SAN DIEGO (SDJW) — In response to antisemitic anti-LBGTQ flyers that were distributed this last weekend in the San Carlos and Del Cerro neighborhoods, in the vicinity respectively of Tifereth Israel Synagogue and Temple Emanu-El, the regional office of the Anti-Defamation League announced on Monday that it has “been working diligently with the San Diego Police Department , the San Diego Mayor’s Office and the District Attorney’s office to identify the perpetrators and support the targeted communities.”
“The flyers are consistent with other flyers we have seen across the country created by a fringe antisemitic and white supremacist group that the ADL Center on Extremism and law enforcement have been tracking for some time,” continued a statement issued by Fabienne Perlov, the ADL Regional Director, and Matt Brown, ADL’s Director of Incident Response and Law Enforcement Coordination.
The flyers, which also were reported in the neighboring city of Santee, are produced by a group whose leaders “are known to law enforcement, and their motivation, beyond the bigotry of their messaging, is to drive traffic to their streaming service to generate revenue, terrorize communities and recruit new supporters,” according to the ADL statement.
San Diego Jewish World agrees with and has complied with ADL’s request to “refrain from sharing images of the flyers or mentioning the group behind these flyers by name or their streaming link to deprive them of the attention and amplification they seek.”
The ADL said that its Center on Extremism “recorded 450 of these propaganda incidents” last year, which was “more than 6 times the 74 recorded in 2021. The 2022 incidents occurred in 42 different states with the majority of incidents in California (84), Florida (56), Texas (50), Georgia (37) and South Carolina (28).”
Perlov and Brown encouraged “reporting of these incidents to ADL and to law enforcement, along with any information that may identify the perpetrators” via a website linked here. Reports also may be texts to HATEHELP at 833-448-0248.
Times of San Diego reported that San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria tweeted: “Hate has no place in San Diego and there will be consequences for those who spread it in our city. These antisemitic and homophobic flyers have been reported to law enforcement and are being investigated.”
Leafleting is considered a First Amendment right unless the flyers make a specific request against a person or an institution, so what recourse the city might have — except perhaps prosecuting the perpetrators for littering — is not apparent.
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Preceding was written by a San Diego Jewish World staff member.