Florida, home of many a Proud Boy, a hotbed for white supremacy. The rest of us can't stand silent

White supremacists and extremists don’t always wear white robes and burn crosses. They don’t necessarily meet in dingy headquarters away from civilized society They are marching on Capitol Hill.

They are flying Nazi flags over interstate overpasses in Florida. They’ve distributed anti-Semitic fliers in Miami Beach, home to a large Jewish population. They have demonstrated outside Disney World, a lighting rod for cultural wars after the company opposed a state parental rights law critics dubbed “Don’t say gay.”

Groups with names like the “White Lives Matter” network, the “Goyim Defense League” and the “New Jersey European Heritage Association” once were relegated to the dark corners of the web. More and more, they feel entitled to publicize their darkest thoughts and beliefs.

Those who have sounded the alarm about the rise of extremism in the Sunshine State have often been dismissed as hysterical liberals. Even as we learned about the Proud Boys’ close ties to Miami Republican politics, in addition to their prominent role in the Jan. 6 attacks, many state leaders remained mum. The Anti-Defamation League describes the Proud Boys as a “right-wing extremist group with a violent agenda” and “some members espouse white supremacist and anti-Semitic ideologies,” which is why it was so rattling to see them show up in force at a recent Miami-Dade School Board meeting.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article265806851.html