Florida Jewish community condemns white nationalist video

NAPLES, Fla. — A video released by The Atlantic magazine this week shows members of the National Policy Institute, an “alt-right” organization that promotes white nationalism,  with Richard B. Spencer, their president, yelling “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory,” at a crowd. They respond with cheers and arms outstretched in Nazi salutes.  The “Sieg Heil” salutes and speech propagating Nazi ideologies are familiar to Holocaust survivors.

Civic leaders, Holocaust survivors and activists throughout Florida are condemning the video content that some say, are expressed by a group of people whose angry nationalist sentiments have become emboldened with the election of Republican Donald Trump.

Hava Holzhauer,  Florida  Anti-Defamation League director said, “In the days since the election, reports of physical attacks, vandalism and harassment have flooded our local offices.  I hear from a lot of people that they are afraid, because violence doesn’t start with a fist, it starts with an idea. Before the Holocaust, there was 12 years of name-calling to make a group of people outside the norm of society. It’s good people’s radars are going off.”

Amongst the cases the Florida ADL is investigating  are two young children who came home from school this week with swastikas drawn on their arms by another child, a call over Halloween described a mock black figure hanging from a tree in an upscale Miami neighborhood,  while another reported fliers being distributed on the University of Florida’s campus with the message, “Tired of anti-white propaganda in college? You are not alone.”

Robert Hilliard, 91, of Sanibel Island, who helped save sick and starving Jews as they were liberated from Nazi concentration camps during World War II said,  “Hate groups feel they have a mandate because of the way Trump reflected their feelings during his campaign. The process of Hitler becoming chancellor is eerily identical to the same process Trump used. People wanted change, and he promised it. They overlooked his white supremacy message. I think people who voted for Trump could find themselves in the same position as the people in Germany who voted for Hitler.”

Rosette Priever Gerbosi, a Holocaust survivor living in Naples, said when she saw the video, she screamed, “When those hands went up. It’s haunting. My parents were sent to Auschwitz and gassed on arrival. I was a hidden child for a year and a half. To see this happen in this country, it’s unacceptable.”

Rabbi Bruce Diamond of Fort Myers’ Community Free Synagogue spoke with his congregation last week in the wake of recent nationwide hate incidents. He said of the group, ” They feel exultant, happy in their own dark way, for having a white president.”