Charlottesville, VA – Antisemitic flyers were distributed throughout Charlottesville’s Barracks Rugby and Venable neighborhoods over the weekend, in what appears to be part of a national public relations stunt by the Goyim Defense League hate group.
Congregation Beth Israel, Charlottesville’s only synagogue whose temple is the oldest still standing in the commonwealth, warned its congregants Monday morning to “be aware of their own personal safety when in public and at their home.”
Former Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer, who is Jewish, told The Daily Progress his street was in one of the neighborhoods the campaign targeted. He said he found the leaflets scattered on several nearby driveways on Saturday morning as he walked out to fetch the morning newspaper.
He said he ran across the street to grab a flyer that had been thrown on his neighbor’s driveway. “She wasn’t going to be interested in receiving that.”
Signer, who served as mayor during the deadly Unite the Right rally-turned-riot when neo-Nazis and neo-Confederates descended on downtown Charlottesville in 2017, said he has heard of such messages showing up in other places in America.
“We have seen a lot of this kind of thing,” he said on Monday. “I know what’s happening all around the country with this kind of activity. It is obviously upsetting to see it come right here to Charlottesville.”
The leaflets distributed in Charlottesville were sealed in plastic bags filled with corn kernels in an apparent attempt to keep them from blowing away. “Every single aspect of the media is Jewish,” they read. “6 Jewish corporations own 96% of the media.” Printed below that is a list of major media companies and the names of Jewish employees, regardless of whether they are still employed there or not.
The leaflets also have an advertisement for Goyim TV, a video platform owned by the Goyim Defense League and operated by self-proclaimed white supremacist Jon Minadeo II.
