Anti-vaxxers with ties to white supremacists are using Nazi imagery (specifically a swastika) to promote their upcoming rally targeting Amoeba Music in Hollywood. On Saturday, the zealots plan on rallying in front of the independent record store’s place of business in opposition to their adherence to the vaccine mandate. The hateful COVID denialists claim Amoeba is “bending over to tyranny.” The rally was originally planned for last weekend, but was cancelled and rescheduled for undisclosed reasons. There is no verbiage on the flyer or in the captions of these images to give context to the Nazi swastika edited onto the image, but anti-vaxxers are known to constantly push the deeply anti-Semitic comparison of vaccine mandates to Nazism and the Holocaust. The Auschwitz Museum has gone on record to speak out against this comparison made by anti-vaxxers around the nation.
This fits a trend of rising Nazism and anti-Semitism at Los Angeles anti-vaxxer rallies. In the last few months of reporting at these rallies, I have witnessed Holocaust denial, Holocaust minimizing, verbal support for Hitler, and chants of “sieg heil.” This particular band of white supremacist-aligned anti-vaxxers have taken things well beyond mere “irony.”
This same clique of anti-vaxxers also participated in a Proud Boys rally headlined by Holocaust supporting Proud Boys leader Tiny Toese. Jairo Rodriguez, the violent organizer of this event, gave a statement last weekend after his similarly bigoted anti-vaxxer rally targeting UCLA was shut down by black bloc counter protesters. As he speaks to the camera, behind him there is a swastika made out of vaccines with an anti-Semitic slur written on it.
Jairo previously participated in the racist anti-vaxxer attack on Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles in Anaheim, in which he yelled at Black women that they were slaves for wearing masks. This rally was also shut down, this time; by security working the restaurant.
The rising clashes between a gang of bigoted harassers and the community protecting itself show us that anti-vaxxers are not going anywhere anytime soon. Last summer, they targeted bars and restaurants with a spree of violent rallies in which bystanders and journalists, myself included, were viciously assaulted. They even targeted a breast cancer clinic over its policy requiring masks. They ended up punching a breast cancer patient right in her cancer scars.
With these groups showing open bigotry and violence, it’s no wonder the community is starting to stand up against them.