implement these suggested practices and highlights ways to identify funding for security improvements. Additionally, CISA’s just-released Security Planning Workbook, which was also noted in yesterday’s Daily Awareness Post, is a comprehensive resource that can assist with the development of a foundational security plan. It is designed to be flexible and scalable and used by individuals involved with an organization’s security planning efforts, including individuals or groups with varying degrees of security expertise, charged with the safety and security of facilities and people.