The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has classified the image of a cement truck as an antisemitic hate symbol.
This is not true. Cement trucks do not appear on the ADL’s database for hate symbols. The claim appears to have come from an altered screenshot shared as satire.
Posts circulating online claim “an image of a cement truck” has been declared an antisemitic hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). This is false.
The claim appears to have come from a screenshot supposedly showing the ADL’s website where a “Cement Truck” is listed under “General Hate Symbols”. The ADL is an organisation with headquarters in the US campaigning against antisemitism, hate and extremism.
In the screenshot, there is an illustrated image of a cement truck with text below saying: “The image of a cement truck is an antisemitic symbol used by white supremacists to imply that Jews dig tunnels to be used for child trafficking. This comes after a tunnel was discovered under a New York synagogue.”
While the screenshot may have been created or shared as satire on X (formerly Twitter), where one post has almost 2,000 shares, other posts on Facebook, which have not shared the screenshot, claim: “The ADL is saying the image of a Cement Truck is now anti-semtic [sic]”.
However, this is not true and the screenshot appears to be fake.
A cement truck does not not currently appear on the ADL’s ‘Hate on Display' hate symbols database. There’s no evidence this has ever been listed on their database.
A closer look comparing the alleged screenshot with genuine pages from the database shows multiple differences—the fake has the subheading ‘Hate on Display’ in bold and features smaller spacing between lines.
An ADL spokesperson told Full Fact: “This cement truck claim is a complete fabrication and was created by someone attempting to discredit our work. Unfortunately, it is part of a wave of online antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish tunnels. We have reached out to social media platforms, urging them to take action against such obvious misinformation and hate.”
The screenshot has emerged after several men were arrested amid a dispute over a secret tunnel dug into the side of a synagogue in Brooklyn, New York.
Fake screenshots are a common type of misinformation we see online. Other such posts we’ve written about include those falsely claiming South Yorkshire Police had arrested a man for ‘repeatedly insisting’ he was English, that Haaretz reported Israelis “made millions” by betting against Israeli shares before the 7 October attack, and that the IDF said Israel was responsible for the bombing of a hospital in Gaza.
Image courtesy of Reedhawk
Update 12 January 2024
This article was updated to include the ADL’s comment.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because a cement truck does not appear on the ADL’s database for hate symbols. The claim comes from an altered screenshot.
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