The Florida sheriff vs. the neo-Nazi ‘scumbags’

Perknose

Forum Director & Omnipotent Overlord
Forum Director
Oct 9, 1999
46,009
8,640
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South Philly Represent!

Some excerpts:

"The “scumbags” had emailed him dozens of times over the past month. He suspected that they’d reported a phony murder-suicide at his parents’ address, sending a SWAT team to their door, long guns out, at 1:15 a.m. He suspected that they were the ones who’d posted his cellphone number on 4chan, encouraging others to join a campaign of calls and texts that so clogged his screen, he’d just placed an order for a burner phone.

In the meantime, Chitwood, 59, the sheriff of conservative Volusia County since 2017, recycled comebacks he’d honed as a boy in South Philadelphia: “Ask me if I give two s---s what you think.”

So went another evening in his fight against the “scumbags,” which is what he called the group of men who’d used a laser projector in February to cast Nazi-glorifying text on the Daytona International Speedway — “Hitler was right” — and anyone who supported their in-your-face displays of antisemitism."

[...]

"“That s--- is going to create the next mass shooter,” he said, phone down now, still pinging, as he guided his county-issued powder blue Chevy Tahoe one March afternoon through a neighborhood where residents had flagged the fliers to 911. “And we’re supposed to do nothing?”

Before now, he hadn’t questioned the limits of free speech much over his four-decade career in law enforcement. The registered Independent and fan of vulgar language had twice voted for Donald Trump, thinking, “He’s pugnacious. I’m pugnacious.” During one budgetary standoff with county officials, Chitwood had called Volusia’s top manager a “lying sack of s---.”

As a police officer starting out in Philly, he’d stood watch at protests over abortion, labor rights, racial injustice — “you name it, it got protested,” he said — and considered each one an American privilege. But the rhetoric flaring up lately around here — Ron DeSantis country, NASCAR country, the “Redneck Riviera,” he joked — was more extreme than anything he’d seen."

^^^ We, as a country, need to come down on these motherfucking scumbags in every way possible. This shit should never be allowed to fly.
 

Jaskalas

Lifer
Jun 23, 2004
33,381
7,444
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^^^ We, as a country, need to come down on these motherfucking scumbags in every way possible. This shit should never be allowed to fly.
They want to come down on us. Makes perfect sense to strike first rather than wait around until they strike.
I suspect you mean legally in our case. Which, it should obviously be a crime to harass the police like that.
Don't know how illegal the Nazi symbols are, given their apparent prominence I'd guess not.....

How do a people go about harassing Nazis?
Do not employ them, do not do business with them?
Someone will pick them up, it'll be diverted into a larger Red VS Blue issue. Make no mistake, Republicans will back their boys.
Then what?

I am at a loss for a civil way forward. Especially when they do not seek one.