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A Florida sheriff is on the warpath against neo-Nazi ‘scumbags’ who want him dead
(JTA) – After hate groups in his county on Florida’s East coast projected antisemitic messages onto the Daytona International Speedway, the local sheriff delivered a press conference with one simple message: He’d had enough.
“We put up their photos, talked about their arrest records, and let everybody know what a bunch of reprehensible thugs were in our community, and what they were up to,” Sheriff Mike Chitwood told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the February press conference. Standing with local Jewish, interfaith and minority group representatives, the sheriff had announced he would be coming after the “scumbags” who did this.
“And after that,” he recalled, “all hell broke loose.”
The group that had made its presence known in Volusia County was the Goyim Defense League, one of the country’s most prominent antisemitic organizations, known for harassing worshippers at synagogues and papering neighborhoods with fliers hawking anti-Jewish conspiracies.
The movement’s leaders recently relocated to the area from California, and they had chosen the Daytona 500, a major NASCAR race that draws more than 100,000 people to the speedway, to make their antisemitic presence known. They didn’t like that the sheriff was now effectively declaring war on them.
Online after the press conference, several men started making death threats against Chitwood, even harassing his daughter and sending SWAT teams to his parents’ house. Antisemitic groups began planning to hold a public demonstration to oppose him specifically, which Chitwood’s intelligence determined was set for this past weekend in Ormond Beach.
So Chitwood fought back. Last week, thanks in part to his corralling, three men in three different states — California, Connecticut and New Jersey — were arrested and charged with making online death threats against him. Two of the three have already been extradited to Volusia County.
Volusia County Sheriff Michael Chitwood (right) thanks residents who turned up to counter-protest a canceled demonstration by a neo-Nazi group in Ormond Beach, Florida, April 22, 2023. (Nadia Zomorodian, courtesy of Volusia County Sheriff)
On Saturday the sheriff went to the airport to personally “welcome” one of the men. He hopes to send a message to hate groups more generally that he intends to “keep up the heat” so that they know they will face resistance from law enforcement if they attempt any public demonstrations: “I think that makes it a little bit harder to peddle your wares.”
Amid a national climate of rising antisemitism, one vexing question has been how to tackle antisemitic activity that is trollish but not violent. While European authorities have prosecuted Holocaust denial and other antisemitic sentiments expressed in social media posts, U.S. law is less expansive about what kind of online posts represent criminal activity. Meanwhile, the Goyim Defense League’s most frequent activities — flier drops, banner displays and public demonstrations — make up the fastest-growing type of antisemitic incidents in the United States, according to the Anti-Defamation League, but they do not always violate the law. A citation for littering in Wisconsin last year was the first known charge in the United States related to the Goyim Defense League’s distribution of antisemitic materials.
The issue is especially acute in Florida, where the populations of Jews and avowed antisemites are both growing. Chitwood suspects the state’s rising Jewish population is one of the reasons why white supremacists have also flocked to the area, along with Florida’s relaxed gun laws.
In this environment, Chitwood’s outspokenness and forceful commitment to eradicating antisemitism — in a county with a relatively small number of Jews — has set a new tone. Raised in a law-enforcement family in Philadelphia — his father was a prominent police officer whose biography chronicles his own battle against “scumbags” — Chitwood speaks in a tough clip peppered with colorful insults directed at his white supremacist opponents (“these clowns,” “little sissies,” “ugly faces”). His passion on the issue is evident when he talks about his desire to be “standing in for John Q. Citizen,” or “some poor son-of-a-gun that’s going to synagogue.” He’s still green enough on the issue that he frequently confuses the Anti-Defamation League with the “JDL,” or Jewish Defense League — a radical violent splinter group of Jewish extremists.
Chitwood has garnered national attention for his actions, as well as the respect of the Jewish community.
“This sheriff is not like all the others, in a sense,” said Oren Segal, vice president of the ADL’s Center on Extremism. “He’s taking different methods and putting himself out there and showing what one type of response can be.”
Rob Lennick, director of the Jewish Federation of Volusia and Flagler Counties, is one of Chitwood’s local allies. The federation is known locally for running several charitable programs, including food pantries, meant to reach people in need across the entire community, and Chitwood has a good relationship with them.
Lennick praised Chitwood for taking “a very strong forward position against these neo-Nazis, against these white supremacist groups coming to our community.” (Lennick arrived in Volusia County last year after leaving the Jewish Federation of New Mexico, which collapsed after employees accused him of misconduct.)
Counter-protesters at a planned neo-Nazi demonstration in Ormond Beach, Florida, thank Volusia County Sheriff Michael Chitwood “for standing against antisemitism,” April 22, 2023. Chitwood has had white supremacists who have threatened him online arrested and extradited to his county. (Nadia Zomorodian, courtesy of Volusia County Sheriff)
In the end, the planned neo-Nazi demonstration against Chitwood on Saturday never took place — though a large group of what the sheriff described as “professional counter-protesters” did show up, flying joint American and Israeli flags and thanking him for standing up to antisemitism. Walking among that interfaith crowd, many of whom had traveled from outside the county to be there, was profound for Chitwood. The experience “was very, very humbling,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve wrapped my brain around it yet.”
Segal declined to comment on the degree to which Chitwood’s office has liaised with the ADL. But he praised Chitwood’s outspokenness, and said he considered it a form of “allyship.”
“It’s easy to speak out against something that breaks the law. It’s not always easy to speak out against something that breaks the value of our communities because it’s hateful, because it scares people, because it makes people feel unsafe,” Segal said. He mused that the fact that so many neo-Nazis now have Chitwood in their crosshairs “creates an inadvertent bond between law enforcement and the Jewish community, that they’re both being harassed by antisemites.”
Lennick had advised local Jews not to attend the site of the protests, not even to participate in the counter-protests. “You’re walking a fine line,” he said. “You don’t want to fuel the bad guys.”
Chitwood, though, has made a point out of naming and shaming the antisemites in his midst, believing that the increased media attention will expose further misdeeds and make it harder for them to hold down employment.
“There is now a national spotlight on these GDL punks,” Chitwood said. “Sooner or later, they’re going to stub their toe. And you have all these entities looking at you.”
The sheriff wants to go further in his crusade. He has pushed for a bill in the Florida legislature that would allow him and other law enforcement in the state to charge people with felonies for distributing fliers and broadcasting messages of “ethnic intimidation” on private property.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis shows off after signing a bill making “ethnic intimidation” displays a felony in his state, during a ceremony at the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem, April 27, 2023. Randy Fine, a Jewish Republican lawmaker from Florida who authored the bill, stands at left. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
On Thursday, Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed the bill into law during a ceremony in Jerusalem after Randy Fine, the Jewish Republican state representative who authored it, delivered it to him there. (DeSantis last year called Nazis rallying in his state “jackasses” but drew criticism for not condemning them more forcefully.) The law was written specifically to address the kinds of activities the Goyim Defense League regularly engages in, including the Daytona message that spurred Chitwood to address the problem head-on, and enjoyed unanimous support from legislators of both parties.
“I guess we need to thank our scumbag Neo-Nazi invaders for uniting our community and the entire state of Florida against hate,” Chitwood tweeted after the signing.
“I see it as another tool in the toolbox,” Chitwood told JTA about his support of the bill. “You go onto private property and drop these leaflets on somebody’s doorstep or in their driveway, that’s now a felony trespass.”
Chitwood acknowledges that law enforcement can often be slow to respond to crimes of ethnic intimidation, and particularly online harassment, which hinders their ability to organize against a common threat. “We are very reactive,” he said. “No matter what it is, even a car break trend, sometimes you have to break into 20 or 30 cars before we detect a trend to go and do what needs to be done.”
He’s frank about the police’s shortcomings when it comes to dealing with such behavior. The fact that he is a sheriff, he said, meant that it was easier to bring the perpetrators of out-of-state online death threats to justice. And, he said, broad coordination across different law enforcement entities for the specific addressing of antisemitism in the state does not yet exist: Apart from communication with some neighboring county sheriffs and the FBI, efforts to collaborate with the broader law enforcement community have been slow.
But, he said, he remains committed to trying to fight antisemitism in his own backyard at the very least. “It is personal,” Chitwood said. “This is my community.”
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Anti-Israel, Antisemitic Views of US Republicans Concentrated Among ‘New Entrants’ to Party, New Poll Finds
People gather for the UTEP chapter of Turning Point USA’s event featuring Border Czar Tom Homan on Dec. 4, 2025, at the UGLC on the UTEP campus in El Paso, Texas. Photo: USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
A strong majority of Republicans in the US support Israel and reject antisemitism, but “new,” more liberal entrants to the party are more likely to hold an animus toward the Jewish state and tolerate antisemitic hatred, according to a major new survey.
The Manhattan Institute, a prominent US-based think tank, has released a new poll examining the evolving makeup of the Republican Party (GOP) and its current attitudes toward Israel and Jewish Americans.
The results show a GOP that still contains a strong, reliable core of pro-Israel voters, yet one that is increasingly fractured, with a growing minority expressing skepticism toward Israel or even openly hostile antisemitic views.
According to the poll, the majority of Republicans, defined as registered GOP voters or those who, regardless of party affiliation, voted for Donald Trump in 2024, remain consistently conservative on foreign policy and firmly supportive of Israel. The Manhattan Institute divided this group into two groups: “Core Republicans,” defined as “longstanding GOP voters who have consistently backed Republican presidential nominees since 2016 or earlier,” and “New Entrant Republicans,” defined as “recent first-time GOP presidential voters, including those who supported Democrats in 2016 or 2020 or were too young to vote in cycles before 2020.” The two blocs comprise about two-thirds and one-third of the GOP coalition, respectively.
Among the nearly 3,000 total respondents, 55 percent said that Israel is an “important and effective” US ally, while 23 percent said that Israel is “a country like any other” whose interests sometimes align with the US. An additional 12 percent agreed with a description of Israel as a “settler-colonial state” and a liability, indicating a heavy disdain for the Jewish state.
“New Entrant Republicans” perceive Israel in a far harsher light than the general GOP base, according to the data. Among this cohort, 24 percent see Israel as a “liability” while just 39 percent still consider Israel an important ally of the US.
Notably, old guard and newer members of the Republican Party have split perspectives on Qatar, with 41 percent of new entrants viewing the Middle Eastern country favorably compared to 23 percent of “core” Republicans.
The survey also delivers a stark warning about a troubling minority within the GOP and across the broader electorate that holds openly antisemitic views. According to the results, 17 percent of current Republicans can be categorized as “anti-Jewish,” defined as those who “self-identify as both racist and antisemitic and express Holocaust denial or describe Israel as a colonial state” or “do not self-identify that way but nevertheless hold both of those extreme positions.”
The Manhattan Institute found that newer entrants are more likely to be anti-Jewish.
“Anti-Jewish Republicans are typically younger, disproportionately male, more likely to be college-educated, and significantly more likely to be New Entrant Republicans,” the survey states. “They are also more racially diverse. Consistent church attendance is one of the strongest predictors of rejecting these attitudes; infrequent church attendance is, all else equal, one of the strongest predictors of falling into this segment.”
This group is also in general more politically liberal, according to the survey: “Given that many of these voters are younger and former Democrats, more progressive policy tendencies are unsurprising.”
Notably, the Manhattan Institute found slightly higher levels of anti-Jewish sentiment (20 percent) among Democrats.
Among newer Republicans, 38 percent believe that Jews are more loyal to a foreign country than the US, compared to 24 percent of more traditional Republicans.
The “new entrant bloc is more likely to express tolerance for racist or antisemitic speech, more likely to support political violence, more conspiratorial, and — on core policy questions — considerably more liberal than the party’s traditional base,” the Manhattan Institute writes. “These voters are drawn to Trump but are not reliably attached to the Republican Party.”
A key factor in the data is age, with the survey showing a major generational divide in which older GOP voters are much more supportive of Israel and less likely to express antisemitic views than their younger cohorts.
According to the data, 25 percent of GOP voters under 50 openly express antisemitic views as opposed to just 4 percent over the age of 50.
Startlingly, a substantial amount, 37 percent, of GOP voters indicate belief in Holocaust denialism. These figures are more pronounced among young men under 50, with a majority, 54 percent, agreeing that the Holocaust “was greatly exaggerated or did not happen as historians describe.” Among men over 50, 41 percent agree with the sentiment. There are also substantial divisions among racial lines. Whopping amounts of black and Latino GOP voters, 66 percent and 77 percent, respectively, believe in Holocaust denialism. Thirty percent of white GOP voters deny or minimize the Holocaust, according to the Manhattan Institute.
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Neo-Nazis Deploy AI Apps as New Creative Weapons Against Jews, Watchdog Groups Reveal
Screenshots taken on Oct. 23, 2025, of three Sora videos created by user “Pablo Deskobar.”
Large language model (LLM) programs marketed as “artificial intelligence” have become common tools in the kits of online extremists advocating a genocide of the Jewish people, according to new research from longtime watchdogs of antisemitic hate groups and terrorist movements.
On Tuesday, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released its report, “The Safety Divide: Open-Source AI Models Fall Short on Guardrails for Antisemitic, Dangerous Content,” which presented the results of testing 17 LLM models — including Google’s Gemma-3, Microsoft’s Phi-4, and Meta’s Llama 3 — which are available for anyone to download and customize to their preferences.
“The ability to easily manipulate open-source AI models to generate antisemitic content exposes a critical vulnerability in the AI ecosystem,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL. “The lack of robust safety guardrails makes AI models susceptible to exploitation by bad actors, and we need industry leaders and policymakers to work together to ensure these tools cannot be misused to spread antisemitism and hate.”
In addition to the “open source” models, the group’s researchers analyzed OpenAI’s “closed source” GPT-4o and GPT-5 as a comparison and reported a surprising finding.
“As suggested by previous research and data, OpenAI’s closed-source GPT-4o beat every open-source model (save gpt-oss-20b) in nearly every benchmark, compared to the next highest, the open-source Phi-4 with a score of .84,” the ADL researchers wrote. “GPT-5, in contrast, despite being a newer model than GPT-4o, had a lower guardrail score (.75 compared to .94), fewer refusals (69% compared to 82%), more harmful content (26% compared to 0%) and a higher evasion rate (6% compared to 1%).”
The analysts considered varying explanations for their findings including the possibility “that GPT-5 is designed for ‘safe completions’ (partial or high-level answers), leading to significantly fewer refusals than GPT-4o (e.g., 0% vs. 40% in one prompt). This also resulted in a change of tone. In Prompt 3, for example, GPT-4o started with a preamble about the sensitive nature of the topic, while GPT-5 usually omitted the warning, choosing instead to address and illustrate problematic tropes within the answer itself.”
The complexity of analyzing the LLM models and ambiguity of the results led the ADL to adopt a cautious tone and assess that “we cannot claim a strict linear boost in overall capability.”
“The decentralized nature of open-source AI presents both opportunities and risks,” said Daniel Kelley, director of the ADL’s Center for Technology and Society. “While these models increasingly drive innovation and provide cost-effective solutions, we must ensure they cannot be weaponized to spread antisemitism, hate, and misinformation that puts Jewish communities and others at risk.”
In its list of recommendations in response to the research findings, the ADL urged governments to “establish strict controls on open-source deployment in government settings, mandate safety audits and require collaboration with civil society experts, [and] require clear disclaimers for AI-generated content on sensitive topics.”
The ADL report came out a few days after the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) published a new analysis of how online neo-Nazi advocates have started to use AI models. The group described the discovery of custom AIs with names like “Fuhrer AI” and “Deep AI Adolf Hitler Chat” programmed to speak in the style of the Nazi leader and to promote his genocidal ideology.
“We are also witnessing the rise of a new digital infrastructure for hate. And it’s not just fringe actors,” Steven Stalinsky, executive director of MEMRI, and Simon Purdue, director of MEMRI’s Violent Extremism Threat Monitor project, wrote in their analysis. “State-aligned networks from Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea amplify this content using bots and fake accounts, sewing division, disinformation, and fear — all powered by AI. This is psychological warfare. And we are unprepared.”
Stalinsky and Purdue warned that “the threat isn’t hypothetical. We’ve been studying how extremists began experimenting with generative AI as early as 2022. Since then, the volume, coordination, and sophistication have grown dramatically.”
Analyzing the many dimensions of the threat posed by AI has recently drawn significant research attention from both the ADL and MEMRI, with the two groups findings’ complementing one another.
Last month, The Algemeiner reported on MEMRI’s in-depth analysis, “Artificial Intelligence and the New Era of Terrorism: An Assessment of How Jihadis Are Using AI to Expand Their Propaganda, Recruitment, and Operations and the Implications for National Security.” In October, the ADL released its report, “”Innovative AI Video Generators Produce Antisemitic, Hateful, and Violent Outputs.”
Meanwhile, Israel has begun moving quickly to integrate AI into its war plans.
Last week, the Israel Defense Forces announced its “Bina” initiative, named after the Hebrew word for “intelligence.” This restructuring and consolidating of Israeli military efforts in artificial intelligence-fueled warfare specifically aims to counter aggression from Iran, China, and Russia.
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Can Jewish tradition help you stay sane when all your bosses are ‘idiots’?
Dear Bintel,
My work colleagues and I need your help. Does Jewish tradition have anything to say about how not to lose your mind when all your bosses are idiots?
Signed,
Losing It
Dear Losing It,
Proverbs 29:2 sums up the impact of bad leadership on morale better than I can: “When a wicked man rules, the people groan.” Believe me, I can hear you and your colleagues groaning in response to every ridiculous email and edict from your inept employers.
The Bible is also full of stories about individuals saddled with work they neither want nor enjoy. Jeremiah is a reluctant prophet ordered to deliver messages nobody wants to hear. Jonah also pointed out the futility of his assignment, saying, essentially, “Why should I tell everyone they’re evil when they won’t listen?” Meanwhile, Moses tries to talk God out of giving him the task of leading the Jews out of Egypt.
And what does the Talmud have to say about all this? The sages portray pushback not as insubordination, but as part of the fundamental relationship between Jews and God: We have a responsibility to demand justice and challenge authority.
But how do you do it without getting fired? Speaking truth to power is an art. Nathan the prophet did it with panache: He got King David to see the error of his ways by relating a parable. When David noticed that the man in Nathan’s tale had transgressed, Nathan said to David, “You are the man!”
Now, I’m not saying your work life will improve if you tell your terrible bosses a story in which the villains are thinly veiled versions of themselves. Nor am I suggesting that you must endure 20 years of servitude, like Jacob did, in order to get some sheep and the woman of your dreams, or that you should argue about every single thing you’re asked to do, as did Moses.
But here’s an oft-quoted Talmudic saying that expresses one of Judaism’s guiding principles, and I think it’s relevant to your work-life quandary: “It is not up to you to complete the task, but neither are you free to avoid it.”
In other words, you aren’t responsible for fixing everything that’s wrong with your job. But you are required to make an effort.
What might that look like? How about cheerfully encouraging adherence to best practices by offering evidence-based recommendations? Or matter-of-factly questioning a pointless policy — without pointing fingers — by simply showing that it’s hurting the bottom line or creating delays?
Now I wouldn’t want you to get on the bosses’ bad side or put yourself in the firing line in the course of offering criticism veiled as new ideas. To help your cause, enlist trusted colleagues to backread that email before you send it, or ask others to jointly request a meeting to propose a new approach to something you’re aching to improve.
What if your suggestions and complaints go unheeded? The Talmud tells of a rabbi who predicts that those on the receiving end of his protests “will not accept the rebuke from me.”
Do it anyway, is the response: “Even though they will not accept it, the Master should rebuke them.”
Consider, too, this beautiful precept from the great philosopher Maimonides: “Each of us should see ourselves as if our next act could change the fate of the world.” Meaning that every small choice you make as you carry out your duties — rendering a compliment to an overwhelmed work friend, making a correction without judgment, sharing a shortcut with the team or listening to a colleague’s frustration — matters.
I truly believe that part of how we maintain our sanity in the face of incompetence or evil is by standing up for our own values, even when it seems pointless. If you subscribe to the notion that every righteous act we perform, no matter how small, contributes to repairing our broken world, and if you can truly believe in the power of individual good deeds, it will go a long way toward restoring your peace of mind.
Peace of mind can also come from the time-honored Jewish tradition of kibbitzing. If you don’t already have an online group on WhatsApp or Discord where you and your coworkers can kvetch as well as support each other away from the bosses’ gaze, start one. If your work is in-person, in the office, rather than remote, invite a couple of colleagues out for a beer or coffee or a meetup in the park.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t also serve up this oft-quoted Talmudic nugget: “A person should love work and not hate it.” The ancient rabbis believed work not only supports one’s material needs, but also provides dignity and self-worth — or so it should. If it’s impossible for you to love your work given your current situation; if you can’t bear the thought of sticking it out the way Jacob did; and if you don’t feel motivated enough to push back one small act at a time, as Maimonides advised, well then, you could always go all out and confront those idiotic bosses head on.
Of course, if you do that, they might hand you your walking papers. Then again, maybe being forced to look for a new job isn’t the worst thing that could happen given your disdain for your situation. Maybe you’re thinking of quitting anyway — and maybe that’s not a bad idea. As a more contemporary Jewish sage, Bob Dylan, once said, “All you can do is do what you must.”
Signed,
Bintel
What do you think? Send your comments to bintel@forward.com or send in a question of your own.
This is Beth Harpaz’s final column for Bintel Brief. She managed and wrote for the column from 2022 to 2025.
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