DeathSantis War On Disney Continues
Members of neo-Nazi groups, flaunting swastikas and other hate symbols and shouting antisemitic slogans, marched near Disney Springs and at a park in Altamonte Springs over Labor Day weekend, drawing widespread condemnation.
Meanwhile, police in New Smryna Beach said Tuesday they’re investigating the distribution of antisemitic flyers in a residential neighborhood on Monday night.
A group of about 15 people was spotted about 10:40 a.m. Saturday toting flags and clothes with Nazi insignia near Hotel Plaza Boulevard and East Buena Vista Drive in Orange County, the Sheriff’s Office confirmed.
In a statement sent by OCSO spokesperson Michelle Guido, the agency said the demonstration lasted about two hours. No one was arrested.
“We know these groups demonstrate in high profile areas in order to agitate and incite people with anti-Semitic symbols and slurs,” the statement said. “The Orange County Sheriff’s Office deplores hate speech in any form, but people have the First Amendment right to demonstrate. What these groups do is revolting and condemned in the strongest way by Sheriff Mina and the Sheriff’s Office. They are looking for attention, and specifically media attention.”
Neo-Nazis were also spotted Saturday at Cranes Roost Park in Altamonte Springs, where they marched from the Sanlando Park area of Seminole County, Altamonte Springs Police Department Senior Police Officer Deana DiPaola said in a statement.
“Our police officers were ready and available to respond appropriately to any potential public safety threat while also being mindful of constitutional freedom of speech,” DiPaola said, describing those who demonstrated as members of a national neo-Nazi group, many of whom were believed to have traveled from out of state.
“Although the message was disturbing, no actions rose to the level of arrest,” she said.
State Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, shared a video on social media showing the group at Cranes Roost Park, clad in red shirts and carrying black flags bearing swastikas, marching through the park while chanting, “We are everywhere.”
“[A]bsolutely disgusting stuff and another example of the far right extremism growing in FL,” she posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Symbols on the demonstrators’ attire indicated they were affiliated with the so-called “Blood Tribe” and the “Goyim Defense League,” a pair of known neo-Nazi groups that often participate in disruptive demonstrations.
“GDL espouses vitriolic antisemitism and white supremacist themes via the internet, through propaganda distributions and in street actions,” the ADL’s online dossier on the group states.
In New Smyrna Beach, police said officers were called to a neighborhood near State Road 44 and Interstate 95 about 9 p.m. Monday after a report of antisemitic flyers being distributed.
The hate messages, thrown by an unidentified man in a vehicle, were inside plastic bags with an unidentified substance, Deputy Chief of Police Chris Kirk said in a statement. Detectives are reviewing video and working to identify the man, he said.
The long weekend’s hateful incidents come as experts report a rise in extremism in Florida.
It’s also far from the first time in recent years that the Orlando area has been visited by neo-Nazi demonstrators.
A dozen demonstrators, including many waving swastikas and some hoisting signs promoting Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign, gathered outside the entrance to Walt Disney World Resort in June.
Come to FloraDuh for the Nazis, stay for the toxic beaches.
When Ann Richter’s husband and 17-year-old daughter returned home from a trip to the mall, they found “vile” antisemitic flyers littering their lawn and a neighbor’s in their Gotha community.
The messages printed on the flyers disparaged Jewish public health officials, made bizarre and sexually explicit claims about Judaism and implored readers to “protect the purity of the white Aryan woman.”
The flyers also invited readers to learn more about Goyim Defense League, a loosely connected neo-Nazi group with thousands of online supporters that has been linked to multiple similar displays of hate across Central Florida.
Richter, who is not Jewish, said she believes whoever left the flyers must have been “cowards” who did so in the dark of night to avoid being seen.
“I was shocked,” she said. “I was trying to figure out why this was on my front lawn. I couldn’t figure out why they would do that to us in particular so I figured it was the whole neighborhood and that turned out to be the case. … I’d heard of these people going to Disney and making a scene and I figured they were the same people.”
Although no links have so far been made to suggest the Jacksonville shooter knew the neo-Nazis who rallied in Orange and Seminole counties, it would be a mistake to view the incidents as separate and unrelated, said Rachel Carroll Rivas, director of research for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, which collects data on extremist groups.
“I think it’s right to go beyond the moment and the individual actor,” Carroll Rivas said.
Encouraging individuals to take violent action in the name of white supremacy has long been part of a strategy written by radical right figure Louis Beam, who favored this approach over organized membership once hate group members started to face legal consequences for their actions.
“This was a plan that they’ve always had – not to be able to put the blame on one person that was a member of one group,” Carroll Rivas said. “They wanted to change all of society like this. It was written down and the idea of the Lone Wolf is a specific terminology used by a white supremacist leader who created it.”
Mike Igel, chairman of the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, acknowledged that Black and Jewish people have faced historic and on-going horrors and, though those histories differ, he sees the groups as allies in the fight against hatred.
That is all the more evident when a gunman motivated by anti-Black racism chooses to place a swastika on his rifle, he said.
“These things do not exist in a vacuum,” Igel said. “Antisemitism, for example, is known as the canary in the coal mine. It is often the first thing but it doesn’t exist by itself. You don’t meet a bigot, a neo-Nazi who says, ‘I hate Jewish people but I sure do love the gay community or the Black community.’ They don’t do that. They tend to dislike and hate and do bad things to anyone they consider ‘the other.’”
“A lot of these folks that are being targeted, I see them in the supermarket. You see them in restaurants. You go to functions, fundraisers with them. … How dare somebody come into my community and try to sow these seeds of annihilation, of wanting to wipe out someone for their race, their religion, their ethnicity or their sexual orientation. How dare they come in and do that.”
Chitwood said he zeroed in on neo-Nazi “scumbags,” as he calls them, after antisemitic hate messages were displayed at the Daytona International Speedway in February. The Goyim Defense League was also blamed for this display.
Days later, a group of teenage boys were caught drawing swastikas in a bathroom at a Volusia County high school.
“When they were confronted by law enforcement, they said it was only meant as a joke,” Chitwood said. “Well, with all due respect, it’s not a joke.”
So Chitwood got creative and worked with a judge to require the students to go to the Florida Holocaust Museum and learn the significance of the swastika as a hate symbol as part of their probation requirements.
And to pay for the trip for these students – and any others who would need similar education in the future – the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office started to sell “Scumbag Eradication Team” T-shirts and mugs that show a sheriff’s deputy flushing a person dressed in neo-Nazi paraphernalia down a toilet.
Chitwood said if the hate is going to be kept at bay, more leaders will need to start to face it head-on.
“I’m not going to take the course that everybody else wants to take, which is, just ignore it, it will go away. It’s never going to go away. It’s 2,000 years old. It’s not going to go away. You’ve got to keep it in check. … That’s how these things rise. Everybody ignores it and then you turn around and it becomes part of the mainstream.”
© Orlando Sentinel
