Neo-Nazi Hate Fest in Emeryville Council Chambers
It was bound to happen here eventually. Trump’s America came bursting into the Emeryville City Council chambers in a co-ordinated attack Tuesday, out-of-town neo-Nazis phoning in racist public comments; calling out Jewish, gay, transgender, and Black people. The group responsible, the ‘Goyim Defense League’ is identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a Florida based hate group. All manner of hateful epithets including the ’N word’ were used by the speakers in our Council Chambers.
Five people identified themselves with fake names and four were shut down by Mayor Courtney Welch for violating Emeryville’s prohibition for public commenters using “threatening, profane or abusive language which disrupts the orderly conduct of meetings”.
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| Mug shot of former Petaluma resident neo-Nazi leader Jon Minadeo. Mayor Welch cut his mic. |
The same five people (sometimes using different names), have been calling in for public comment at city council meetings in Blue States across America including but not limited to San Francisco, Petaluma, Sonoma, Sacramento, El Cerrito, San Jose, Walnut Creek, Laguna Beach, Monterey, Saratoga, Walla Walla WA, Snoqualmie WA, Framingham MA and Norwalk CT. At the January 24th council meeting in Walla Walla, one of the speakers identifying himself as ‘Andy Zemite’ but in Emeryville went by ‘Rex Yuden’, yelled “Heil Hitler” just before his mic was cut. That speaker may have been the group’s leader, former Petaluma resident Jon Minadeo.
Goyim Defense League (GDL) is a small network of virulently antisemitic provocateurs led by Minadeo who moved from Petaluma to Florida in December 2022. GDL is a parody of the anti-hate Anti-Defamation League’s name by replacing “Anti-Defamation” with “Goyim Defense” -- “Goyim” being a disparaging Yiddish and Hebrew word for non-Jews.
Minadeo was arrested in 2023 and jailed 30 days for illegally distributing racist literature in Florida.
Former Emeryville resident Marc Albert reports on the group disrupting the Petaluma council meeting: https://krcb.org/2023110793047/news-feed/petaluma-to-weigh-resuming-public-comment-following-racist-disruptions
