The Goyim Defense League (GDL) spreads virulent antisemitic and racist harassment through stunts that it characterizes as pranks. Nevertheless, its members have sometimes faced civil and criminal charges in the United States and Europe related to their targeting of religious, ethnic and sexual minorities.
GDL founder Jon Minadeo II, who also uses the pseudonym “Handsome Truth” online, has said his goal for the group is “to wake up everyone to the Jews and kick these Jews out of the country.” The group’s antisemitic activism has taken a variety of forms. GDL activists have appeared at public meetings to spew bigoted rhetoric, held signs promoting antisemitism outside a concentration camp, harassed non-white children on video chat apps, and engaged in assault. Minadeo and other GDL activists often record acts of extreme bigotry to create propaganda for the video livestreaming site GoyimTV.
Extremist File
Key Takeaways
- Minadeo launched GDL in 2018, when he and other activists used an app that allowed users to request personalized video messages from celebrities to create content with coded antisemitic references. He launched GoyimTV, the group’s livestreaming site, in 2020.
- While GoyimTV constitutes the heart of GDL’s operations, much of its content originated on other livestreaming sites, a Southern Poverty Law Center investigation found. GDL leaders and members have also shared videos of themselves using the video chat apps Omegle and Monkey to harass Black, Brown, Asian and Jewish people, or anyone perceived as non-white, including minors.
- During the COVID-19 pandemic, GDL was one of the more prominent white supremacist groups to embrace “zoombombing,” in which activists would call into public or semi-public meetings on Zoom or similar apps with the purpose of disrupting them. The group has also targeted religious groups and local municipal meetings throughout the country using similar disruptive tactics since these gatherings have moved back to being in-person.
- GDL collaborates with a range of white supremacist groups, including Blood Tribe, a neo-Nazi group founded by Chris Pohlhaus. Along with Pohlhaus, Minadeo and other GDL activists marched with swastika flags through Orlando, Florida, in fall 2023. The event marked one of the largest demonstrations using overt neo-Nazi imagery since the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
- Multiple members of GDL have faced criminal and civil charges for efforts to terrorize the city of Nashville, Tennessee, throughout 2024. The SPLC is currently representing multiple plaintiffs that GDL targeted with violence, intimidation and hate during rallies there.
Image at top: Members of the Goyim Defense League march in September 2023 during a rally outside Orlando, Florida. (Credit: David Decker)