Three days before the Aug. 20 “America First!” rally in Laguna Beach, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) prepped the police department on the unsavory alt-right characters it’d bring out of the fap factory. Peter S. Levi, ADL Regional Director for OC and Long Beach, provided a copy of its Center on Extremism study on the event to the police chiefs of Laguna Beach and Huntington Beach as well as the OC Intelligence and Assessment Center. Despite Laguna Beach Mayor Toni Iseman, a Jewish woman, being ridiculed with anti-Semitic memes circulating online beforehand, including by the event organizer, the ADL soft-balled Johnny Benitez and Vincent James Foxx, two OC alt-right losers who were scheduled speakers.
The report obtained by the Weekly starts out simple enough by noting that Benitez, whose real name is Juan Cadavid, previously organized monthly vigils at Laguna Beach three times, ostensibly to honor “the victims of illegal aliens.” The lead researcher also pointed out that Cadavid used the July gathering to promote an Aug. 5 “Make Men Great Again” event at Old World in Huntington Beach which drew a measly 50 people instead of the anticipated 700 listed on the permit.
But then, the ADL gave OC’s alt-losers a pass on anti-Semitism and white nationalism to law enforcement. Vincent James Foxx, the OC man behind The Red Elephants, is described as a person who uses his social media platform to interview white supremacists like “Unite the Right” organizer Jason Kessler and Identity Evropa’s woman-punching Nathan Domingo, but that’s about it. “While he has written articles and posted videos agreeing with viewpoints expressed by those in the alt right, he himself has not expressed white supremacist views,” the report somehow claims.
Of all groups, the ADL missed an opportunity to peg Foxx with anti-Semitism. There’s no mention of comments Foxx left on a now deleted Aug. 8 Cadavid livestream (we kept the receipts) where he disregarded the horrors of the Holocaust writing, “no residue of cyanide was found on ANY of the walls of any of the ALLEGED gas chambers” and that “(((Hollywood)))” was “controlled by the Jews.”
Nothing appears, either, regarding Foxx’s whitewashing of “1488,” a numeric symbol the ADL itself notes as white supremacist. And how did the lead researcher (whose name we’ll spare) miss Foxx’s promotion of the explicitly white supremacist Charlottesville rally on The Red Elephants site a month before?
And then there’s Cadavid, who desperately trolls the ADL on social media for attention. The Laguna Beach report shows they’ve studied him quietly, and, probably much to Juanito’s chagrin, took his political spin at face value. “Benitez self-identifies as part of the alt right, but doesn’t actually subscribe to the alt-right’s white supremacist ideology and had previously identified with the OC Proud Boys,” it reads. The ADL points out Cadavid’s use of several pseudonyms and his unceremonious exit from the Proud Boys, but still spun in his favor.
“The core of Benitez’ ideology is focused on identity politics-politics that reject mainstream conservatism in favor of those that embrace the promotion of whites,” the report reads. “He explicitly notes that he is not actively working against other races, but rather is focused on taking care of his own people. Among his concerns: low fertility rates among white people and immigration to the US (which he believes will result in whites becoming a minority).”
Imagine the disappointment Cadavid must feel in the ADL’s size-up!
It’s no match, though, for how disappointing the hate watch group’s report actually is. If the ADL had only read the Weekly more in compiling their findings, they would’ve learned that weeks before the rally OC GOP Chairman Fred Whitaker denounced Cadavid for anti-Semitic comments made in the aforementioned deleted Facebook video. The ADL didn’t even bother with Cadavid’s generous use of triple brackets to identify Jewish people online, an (((echo))) that, again, the ADL itself notes as a hate symbol. Hell, Cadavid even co-organized a cancelled Huntington Beach book burning event for the weekend before the August 20 vigil. Not fashy enough yet, ADL?
To the group’s credit, they did note that the Cadavid-organized Laguna Beach vigils attracted right-wing extremist groups like the Three Percenters, Proud Boys, Hammerskin neo-Nazis and the Rise Above Movement (formerly DIY Division). The ADL provided a paragraph description for each of them before profiling half-a-dozen people who publicly RSVP’d for the event on Facebook, including OC Fraternal Order of Alt-Knight’s Dennis Luke, who later challenged Cadavid to an MMA fight after the vigil when the ranks of the Alt-Right fractured. Alt-Knight leader Kyle Chapman (aka Based Stickman) followed by publicly disavowing Cadavid from the “Patriot Movement.”
The tensions caused Cadavid to cancel a planned Laguna Beach vigil in September. The ADL patted itself on the back that month for its law enforcement collaboration. Laguna Beach responded to the largely peaceful August counterprotest by passing an emergency ban on items that can be used as weapons at future political rallies. A new gathering is set in the city for Oct. 22 when the focus will be on Benghazi instead of immigrants—because Benghazi is SUCH a hot topic right now. Given how discredited Cadavid is these days, though, expect a smaller turn out that the Aug. 20 Alt-Right sandbox pictured above.
Stay classy, ADL!
Gabriel San Román is from Anacrime. He’s a journalist, subversive historian and the tallest Mexican in OC. He also once stood falsely accused of writing articles on Turkish politics in exchange for free food from DönerG’s!