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Cosmetics tycoon Ronald Lauder has launched a new online portal to track the prevalence of coronavirus-fueled hate crimes. Lauder’s Anti-Semitism Accountability Project set up the website to collect reports of physical and online attacks on Asian-Americans, Jews and other groups whom bigots have falsely blamed for the pandemic. The billionaire former Estee Lauder chairman aims …
Cosmetics tycoon Ronald Lauder has launched a new online portal to track the prevalence of coronavirus-fueled hate crimes.
Lauder’s Anti-Semitism Accountability Project set up the website to collect reports of physical and online attacks on Asian-Americans, Jews and other groups whom bigots have falsely blamed for the pandemic.
The billionaire former Estee Lauder chairman aims to turn those reports into hard data that lawmakers and advocates can use to fight discrimination linked to the virus crisis.
“What our job is to do is to pull together, put a face on it, put emotion on it, and then talk about it,” Lauder told The Post on Tuesday. “We have so many problems potentially that unless we are able to bring this into focus, it will become diffuse.”
The Anti-Semitism Accountability Project — Lauder’s $25 million campaign against hatred of Jews — launched the new portal in partnership with the America China Public Affairs Institute, a nonprofit focused on US-China relations.
The effort comes amid a recent uptick in coronavirus-related hate crimes in New York City that have primarily targeted Asian people. The Anti-Defamation League has also said internet conspiracy theorists are propagating “antisemitic tropes” by baselessly pinning the pandemic on powerful Jews such as George Soros.
That hate has sometimes bled into the real world, like when fears about the coronavirus drove extremist Timothy Wilson to plot a hospital bombing in Missouri. Wilson was killed last month in a shootout with FBI agents as they tried to arrest him.
“This sounds almost like in the 15th, 16th century, the Jews were blamed for the bubonic plague,” Lauder said. “This has been used very much by anti-Semitic groups all over.”
Lauder said the portal is part of a strategic shift for the Anti-Semitism Accountability Project, which was conceived as a political campaign targeting candidates and cultural leaders who condoned animus toward Jews.
The project will start working on campaigns against anti-Semitism more broadly as well as getting involved in particular races, according to Lauder, who also serves as president of the World Jewish Congress.
“It’s all political,” he said.
