ORLANDO, Fla. — Neo-Nazi demonstrations in Orlando over the weekend drew bipartisan condemnations from state and local officials, but Gov. Ron DeSantis remained silent until Monday afternoon when he responded to a question about the rallies with a tirade against his political enemies.
“So what I’m going to say is these people, these Democrats who are trying to use this as some type of political issue to try to smear me as if I had something to with do that, we’re not playing their game,” the governor said during a press conference in Palm Beach.
He referred to the demonstrators, a group of about 20 shouting antisemitic slurs while waving Nazi flags near a UCF-area shopping plaza on Saturday and on an Interstate 4 overpass on Sunday, as “some jackasses doing this on the street” and said they’d be held accountable by law enforcement.
But he also accused Democrats who called for him to denounce the neo-Nazis — as fellow Republican office-holders including U.S. Sen. Rick Scott and state House Speaker Chris Sprowls had already done — of exploiting the demonstrations for political gain, while also touting his record of support for the Jewish community and Israel.
“And so they try to play games to try to politicize, why would they do that? Why would they want to elevate a half dozen malcontents and try to make this an issue for political gain?” DeSantis said. “Well, because they want to distract from the failure that we’ve seen with Biden, and they’re all joined at the hip, all these policies, they all support in Florida 100%.”
Videos spread on social media showed the group waving Nazi flags, saluting and shouting at passing cars near Waterford Lakes Town Center in east Orange County. The demonstrators were also seen getting into at least one fight in the roadway in front of the shopping plaza.
In a statement, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said it received a call about 12:15 p.m. Saturday about demonstrators gathered near Alafaya Trail and Waterford Lakes Parkway who were yelling profanities and slurs at passing cars.
The agency said Monday its investigation into the fight between several of the demonstrators and a passerby is ongoing. No arrests were made Saturday but Sheriff John Mina promised to “thoroughly” investigate any criminal activity.
“I along with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office deplore any type of hate speech,” he said in a social media post. “This hatred has no place in our society.”
A group waving Nazi flags was also seen on the Daryl Carter Parkway overpass of Interstate 4 on Sunday. The Florida Highway Patrol “immediately disbanded” the display, according to a statement by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
‘Do we even know they’re Nazis?’
Numerous officials — from Central Florida and across the state — spoke out against the neo-Nazi gatherings, including state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando, who said, “Hatred and anti-Semitism have NO PLACE in our community.”
“I’m appalled to see Nazis rallying in the East Orlando district I represent,” he tweeted Sunday. “They are NEVER welcome here. All Floridians should be alarmed by the rise of extremism and white supremacy in our state. We have to stop it!”
Smith and others called on DeSantis to condemn the demonstrations. But the governor’s press secretary sparked a firestorm when she initially weighed in with skepticism about the demonstrators’ identities.
“Do we even know they’re Nazis?” Christina Pushaw posted in a since-deleted Sunday night tweet, according to FloridaPolitics.com. “... I trust Florida law enforcement to investigate and am awaiting their conclusions.”
Pushaw cited a stunt by the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, during the Virginia gubernatorial race in which members posed as torch-carrying white nationalists purporting to endorse the Republican candidate and eventual winner Glenn Youngkin.
By all indications, the Orlando demonstrations were organized by the National Socialist Movement, a decades-old neo-Nazi group that advertised its plan for a Saturday rally in Orlando on its website.
Despite having deleted her tweet, Pushaw later retweeted several posts defending her skepticism of the Orlando demonstrations and criticizing those asking for the governor to weigh in on them.
By Monday afternoon, Pushaw issued a statement saying DeSantis “has always condemned hate” and “has taken an unequivocal and consistent stand against antisemitism throughout his entire political career.”
When DeSantis spoke later, he touted having signed what he described as “the strongest antisemitism bill in the country” as well as “record funding for Jewish day schools” and “the strongest relationship between Florida and Israel than we ever had.”
His answer touched on unrelated issues — including inflation, gas prices, immigration at the southern border and “soft-on-crime policies” — and included broadsides against Minnesota progressive U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar and vacation rental service Airbnb, who he said had “indulged” the BDS movement, which calls for sanctions against Israel.
“And so... what they’re trying to avoid is being able to be held accountable for that,” DeSantis said. “So we’re not going to let them get away with these stupid things where they’re trying to smear somebody unfairly, and I will not be smeared by them.”
The Florida office of the Anti-Defamation League, which combats antisemitism, in a Monday statement on Twitter said it was “alarmed” that Pushaw “would first give cover to antisemites rather than immediately and forcefully condemning their revolting, hate-filled rally and assault.”
“We need all leaders to call out antisemitism and hate, rather than push false narratives or conspiracy theories,” the organization tweeted.
Other Dem, GOP officials denounce demonstrators
U.S. Rep. Val Demings, D-Orlando, tweeted of the neo-Nazis that “America beat their disturbing ideology before and we’ll do it again.”
Scott, the Republican U.S. Senator, said such demonstrations “have no place in our state.”
“Across America, we’ve seen a heartbreaking & disgusting rise in hate like this,” his statement said. “We must always condemn it & continue to stand strongly with our Jewish communities.”
Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said, “Anti-semitism and hatred are not welcome in this community.”
“Despite displays of hate in Central Florida this weekend, our collective commitment to building an inclusive, compassionate community for all is stronger than ever,” he said in a statement.
Sprowls, the Palm Harbor-based Republican speaker of the Florida House, called the demonstrations in Orlando a “disgusting display of anti-semitism” that “does not reflect the values of Floridians.”
State Sen. Lauren Book, the Senate Democratic leader from Plantation, in a statement noted the neo-Nazi activity came days after International Holocaust Remembrance Day. “We must all speak out to condemn these emboldened white supremacists,” Book said. “Hate has NO place here.”
The antisemitic rallies show the continuing need for education against this type of hatred, said Katherine Turner, vice president over development and marketing at Maitland’s Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center of Florida.
“It is quite disturbing, and while we are dismayed by it all, it just speaks to the relevance and importance of our mission and vision,” she said. “The work that we do is critical right now.”
The center shares the testimonies of those who survived the systematic genocide of 6 million Jewish people by Nazi Germany during World War II with the hope that “some will learn from history and not repeat it,” Turner said.
“It’s only by working together that we will make a significant difference,” she said.
Neo-Nazi group dates back to ‘90s
The demonstrators touted signs promoting the website for National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group whose current leader is based in Kissimmee, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
According to the ADL, the NSM “is one of the more explicitly neo-Nazi groups in the United States,” which “calls for an all-white ‘greater America’ that would deny citizenship and virtually all legal protection to non-whites, Jews and the LGBTQ population.”
The neo-Nazi hate group started in Michigan in the early 1990s, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks the activities of extremist and anti-government groups.
“The National Socialist Movement is based on Nazi premises,” said Elizabeth Yates, a senior researcher at the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.
The group, Yates said, has gone through several iterations including a failed attempt in 2016 to stop the use of swastikas in hopes of making itself appear more “palatable” to potential members. But even in that period, the extremist group was characterized by racism, antisemitism and violence.
In addition to displaying Nazi insignia, the group on the I-4 overpass hung a sign that referenced “Let’s Go, Brandon,” a viral chant that serves as a thinly disguised vulgar insult of President Joe Biden. The phrase has been embraced by conservative figures and Republican officeholders alike, including DeSantis.
Yates said the mix of right-wing political messaging with Nazi symbols and antisemitic slurs is concerning and could reflect a strategy by the hate group to spread its beliefs through partisan rhetoric.
“On the one hand, that’s sort of an attempt to access the mainstream and to integrate their goals and their desires and ideologies into contemporary events and try to pull people who may be agreeing with that sentiment,” said Yates, who studies extremist groups and the spread of extremist ideas. “Then, with the swastika, it’s like they are really staking out a claim as extremists.”
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Orlando Sentinel staff writer Steven Lemongello contributed to this report.
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