Goyim Defense League

Goyim Defense League logo.

Hate for hate's sake Antisemitism

Perpetuating prejudice

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Hate mongers

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“”"The common denominator, though, is what we're seeing is they're in their thirties, they live at home with mommy, they're unemployed and they spend, according to their parents, 20 hours a day in these neo-Nazi chat rooms. That's the scary part. What I've learned in my career is that what GD and the other groups are doing is they're loading the gun and laying it on the counter waiting for that one person who's marginalized, lives with their mom, with a little bit of mental illness who thinks, ‘oh my God, I got to do something about this.’ Then they go out and commit the atrocity based on what they pushed this person to do. "

—Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood, describing the true nature of those who see themselves as "the master race".

The Goyim Defense League (GDL) is an antisemitic hate network of troll edgelords whose goals are to cast aspersions on Jews, spread antisemitic myths and conspiracy theories, and make Iron Eyes Cody shed many tears due to their frequent obnoxious littering of antisemitic flyers. The group name is derived from the Hebrew term goyim, which means gentiles (non-Jews), and parodies the name of the antisemitism watchdog group Anti-Defamation League and the far-right terrorist organization Jewish Defense League.

The group is led by neo-Nazi Jon Minadeo II also known online as Handsome Truth, who is a "failed actor, failed rapper, failed dishwasher, (and) failed human being" who somehow devolved to the point where he currently proudly boasts on his Gab profile that (in his mind) he is "AMERICAS #1 ANTI SEMITE!".

This group was originally founded in Petaluma, California. Due to perceived hostilities and threats from the California community (as well as a perceived more hospitable climate to antisemites in his chosen destination), Minadeo moved the group to Florida around the end of 2022.

Antisemitic stunts and flyers

The primary activity of this group is the distribution of antisemitic propaganda via flyers containing anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and racist slurs. The common theme of the flyers is that every single thing on the planet (and they absolutely mean every single aspect, a phrase that is frequently used on the flyers) is somehow the fault of the Jews. They "prove" this by finding some Jews among the people involved with a thing, then listing them, as if it's a shocking revelation that Jewish people participate in society (both its good and bad parts), and as if listing some of the participants in some particular thing who have some Jewish ancestry to the complete exclusion of any who don't (what we used to call lying by omission) proves that "every single aspect" of that thing is Jewish.

Sample flyers see the Jewish conspiracy! in the media, abortion, Disney, the slave trade, the Donald Trump campaign, the Joe Biden administration, COVID-19, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, immigration, the crucifixion of Jesus, the investment company BlackRock, the Federal Reserve, purported censorship of African-Americans, gun control, and antifa. These flyers have been "distributed" in almost every state in the United States by GDL members and their loose association of online sympathizers, usually via littering the flyers (which are placed in plastic bags weighed down by either small rocks or corn kernels) on residential lawns, parks, and other locations.

Members of the group have been known to drive around in kookmobiles plastered with various slogans incoherently blaming everything on the Jews. Not surprisingly, the group is an advocate of fringe racist conspiracy theories like The Great Replacement.

As expected for edgelord trolls, another prominent activity of this group is "stunts" for social media. These attention-seeking "stunts", designed to attempt to get maximum engagement on alt-tech edgelord social media networks, have included activities such as shouting "Heil Hitler!" outside a synagogue as Jewish members entered to worship; hurling racial and religious slurs at children on Omegle; live-streaming an encounter with a Black police officer who had stopped them for littering (Minadeo proceeded to call the officer a "nigger" and a "Jewish science experiment"); and hanging or projecting signs saying bullshit like "Henry Ford was right about the Jews" and "Hitler was right" near the Daytona Speedway during the Daytona 500 weekend.

Notoriously, during the height of Ye's antisemitic Hitler-praising meltdown, in late October 2022, the GDL hung a banner over a busy Los Angeles freeway (complete with Nazi salutes from the banner hangers) saying "Kanye is right about the Jews". The same message also was digitally projected onto the outside of TIAA Bank Field in Jacksonville, Florida in late October 2022, just after a prominent college football game. GDL members later continued their edgelord antics by projecting antisemitic messages on multiple buildings around Florida in 2023.

In another edgelord stunt, members of the GDL in 2018 convinced several celebrities who used Cameo, a platform where fans can pay for personalized videos from celebrities, to record a message with multiple obscure antisemitic dog whistles. Victims of this stunt include Brett Favre, Soulja Boy, and Andy Dick.

Having been deplatformed from mainstream social media sites, or indeed any sort of social media platform with even light content moderation, they operate their own website and video network called GoyimTV.

Members of the GDL have been frequently fined for littering (and even in one case in November 2023 involving Minadeo II, jailed 30 days for the offense). This also has occasionally led to arrests on other charges. GDL members have also been associated with more serious crimes. In 2021, a GDL member named Robert Wilson allegedly assaulted his neighbor while yelling homophobic slurs at him. Before he could be prosecuted, he fled the country. In April 2023, Wilson was arrested in Poland after being suspected of projecting an antisemitic message on the Anne Frank House in the Netherlands. GDL flyers may also have played a part in the radicalization of a man named Jamie Tran in the Los Angeles Area, who in February 2023 shot two Jewish men as they were leaving synagogues.

In mid-2023, GDL members started using sovereign citizen tactics in a misguided attempt to escape their legal troubles.

Reactions from Florida

In light of the deteriorating climate for minorities in Florida under the Republican government of Ron DeSantis, the GDL had good reason to believe that the political climate would be better for them there compared to California. However, virulent neo-Nazi antisemitism ended up actually being too extreme even for the Florida GOP.

In particular, the self-described pugnacious sheriff of Volusia County Florida, Mike Chitwood, was infuriated about the GDL relocating to Florida, particularly after the Daytona 500 incidents. In late February 2023, Chitwood held a press conference where he called the GDL "pure evil" "cowardly scumbags". During the conference, he walked reporters through the criminal records of those involved with the GDL; claimed that he was on the GDL's hit list; and stated in reference to this that "it's an honor to be sought after by a bunch of punk thugs like you."

Naturally, these statements infuriated the Nazi scumbags lurking on platforms like 4chan's /pol/. Immediately after this conference, the trolls on these platforms started their usual antics: hate mail, doxxing and SWATting the parents of Chitwood, and attempting to embarrass Chitwood by posting a picture of him in a bra (a picture which Chitwood didn't give a shit about, seeing as how that photo was taken at an event that raised thousands for breast cancer research). Flyers were also littered around Volusia County that targeted Chitwood using this photo, along with a caption that tried to played up the usual boogeymen of the 4chan crowd. ("Vaccinated and boosted cross-dressing Sheriff Mike Chitwood wants to end the First Amendment and replace you with immigrants and illegal aliens!"). Other than annoyance at the littering trolls, the impact of this stunt was minimal.

Multiple death threats were also made targeting Chitwood on 4chan's /pol/. This led to police arresting five 4chan posters and charging them with making a written threat to kill. In two cases, true to stereotype, they were dragged out from where you'd expect a 4chan poster to live — their mother's house. In addition, one of the /pol/ posters threatening Chitman was initially arrested for allegedly killing his fiancée’s sister and her husband.

On May 30 2023, the GDL filed a lawsuit against Chitwood. In a sign that Chitwood could troll as well as anyone on 4chan, Chitwood responded by mailing out pacifiers that read “Mike Chitwood hurt my feelings” to each of the members involved in the lawsuit.

Demonstrating the potential legal perils of actually writing death threats when shitposting, one of the people who threatened Chitwood, Richard Golden, was sentenced to one year in jail on December 1 2023.

On January 27 2023, Florida state representative Mike Caruso introduced new Florida legislation that was seemingly created in direct response to GDL's stunts and flyer littering. Among other aspects, the bill made littering for the purpose of intimidation a criminal offense, and outlawed projections on buildings without written consent. The bill unanimously passed the Florida House and Senate, and was signed into law by DeSantis (yes, DeSantis of all people) on April 28, 2023. Far-right agitators such as Alex Jones, Laura Loomer, and Styxhexenhammer666 were not amused.