A bill making its way through the Florida Legislature could land a person in prison for up to five years for passing out leaflets with antisemitic messages, vandalizing property with antisemitic slogans or symbols, or harassing someone based on their religious attire.
“Nazis aren’t welcome in Florida,” said Fine, who introduced the bill with another lawmaker. “These people are not hiding. They are not wearing masks anymore.”
Fine pointed to recent displays of harassment against Jewish people, including an incident where the message “Jews Control the Media” was projected on the side of the Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach on Feb. 18. That was during race week for the NASCAR Xfinity Series.
Fine pointed to another disturbing trend: anti-Jewish fliers, put in plastic bags with rocks, and tossed onto lawns.
“This is happening almost daily in Florida,” Fine told The Epoch Times. “Hell and damnation should rain down on these people. Go back to California, where you came from.”
A video posted to Twitter on Feb. 22 shows Jon Eugene Minadeo II, a recent transplant from California, yelling insults and expletives through a megaphone. His tirade is directed at Jewish people near Chabad of South Orlando, an Orthodox synagogue in Doctor Phillips, Florida.
User StopAntisemitism posted a video of Minadeo on Twitter, writing, “Enough is enough @RonDeSantisFL—as Governor, please act!”
Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood identified Minadeo as founder of the antisemitic Goyim Defense League during a Feb. 27 press conference.
Actions like Minadeo’s are what lawmakers hope to stop.
‘Pro-white, Anti-Jewish Troll’
Minadeo, who goes by the moniker “Handsome Truth,” told The Epoch Times that his group is responsible for most anti-Jewish messages and protests in Central Florida. He described his band of activists as a “pro-white, anti-Jewish troll group.”His fliers, posted on his website, can be accessed and distributed by anyone, he said. His group does not have a formal membership.
While speaking with an Epoch Times reporter, he said positive things about Adolf Hitler and questioned whether the Holocaust actually occurred.
“I believe national socialism is the best thing,” Minadeo said. “If Hitler was such an evil, white supremacist, why was he working with all these non-white countries?”
Minadeo says his group is non-violent and law-abiding. He questions whether government attempts to shut down criticism of Jews is a violation of the First Amendment. Some Jews agree with him.
“We do not want to see synagogues spray-painted,” Minadeo said. “We are testing the limits of free speech to see if we still have it. They could have ignored the fliers, but they are amplifying it.”
Chitwood disagrees with Minadeo’s characterizations of his group’s actions.
“Let me tell you—this is not about free speech,” the sheriff said at his press conference. “This is about violence.
“Two days after the incident at the Speedway [in Daytona Beach], one of these GDL members ambushed and shot two Jewish Orthodox folks outside their synagogue in LA.”
Sheriff Chitwood seems “unhinged and dangerous,” Minadeo said. He plans to pursue legal action, he said.
Free Speech at Risk?
In one of his videos, Minadeo can be seen peacefully interacting with Jewish people outside their synagogue on the same day he was filmed shouting insults at them through a megaphone.“Do you believe in our right to free speech?” Minadeo asks a Jewish woman, while filming the interview.
She answers, “Yes, Absolutely.”
“Should we be thrown in jail for doing this?” he asks.
“Absolutely not,” she says. “As long as you are not violent and as long as you don’t push violence.”
“We don’t believe the same as you do,” a man with Minadeo’s group says in the video.
The woman replies, “That’s perfectly OK. That is what America is all about.”
Minadeo said he’s faced violence for voicing his anti-Jewish opinions.
“I have been attacked in the streets, had people threaten to burn my house down,” he said. “A rabbi in the video tried to run me over. Nothing was done.”
Silencing ‘Hate Activity’
In the South Florida community of Atlantis, Police Chief Robert Mangold revealed in emails obtained by The Epoch Times that he intends “to request a [City] Council resolution condemning antisemitism and all hate activity.”Mangold’s email was in response to a request from Yael Hershfield, of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), about reining in antisemitic activities by Minadeo’s group.
“Legally we cannot prevent them, which is why it is important city leadership condemns it,” Hershfield wrote in her Jan. 23 email to the police chief.
Mangold replies, calling attention to a post on the Atlantis Police Department Facebook page, and encouraging Hershfield to send more information about “dealing with these groups.”
The Facebook post describes an arrest of a GDL activist for “obstructing a law enforcement officer without violence,” after refusing to identify himself when questioned about throwing bags, weighted with rocks and holding antisemitic fliers, onto lawns.
The post quotes Mangold as saying, “As the chief of police, and speaking for the entire department, I want to assure our residents that we strongly denounce and condemn any and all hate activity, speech, literature, and otherwise, and in particular this specific group of antisemitic hate activists that brought their destructive ideology to our fair city.”
Hershfield spoke at Chitwood’s press conference about Minadeo’s group, about the need to banish hate and “put this darkness away.”
ADL has “a center on extremism that investigates and exposes the individuals and groups that espouse hate and work with law enforcement and community to reject them,” Hershfield said.
The Epoch Times reached out to Mangold and Hershfield for comment, but did not receive a response.
The ADL often is quoted in news reports about extremism and antisemitism. The group criticized organizers of a Protect the Children rally in Fort Lauderdale in December 2022 for objecting to the promotion of transgender ideology to children.
The law prohibits teaching children in grades 3 and below about sexual orientation and gender ideology.
Volusia resident Rachael Love Cohen says she feels more threatened by government restrictions on freedom of speech than by individuals handing out anti-Jewish fliers.
“As a Jew and American citizen, I have fear our government is taking too much power,” Cohen told The Epoch Times. “These bills are chipping away at our fundamental liberties.”
Cohen moved from South Florida to DeLeon Springs, near the middle of the state, to escape COVID-19 restrictions, and because Jewish schools in her previous community required vaccines, she said.
“We had swastikas drawn in the street near our house” in DeLeon Springs, she said. “It turned out to be a group of teenagers.”
Cohen expressed frustration with Chitwood over “free speech” issues during the pandemic.
After she spoke out about mask mandates, a Facebook user maintaining a page named “Volusia County Mask Enforcement” posted a photo of her and information that identified her home and profession.
Other Freedoms Under Attack
Cohen, who calls herself a “traditional Jewish woman,” says she is more concerned with how infringements on the Second Amendment and medical freedom could lead to a repeat of what happened in Nazi Germany.“Disarmament of the Jews contributed to the magnitude of the Holocaust,” Cohen said. “Jews in the ‘30s had to give their weapons and shooting permits to the police, and no further weapons permits were issued. In nearly all countries where a genocide has taken place, they had gun control first.”
“When all the Jewish schools in South Florida decided to kick out the unvaccinated kids, it was a chilling reminder of 1930s Nazi Germany.”
HB 269 would be “removing our fundamental free speech rights,” she said.
Not true, Fine said about his bill.
“This has nothing to do with the First Amendment,” he said. “We are targeting people littering on property, not handing out leaflets in the public square.”
According to the proposed bill, “a person who distributes pamphlets, flyers (sic), or other materials, whether for commercial or noncommercial purposes, in a public place, including outside a private residence, and such materials discarded by recipients leads to littering” the person can be charged with a third-degree felony and a hate crime if it the motivation was found to be “religious or ethnic animus.”
The bill also would make it a third-degree felony to project an image outdoors, onto a publicly or privately owned building or other property, without the written consent of the owner of the building or other property, if the act is found to have “religious or ethnic animus.”
And the bill would ban “any physical manifestations of antisemitism directed toward a Jewish or non-Jewish individual or his or her property or toward Jewish community institutions or religious facilities, Jewish cemeteries, or Jewish gravesites.”
‘Guarantee the Bill Will Pass’
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, widely expected to announce a run for president after the legislative session concludes in May, hasn’t weighed in on HB 269.“As with all legislation that is currently subject to the legislative process [and thus different changes or iterations] we are monitoring it and will render a decision and official position if and when it is passed and reaches the governor’s desk,” spokesman Bryan Griffin told The Epoch Times in a written statement.
“Nonetheless, we are, of course, adamantly opposed to antisemitism and the harassment of the Jewish community,” Griffin wrote.
The wording of the bill will need to be tweaked, Fine predicted. But he said he expects it to move through the legislature quickly.
“Of the members of the Florida House, I believe 42 of the 120 have already co-sponsored the bill,” he said at a press conference. “I am sure more will.
“I guarantee the bill will pass. And I never do that.”
