If anyone may think that neo-Nazism doesn’t exist in America, just a few minutes of watching GoyimTV, a purely antisemitic video platform, will blow their mind.
In the past week, I’ve watched many hours of this low-level and racist content that unfortunately has many viewers in the US and around the world. Goyim is plural for non-Jews in Hebrew. On a daily show called Handsome Truth, the host, Jon Minadeo II, always begins with a Nazi salute, and, seconds later, an intro video displays evil leaders such as Adolf Hitler and others, as well as antisemitic symbols.
Minadeo, an antisemitic conspiracy theorist, neo-Nazi, white supremacist and former rapper, is one of the founders of a group called the Goyim Defense League.
How do the Goyim Defense League spread antisemitic conspiracy theories?
GDL is a group known for spreading antisemitic ideologies and promoting conspiracy theories. Operating primarily on social media platforms, it has also established an online video platform called GoyimTV. The GDL engages in various activities aimed at harassing Jews, including distributing flyers, conducting banner drops and engaging in other provocative actions. The GDL has been recognized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors such organizations.
On his show, Minadeo actively promotes the distribution of “drop,” as he calls it, of antisemitic flyers across the US. He sells designed flyers online in bulk packages of hundreds or thousands, as a way to support his controversial work. Though this toxic activity is considered by GDL as freedom of speech, its activities are seen by many minorities, mainly Jews, as a threat to their security.
During this past week, he was encouraging his followers to “drop” what he called the “defiant flyers.” These flyers promote watching an online conspiracy video.
Though some of the activists of this movement claim that they are only active online, reality proves otherwise: FOX LA reported this week that authorities are investigating, after an antisemitic flyer in Redondo Beach California was discovered. “A picture of the flyer shared with FOX 11 shows a white paper reading ‘Watch Defiant by Devon Stack,’ along with a link to an antisemitic website, sealed in a Ziploc bag containing white rocks,” the report said.
“According to authorities, the Redondo Beach Police Department has responded to similar incidents in the past few months, but it’s still under investigation if they are connected,” it was stated.
On a show that Minadeo hosted this week from Florida, he said that he is “super excited” about the fact that “one of the buddies is giving us a boat,” and that they will be doing “Jew-naming on the water. I’m excited to get on a boat and name Jews.” The GDL has created an entire terminology that they use, many times in order to hide their real intentions or to not make these words searchable online. The word “Israel” is written in many different ways on GoyimTV. “JIZraHell” is the way it was spelled in a video titled “JIZraHell drone TERROR attack kills 3 in OCCUPIED West Bank car attack.”
Interestingly, GoyimTV use extreme-left and pro-Palestinian terms as well as ideology, when speaking of Israel and Zionism, even though it is an extreme-right movement. It also uses extreme-right and neo-Nazi terminology. Swastikas are used frequently, and Hitler is the most popular opinion leader of this group.
THESE TRENDS have already been monitored by the Anti-Defamation League 2022 Audit, according to which organized efforts by white supremacists to share antisemitic propaganda, mostly through distributing flyers with antisemitic messages, accounted for 852 incidents in 2022, up from 422 in 2021, a bit more than a 100% increase.
“This massive uptick was largely due to the growth of the GDL and its accelerated tempo of antisemitic propaganda campaigns,” the ADL said.
According to the audit, the GDL network was responsible for at least 492 propaganda incidents in 2022, a dramatic increase from the 74 GDL antisemitic propaganda incidents recorded in 2021.
According to the ADL, the GDL’s primary activity is “the distribution of antisemitic propaganda, including occasional banner drops typically from overpasses on major thoroughfares.”
In 2022, ADL recorded over 370 GDL propaganda incidents in 43 different states, with the majority of incidents occurring in California, Florida, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, Illinois and New York. This is a significant increase from the 74 GDL propaganda incidents recorded in 2021. According to ADL, the increase corresponds with the network’s initiation of coordinated propaganda campaigns that began in December 2021. GDL’s 2022 propaganda blames the Jewish community for a variety of perceived social grievances, including immigration, pornography and abortion.
Distributing antisemitic flyers is becoming mainstream throughout the US
Yoni Michanie, Combat Antisemitism Movement research and data manager, told The Jerusalem Post that the GDL and the distribution of flyers is a phenomenon that has become mainstream. He explained that the distribution of these flyers has been taking place “virtually in every state in the US and across party lines.” Therefore, there is “difficulty finding patterns.”
“The flyers are disseminated by white supremacist groups such as GDL, and they contribute to some degree of radicalization,” Michanie said, while giving an example of two shooting incidents that took place in February when Jaime Tran, a 28-year-old Asian man, was charged for shooting two Jewish men in separate incidents in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood of LA. The victims, aged 47 and in his 70s, were shot while leaving morning services. The US Attorney’s Office, Central District of California, published a statement in March, revealing that in November 2022, Tran allegedly emailed two dozen former classmates a flyer containing antisemitic propaganda, including the statement, “EVERY SINGLE ASPECT OF THE COVID AGENDA IS JEWISH,” a claim that many extremists have been using in the past few years.
Michanie explained that they have seen a “spike in the distribution of antisemitic propaganda and literature” across the country, not only promoting antisemitism but also anti-LGBT and other sentiments.
Carla Hill, director of investigative research at the ADL’s Center on Extremism, has been tracking GDL as well as other similar groups in recent years. She told the Post that in 2022, the Center on Extremism tracked a 38% increase in what’s termed as propaganda.
“A subset of that propaganda was categorized as antisemitic, which also increased the amount of antisemitic white supremacist propaganda,” Hill explained, and added that more than 50 different extremist groups participated in this tactic of promoting materials, yet three of these organizations “led those contributions,” with 93% of all incidents: The NatSoc Florida (National Socialist Florida, NSF), GDL and White Lives Matter.
Asked why these numbers of antisemitic and racist flyers have increased in 2022, as well as in 2023, Hill said that they have learned that the activists of these groups “have a propaganda quota, which members are required to meet. Membership is required to participate in this type of activity.” Hill added that in November 2022, Minadeo had encouraged his followers to distribute these flyers on certain days and weekends, “so that also caused a spike.”
“White Lives Matter has been doing this since April 2021,” she said of these tactics, where it has a designated day each month on which it asks participants to distribute propaganda.
In 2023, Hill actually saw a decrease in the antisemitic literature being distributed across the US. She said that well over 200 incidents have been recorded so far, mainly of flyers of the GDL. One reason for the decrease, according to Hill, is the fact that many of the NSF flyers have become more self-promoting, with less straight-out antisemitic content. In addition, the fact that these incidents have become so popular means they aren’t all getting as much media attention as they were in recent years and are almost being ignored by the national media.
Hill also disclosed that the “defiant” flyer campaign is an organized campaign of a coalition of white supremacist groups, geared to be seen on Juneteenth, the National Independence Day, a federal US holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans. “We’re still counting up those numbers to see how much traction that campaign got, but there was definitely some effort to participate. We’ve seen dozens so far.”
According to the ADL, most of these groups haven’t been working together in recent years, and this seems to be the first time they have been reuniting their forces and working in sync.
“These are people who are driven to try to make change, because they want the world to reflect their views,” Hill concluded. “So they’re driven and motivated and given hope, when they see other people doing the same thing.”
Because of America’s staunch freedom of speech rights, many of these actions don’t end up being criminal. Hill explained that it differs from state to state, and that “as long as it doesn’t damage property, propaganda is largely legal in the US and is considered freedom of speech. But if you use the propaganda to target a particular person for a particular reason, then it can be considered a hate crime, but extremists know this, and that’s why they act in foreign neighborhoods [as opposed to highly Jewish populated areas], so they can’t be accused of targeting any one individual.” At times, these activists have been charged with littering or trespassing on property.
The US will need to determine whether this type of speech can be allowed, when it is calling for violence, racism and vandalism, as well as promoting lies and conspiracy theories.•