The FBI’s “Righteous Divorce” From the ADL

The FBI, under Director Kash Patel, announced this week that it is cutting formal ties with the Anti‑Defamation League (ADL), a move billed as a moral reset in the wake of decades of collaboration. Washington is abuzz: is this a real break from activist propaganda or simply optics dressed up in new clothes? The decision carries national significance, not just political theater. This happens amid controversy about the ADL's characterization of Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA in 2019 as a "hate group".

*The ADL's entry on TPUSA is no longer available at its website since the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

The Optics: Moral Cleansing in Public View

On the surface, this is powerful symbolism. Patel described past cooperation as “activism dressed up as counterterrorism” — a rebuke of the old regime’s methods. He named James Comey’s public praise of ADL work a “love letter,” embedding the narrative that the Bureau is now choosing principle over partnership.

The announcement is designed to reassure the public that law enforcement will no longer be yoked to ideological enforcers.

“James Comey disgraced the FBI by writing ‘love letters’ to the ADL and embedding agents with an extreme group functioning like a terrorist organization and the disgraceful operation they ran spying on Americans,” Patel stated in a Tweet:

The Reality: Activism Doesn’t Disappear Overnight

Just cutting ties with the ADL doesn’t clear decades of embedded influence. The real danger lies in:

• Residual networks still leveraging ADL/SPLC research quietly
• Training, manuals, policy architecture that may still carry activist framing
• “Regret” language masking internal continuity
• Selective purges of visible figures while the deeper system remains

You won’t see the damage from replacing a few names. The damage is in the structure — the scaffold supports the same system.

The Marxist Framework: Ideological Institutions Without Apology

This is what they want: a reset narrative without renouncing ideology. The ADL and SPLC have acted as knowledge police, deciding which ideas get labelled “extremist” before law enforcement ever steps in. That’s classically cultural Marxism: controlling the framework of discourse so dissent becomes a crime in the system’s eyes.

They didn’t just influence law enforcement. They defined which voices are dangerous and which speech must be policed. Their destruction of distinctions between opinion and threats was their battleground.

Final Strike: No Rebrand Without Reckoning

A “divorce” isn’t enough. The ADL severed — but the SPLC remains. The tactic still persists. The definitions still slant. The power to criminalize dissent still lies in bureaucratic hands.

This is what accountability looks like:

• Dismantling the ideological pipeline in policy
• Purging its artifacts from training and intelligence
• Replacing them with constitutional guardrails, not activist signals

Because if we allow them to recast oppression as reform, we lose more than battles. We lose the narrative.