The Jewish Outreach Chairman for the campaign of former Rep. Ron DeSantis, the Republican nominee for governor in Florida, was identified palling around with members of CRTV host Gavin McInnes’ often-violent “Proud Boys” hate group. Last Friday, DeSantis booster Corey Breier joined an angry mob at a campaign event featuring House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, ThinkProgress reports. In addition to disparaging Muslims and immigrants, Proud Boys founder McInnes has a history providing a platform for anti-Semites.
Last week, an outraged crowd of Republicans created a scene at a Democratic campaign headquarters in South Florida that law enforcement found so unruly that it locked down the building. Nelson Diaz, county chairman of the Miami-Dade Republican Party, was filmed alongside Proud Boys at that contentious demonstration. ThinkProgress’ latest reporting also identifies Corey Breier, who works as DeSantis’ Miami-Dade County Jewish Outreach Chairman, at the demonstration. From ThinkPogress’ Frank Dale:
[A]n employee and “dear friend” of former Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), the GOP’s gubernatorial nominee, has become the latest Florida Republican to be identified as part of the Proud Boys’ rally.
Corey Breier is DeSantis’ Miami-Dade County Jewish Outreach Chairman, a member of the Executive Committee of Florida’s Republican Party, and the Vice Chairman of Miami-Dade County’s Republican Party.
Breier also attended other gatherings of the Florida Proud Boys last week, based on images posted to social media.
The fact that Breier works as DeSantis’ link to the Jewish community stands in stark contrast to McInnes’ prior remarks about Jewish people and his willingness to provide wildly anti-Semitic people a platform before large audiences.
In 2017, McInnes filmed a video in Israel in which he drunkenly proclaimed that he was “becoming anti-Semitic” and iterated remarks that appear to be in support of Holocaust revisionist and anti-Semitism, earning the praise of former KKK Grand Wizard and Republican politician David Duke and white nationalist figurehead Richard Spencer. When he received blowback for the video, he filmed another that he advertised on Twitter by posting the headline, “10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT THE GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING JEWS!”
Aside from those remarks, McInnes has largely made public efforts to refute claims that he is anti-Semitic, although he has not applied that same standard to those who he has placed in his orbit.
On his radio show at Compound Media, McInnes has hosted notorious anti-Semites including Emily Youcis, Christopher Cantwell, David Duke, Richard Spencer, and Tim “Baked Alaska” Gionet on his show at Compound Media. Additionally, a number of anti-Semitic white nationalists have been identified within the Proud Boys since the group’s formation, including Jason Kessler, the white nationalist who organized the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where, on the eve of the rally, participants chanted, “Jews will not replace us” during a torch-lit march on the University of Virginia campus.
McInnes’ speaking engagement at the Metropolitan Republican Club in New York City, which made headlines for the violence in the streets that transpired afterward, attracted members of the skinhead gangs 211 Bootboys and Battalion 49.
