By Gabe Stutman
The functional headquarters and nerve center of the nation’s most prolific antisemitic propaganda group have moved from the Bay Area to Florida.
Jon Minadeo Jr., the leader of Goyim TV, announced the move in videos and social media posts this week, explaining that he had grown increasingly isolated in his hometown of Petaluma, and saw Florida as fertile ground for the hate group’s activities. The announcement came in a highly dramatic, Hollywood-style movie trailer replete with drone shots of the Florida coast, alligators and flamingoes. “My time in this state is over,” Minadeo says in voiceover.
A loose network of antisemites, white supremacists and virulently anti-gay activists, Goyim TV, which is both a website and the name of Minadeo’s business registered in California, focuses its efforts on spreading anti-Jewish propaganda. Its followers have claimed responsibility for hundreds of antisemitic flyer drops in more than 40 states over the past two years.
In the Bay Area, flyer drops blaming Jews for the Covid pandemic, for the war in Ukraine and for “gun control” have hit San Francisco, Danville, Berkeley, Marin City, Tiburon, and Novato, among other cities.
The most widely viewed videos on Goyim TV are hosted by Minadeo, who works alongside a cadre of die-hard supporters known as the Goyim Defense League to help keep the website running, evade takedowns and orchestrate propaganda events “IRL,” or “in real life.” The terms “Goyim TV” and the “Goyim Defense League” are often used interchangeably by watchers of the hate group’s activities.
In 2022, the group “more than tripled” the number of propaganda acts targeting Jews, according to ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, “making them feel vulnerable all over the United States.”
“GDL’s overarching goal is to cast aspersions on Jews and spread antisemitic myths and conspiracy theories,” an Anti-Defamation League report says.
The group has gained widespread publicity in part because of several banner drops; one such stunt troubled many in Los Angeles in October. Seeking to capitalize on the mainstreaming of antisemitism from celebrities such as the rapper Ye, Goyim TV hung a banner over the 405 freeway claiming “Kanye is right about the Jews.”
Minadeo, who grew up in Northern California and attended Novato High School, had for years recorded near-daily livestreams in a makeshift studio at his home in Petaluma. In the livestreams, which have continued from Florida and are viewed in real time by hundreds of people who simultaneously donate money, Minadeo rails against Jews, Black people, Latinos and LGBTQ people, spouting a litany of slurs, Holocaust denial and conspiracy theories.
He sells and ships packets of 500 flyers, encouraging his viewers to pass out as many as possible, usually in the middle of the night. Minadeo praises those who drop the flyers, calling them “paper goys,” and rewards anyone who earns coverage on TV news broadcasts with free merchandise, including antisemitic T-shirts and bars of soap that say “wash the Jew away.”
Despite his close family ties and following in Northern California, Minadeo had increasingly felt besieged by negative press and by criticism of his behavior by authorities. Minadeo’s family owns the historic Valley Ford restaurant Dinucci’s Italian Dinners, a popular road stop en route to the Sonoma Coast, and a source close to Minadeo said the 39-year-old once worked as a waiter at the restaurant, one of his last real jobs.
Yet he had developed a dismal reputation in the North Bay after a flood of media attention on his provocative antisemitic propaganda operation in J., the San Francisco Chronicle, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat and other outlets.
And he had made enemies. Over a year ago his house was vandalized, he said, and later someone “threatened to burn down my house.” Minadeo said he never felt the authorities took his complaints seriously.
“Jews are getting to intimidate me, vandalize my house, slander me, assault me, and the police do absolutely nothing,” he said.
North Bay police have called out the flyer campaigns as “hate incidents,” which Minadeo said has damaged his reputation.
“You’re essentially putting a green light on my head with the community, to say that I’m some bad person because I’m talking truth about Jews,” he said.
Though Minadeo says he does not support violence, his content is rife with violent imagery and messages. One digital background that appears frequently on his livestream is a photo of the train tracks leading to Auschwitz. Much of the casual language used in the Goyim TV online universe is extremely violent; when Minadeo wants to point out something he doesn’t like, for example, he instructs his followers to “gas” it, or kill it, using a reference to the Holocaust.
He also encourages his followers to harass journalists and activists who cover or speak out against his activities.
Minadeo hopes Florida will be more hospitable to him and his worldview, and he may have reason to believe that to be true. A recent report from the ADL described an upward trend of extremist and antisemitic activity in the Sunshine State, driven in part by new white supremacist groups including White Lives Matter, Sunshine State Nationalists, NatSoc Florida and Florida Nationalists.
Minadeo and Goyim TV have partnered with neo-Nazi elements in Florida on antisemitic stunts in the past, and the Goyim Defense League has been extremely active in the state. Last May, Minadeo and his followers held a “protest” outside a Holocaust memorial center in Maitland, an Orlando suburb, carrying bullhorns and holding up signs denying the Holocaust and saying “Jews promote homosexuality.” In October, he and others describing themselves as “laser Nazis” used a light projection to superimpose the message “Kanye is right about the Jews” on a football stadium in Jacksonville, as fans streamed out of a college rivalry game attended by 75,000 people.
Minadeo pledged to continue Goyim TV’s propaganda efforts and daily livestreams from Florida, where at least one other prominent member of the hate group already lives: Dominic Di Giorgio, a tech-savvy GDL operative known as “Ned Flanders.”
In its video announcing the move, Goyim TV showed images of Gov. Ron DeSantis in Jerusalem signing an antisemitism bill, and praying at the Western Wall. “Keep the pressure on,” a message on the video said. “This has to end.”
Parts of Florida have large Jewish populations, including Tampa and the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area, which has one of the largest Jewish populations of any metro area in the U.S.
The Secure Community Network, which monitors threats to Jewish communities across North America, did not address Goyim TV specifically in a statement to J. but said it monitors threats to Jewish communities closely, and over the last six months it had addressed “risk events” affecting over 4,000 Jewish institutions and referred “over 225 individuals to law enforcement for follow-up.”
“As the official safety and security organization for the Jewish community in North America, the Secure Community Network works closely with local Jewish Federations, community leaders, and law enforcement partners to keep the Jewish community safe and secure,” a statement from Michael Masters said.
Gabe Stutman is the news editor of J. Follow him on Twitter @jnewsgabe.
