Isn’t it nice to see someone involved in American politics and law enforcement come out hard against Nazis?
A week after a neo-Nazi hate group circulated throughout the Daytona Beach, Florida area displaying and distributing extremist propaganda, the county’s top cop has had enough.
“These scumbags came to the wrong county… We are not going to tolerate this,” a seething Volusia Sheriff Mike Chitwood said at a press conference on Monday. “This is not about free speech. This is about violence.”
Chitwood identified the Goyim Defense League (GDL) as the organization behind the disturbing behavior, which included leaving antisemitic flyers on people’s doorsteps and hanging anti-Jewish banners from busy pedestrian bridges during Daytona 500 weekend. On Feb. 17, the GDL held a demonstration outside Chabad of South Orlando, harassing pedestrians and motorists, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The next day, members hung signs at the Daytona International Speedway with sayings such as, “Henry Ford was right about the Jews.” They later projected antisemitic slogans on the outside of the track, with one reading, “Hitler was right.” […]
Chitwood, who did not hide his rage, said a group of GDL members from various states had spent last weekend traveling up and down Daytona’s International Speedway Boulevard while thousands of fans were in town for the races, “yelling obscenities” from the back of a rented U-Haul truck. He said he didn’t “see anything where these people can say this is First Amendment [protected speech]. This is nothing but pure, pure, pure evil.” […]
Chitwood then told those gathered before him that a lot of people in the room—including himself—as well as Jews around the country, were on the GDL’s “hit list.”
Chitwood called it a “badge of honor,” daring the GDL to come and “put a bullet in the back of my head.”
“That’s my message to you: go for it,” he said. “You want to try to get into my computer and plant child porn in there with a group of people that have an IQ of 12? Go for it. I challenge you to go for it. You want to put surveillance on me 24 hours [a day]? Go for it. And the best of all: you’re going to dox me and make me unelectable? Go for it. You came to the wrong county. I stand with my Jewish friends and I’m honored to be on your hit list. It’s an honor to be sought after by a bunch of punk thugs like you.”
I know, ACAB and all that, but damn. And this Chitwood fellow is county sheriff in the thick of Trumpland, too, in Florida, the state whose governor has notably refused to condemn the support he’s received from overt Nazis on more than one occasion, indeed calling it a Democrat smear. I don’t really know anything about Chitwood apart from this story and this look at his earlier days as sheriff, but it’s nice to know someone in the force (and his fellow sheriff John Mina, who’s also busted some) gives a shit about stopping Nazis… especially since there’s probably a few in his own force.
