Timestamp: 03 October 2023 @ 0445 Pacific
By Emma Goss | September 27, 2023
Three anonymous callers joined the San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting remotely on Tuesday to spew antisemitic and racist remarks, prompting the body to consider doing away with remote public comment entirely.
"Let's be clear, I fought to have unlimited remote public comment," which was introduced during pandemic lockdowns to enable access to public meetings, said board president Aaron Peskin.
"I will be introducing a change to the board rules. This will be done," the Jewish supervisor said at the end of Tuesday's public comments. "Ain't going to happen in these chambers in this city."
Near the end of the comment period, an individual who joined the meeting via Zoom self-identified as "Ky," part of a fake name with a coded antisemitic slur. The caller made derogatory claims about Black people and Jews. The person was cut off and the supervisors went to the next person in the queue. That caller, however, used even more inflammatory language speaking against Black people and Jews.
Several other California city and county governments, including in Walnut Creek, Sacramento, Sonoma County and El Dorado County, have been targeted by white supremacists and racists this year in a coordinated effort linked to the white supremacist Goyim Defense League.
This was the first time it had occurred at a San Francisco supervisors meeting, Peskin told J. on Wednesday, noting that while "we have provocative public comment and foul language," it rarely veers into hate speech like it did the day before.
"Yesterday was a concerted onslaught, and I'm not going to countenance it," Peskin said in a phone interview. "I feel badly that these handful of bigots are ruining it for the rest of the public. I don't see that we have a choice."
Until that meeting, Peskin was a proponent of unlimited remote public comment. Earlier this year, the board approved a resolution to codify it and make it a permanent feature.
Peskin now says he will introduce a policy to end access to remote public comment, which will go to the board's rules committee on Oct. 9, then to the full Board of Supervisors for approval.
"These are dark times. Silence and ignoring this behavior only exacerbates it," Peskin said. "I think we just have to stand up and give a strong and immediate response."
Also on Tuesday, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors held its first meeting that did not include an option for remote public comment. Since May, public commenters repeatedly have gone on antisemitic and racist rants during the meetings. Ryan Messano of Fairfield, a white supremacist who specializes in disrupting public meetings, had been discharging hate-filled rants week after week at the Sonoma County meetings.
Larkspur, Saratoga, Atherton and San Diego have also been targeted, according to several local news reports.
The Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism has been tracking these incidents and has identified some of the individuals and groups that encourage and instigate hate speech in public forums.
Among them is the antisemitic network Goyim Defense League, led by Jon Minadeo Jr., a former Petaluma resident who now lives in Florida. He has praised Messano for his comments in public meetings.
On a May 24 podcast, Minadeo encouraged listeners to "find a city council meeting ... talk about Jewish supremacy."
Goyim Defense League has posted clipped portions of public meetings to highlight the hate speech and use them for entertainment and fundraising, according to the ADL. In August, the ADL published an online toolkit for city and county governments, as well as for the public, to prepare for and respond to hate speech at public meetings.
The toolkit suggests reviewing and revising rules for comment periods such as setting consistent time limits for each person's remarks or encouraging the public to submit written remarks, which is still an option in Sonoma County and San Francisco for people who don't attend the meeting in person.
"Fundamentally, these people are cowards," Peskin said. They "know that these views are unacceptable, which is why they hide behind the anonymity of the internet and remote public comment."
Keywords: Fortuna Humboldt California US MGTOW Ziosphere antisemitic racist Jewish antisemitic derogatory inflammatory targeted white supremacists racists white supremacist hate antisemitic racist white supremacist hate targeted hate antisemitic Jewish hate hate cowards Aaron Peskin San Francisco board of supervisors public access anonymous free speech Thomas Paine
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Tell us again: who, here, has a potty mouth?
It's telling that the actual words and sentences uttered by the people Peskin wants to censor have been systematically erased. We just have to take Peskin's word for it. He knows better than we do.
We have a sneaking suspicion that what so-called Jewish people call "hate speech" is, basically, speech that Jewish people hate.
We don't hate Jews. We hate dishonesty and lies and deceit. We are actually Ashkenazi, through our mother, and our grandmother. Jews who call us 'antisemites' can fuck off.
Jewish people hate to hear the facts, because it brings into question everything they have based their lives upon - the claim that they are intellectually superior, the claim that they are morally superior, the claim that God gave them an entire fucking slice of the Middle East and that these so-called Jews' three-thousand-year-old claim to land occupied by real descendants of real Judeans, real Semites, somehow supercedes the claim of these actual, literal Judeans, now known as 'Palestinians' ... living among groves of olive trees that are centuries old.
They call this, hate speech.
Normal people call these, objective facts.
Who are the real haters?
Who are the real Semites?
Who are the real anti-Semites?
Decide for yourself. It's not complicated.