Goyim Defense League founder sentenced to 30 days for antisemitic littering

White supremacist Jon Minadeo II says prosecution charges against him are attempt to censor free speech

Goyim Defense League founder Jon Minadeo II in a video on the Goyim TV website. (Screenshot used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)
Goyim Defense League founder Jon Minadeo II in a video on the Goyim TV website. (Screenshot used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

JTA — A prominent white supremacist has been sentenced to 30 days in jail in Florida for distributing antisemitic flyers — though the content of the material did not factor into his penalty.

Jon Minadeo II, the founder of the Goyim Defense League, was found guilty of littering in a jury trial Wednesday in Palm Beach County. Minadeo was arrested in March while distributing antisemitic literature out of the back of a U-Haul truck.

Distributing antisemitic flyers is a core activity of the Goyim Defense League, which Minadeo founded in California in 2018. The group was responsible for nearly 500 incidents of antisemitic propaganda in 2022, according to the Anti-Defamation League, making it one of the most prominent American antisemitic groups. Its members typically put antisemitic flyers in plastic bags and leave them, often weighted down with rocks, on public and private property.

Minadeo relocated to Florida last year, saying that he thought it would be more hospitable to his group’s operations. In fact, a new Florida state law, intended to curb neo-Nazi activity, makes it a felony to distribute hateful or intimidating materials on private property.

The law was passed after Minadeo’s arrest, so it did not factor into how he was prosecuted. He told a local news outlet from court on Wednesday that he thought his prosecution on littering charges was inappropriate.

“I do believe they’re trying to censor free speech by using tactics like littering,” he said.

Antisemites hang a banner over a Los Angeles freeway declaring ‘Kanye is right about the Jews’ next to another advertising the Goyim Defense League’s Goyim TV website. (Oren Segal, via Twitter/used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

Minadeo and his group have made headlines in the past for extremist activity including picketing synagogues in various states, flying antisemitic banners and projecting antisemitic messages on sports stadium, and says he has previously been arrested by Polish authorities for promoting antisemitism at the site of the Auschwitz death camp.

Neo-Nazi groups like the Goyim Defense League have pounced on the rise of anti-Israel activism in the wake of the country’s war with Hamas, the Gaza-ruling terror group which massacred 1,400 people in Israel on October 7 — most of them civilians, slaughtered amid horrific atrocities — to try to sway new members.

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