Goyim Defense League founder Jon Minadeo sentenced to 30 days in jail for antisemitic littering
Goyim Defense League leader Jon Minadeo, Jr. announced Goyim TV’s move to Florida in a livestream on Dec. 12, 2022.
(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.
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 to try to sway new members.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
