Sunday, Nov. 6, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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Aren’t you sick of the hatemongering, the hate messaging and the hate-fueled violence?
I am — but there’s no escaping it in Florida.
And you know we’ve reached a new low when a college football game videoboard becomes a showcase for antisemitism.
The message projected recently onto Jacksonville’s TIAA Bank Field’s video board at the end of the sold-out Florida-Georgia football game — “Kanye was right about the jews” — was only one of several such messages seen around the city.
Another was projected on a downtown building, and banners were hoisted on an Interstate 10 overpass and the Arlington Expressway on Friday and Saturday. Way to put a damper on an institutional rivalry between two neighboring states that’s supposed to be a citywide party, not a regression into a dark history.
Worst yet, we’re normalizing people intent on giving wings to bigotry.
Nothing can be done about the antisemitic acts, Jacksonville authorities declared, because no matter how hateful, it’s protected speech.
“At this time, the Sheriff’s Office has not identified any crimes having been committed; the comments displayed do not include any type of threat and are protected by the First Amendment,” wrote public information officer T.N. Dash in an email. “We will continue to monitor any reports of this nature to determine if they rise to level of a criminal nature.”
Really?
But wasn’t the act of protesting on highways ruled unlawful by the Republican Legislature, its bill signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis?
Nobody, not even short-sighted politicians who stoke division and bigotry in incendiary campaign ads, benefits from the atmosphere of hate enveloping the state like an unbreakable curse.
Who wants to live under a daily hovering cloud of negativity and threats of violence — verbal, implied and physical?
Yet acts of antisemitism are on the rise. It’s no coincidence.
This summer, antisemitic propaganda fliers were distributed in the north end of Coral Gables. In Tampa, a group of neo-Nazis rallied and held signs with swastikas around the Tampa Convention Center. Twice in October, the Hunters Pointe community in Weston woke up to antisemitic messages spray-painted on its entrance.
It’s shameful that this is happening in a state that’s home to sizable communities of Holocaust survivors and their descendants.
But those who lead the state act like they don’t give a damn. Their silence seems a macabre attempt to dull our senses to hate speech.
DeSantis, who calls himself an ally of Israel and is largely responsible for the angry state of the state, was campaigning at the game between the Florida Gators and Georgia Bulldogs.
But the public had to wait three days to hear a tepid condemnation of the racist act in support of celebrity Kanye West’s attack on Jews on social media earlier in the week, which went viral.
“Gov. DeSantis rejects attempts to scapegoat the Jewish community — it has no place in Florida,” said his deputy press secretary Jeremy Redfern.
What does the first part of that statement, “to scapegoat,” even mean? A suspect choice of words.
The rest of the statement is a plug for DeSantis, not a strong defense of the Jewish community or a condemnation of Nazism.
“Through legislative proposals, laws, and decisive executive action, Gov. DeSantis has a proven record of supporting the Jewish community and fighting antisemitism and the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement in Florida,” it said.
Another hate group the Republican Party has a hard time disassociating from is the Proud Boys.
In Miami-Dade, members are active in the local party. And, outrageously so this election, three ex-Proud Boys were hired to work as poll workers, one of them — ultimately let go — wearing an ankle monitor while awaiting trial on federal charges for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the nation’s Capitol.
What could be more legitimizing than having former members of a far-right white-nationalist extremist group monitoring our voting booths and interacting with voters?
It’s as if the worst evils of the past were making a comeback.
The World War II generation — so proudly hailed as “the greatest” — battled antisemitism and genocide, and almost 300,000 paid with their lives. Not too long ago, the hard-fought Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s brought Black Americans equal rights under U.S. law.
But in today’s Florida, we’re tolerant of neo-Nazis and disenfranchise Black voters by gerrymandering districts to dilute their voting power.
The haters — broken, ignorant, prejudiced people — have always been among us.
But before Donald Trump and DeSantis happened to Florida, they were often left behind, marginalized in their state of darkness. Not so now. They’re participants in the democracy they tried to dismantle.
Every election season brings its own brand of fireworks. But these midterms — when, according to polls, there aren’t razor-thin margins in the race for governor between DeSantis and Democrat Charlie Crist — seem to be bringing out the worst of the worst.
Radicalism is in vogue in Florida. There’s a concerted effort to normalize bigotry as an election strategy for politicians who find lowlife behaviors useful.
But Floridians can’t afford it. Hatred toward one group eventually catches up to us all.
Fabiola Santiago is a columnist for the Miami Herald.
