Search

Police investigating after truck bearing antisemitic messages drives through West Hollywood

“As a daughter of an Auschwitz survivor, I will always stand up, speak out and fight this hatred,” West Hollywood Mayor Lili Bosse said.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

Authorities in Los Angeles are investigating after members of a white supremacist group drove through West Hollywood and Beverly Hills on Saturday in a truck exhibiting disturbing antisemitic messages.

The watchdog organization StopAntisemitism posted footage of members of the so-called “Goyim Defense League,” including founder Jon Minadeo Jr, driving the truck and hurling antisemitic insults at bystanders outside the Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills. Police were called to the scene and asked the GDL members to leave, but issued no citations, the organization said.

According to a local CBS affiliate, the Beverly Hills Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department are jointly investigating the incident following reports by eyewitnesses, who said that those in the truck also exited the vehicle to verbally abuse anyone objecting to their messages.

The “Goyim Defense League” is described by the ADL as a group of “loose network of individuals connected by their virulent antisemitism,” responsible for at least 74 antisemitic propaganda incidents last year. A URL for the group’s website was scrawled on the truck, along with messages that included “resisting the great replacement,” a reference to a notorious antisemitic conspiracy theory.

Read  Full-scale replica of Anne Frank’s annex to open in NYC

“A disgusting antisemitic truck spewing vulgar Jew-hatred drove through our streets today. An example of inhumanity,” West Hollywood Mayor Lili Bosse tweeted on Saturday. “As a daughter of an Auschwitz survivor, I will always stand up, speak out and fight this hatred.”

Replying to the mayor’s tweet, ADL Southern California said, “We stand in solidarity with Mayor Bosse and thank the Beverly Hills PD for clarity that this disgusting display of antisemitism has no place in Beverly Hills or anywhere else.”

The City of West Hollywood also denounced the incident, noting it coincided with the city’s commemoration of Harvey Milk, a Jew who was also the first openly gay man elected to public office in California.

“These reports are particularly distressing as we mark Harvey Milk Day,” it continued. “In honoring his life and in remembering how his life was cut short by hate-fueled violence, we must commit to standing together in rejecting hate. Hate has no place in the City of West Hollywood.”

The GDL previously targeted Beverly Hills during Passover as part of an ongoing antisemitic leafleting campaign, distributing flyers blaming Jews for the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine around the neighborhood.