A group of men dressed in Nazi paraphernalia, among them a Bay Area leader of a known antisemitic organization, were allegedly seen harassing individuals throughout Los Angeles County, including at a West Hollywood gas station and at a Beverly Hills Hilton hotel.
The group sparked fury last weekend after being spotted driving around in a box truck painted with antisemitic, white supremacist rhetoric, making references to the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, a white supremacist myth that immigrants and ethnic minorities are “replacing” America’s white population.
The acronym “GDL” was reportedly painted on the truck, a seeming reference to the Goyim Defense League — a group classified by the Anti-Defamation League as a network that “espouses vitriolic antisemitism and white supremacist themes via the internet, through propaganda distributions and in street actions.” One of the individuals was identified by the group StopAntisemitism as Jon Minadeo Jr., the Petaluma-based leader of the GDL.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Minadeo and a group of men were spotted at the Beverly Hills Hilton on Saturday in what appeared to be outfits similar to Nazi brownshirts, parading around the hotel and shouting, “Here comes Jew boy … we’re going to make you go extinct.”
Also on Saturday, Forward reported, two men in the truck were also spotted in West Hollywood harassing Black drivers buying gasoline and shouting homophobic messages. (It is unclear whether one of those men was Minadeo.) Videos also showed the vehicle around Beverly Hills, with people shouting antisemitic messages from inside.
Officials in Beverly Hills and West Hollywood condemned the actions.
“A Disgusting antisemitic truck spewing vulgar Jew hatred drove through our streets today,” Beverly Hills Mayor Lili Bosse tweeted Saturday. “An example of inhumanity. As a daughter of an Auschwitz survivor, I will always stand up, speak out and fight this hatred.”
In March, Minadeo’s girlfriend at the time, yoga instructor Kelly Johnson, was fired from two popular Bay Area yoga studios because of her connection with Minadeo. Owner Jeff Renfro described Minadeo in an interview with SFGATE as “a quite well-known white supremacist, antisemite, gay-basher.”
Beverly Hills police have yet to publicly identify anyone who conducted these actions. A spokesperson for the department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from SFGATE.
