Flyers containing an antisemitic conspiracy theory linking the COVID-19 pandemic with several American Jews were distributed throughout Miami Beach Saturday night.
Now, Miami Beach Police say they’re investigating the flyers and increasing their presence throughout the city.
“Miami Beach PD has been made aware of an antisemitic flyer distributed overnight in residential neighborhoods. Detectives are actively investigating to determine their origin. We have increased patrols in our neighborhoods and also at our religious institutions,” Miami Beach Police tweeted Sunday.
“There is no place for hate in our community and it will not be tolerated.”
The flyer lists 14 prominent figures who work at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, pharmaceutical giants and COVID vaccine manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna, investment firms BlackRock and Vanguard and other institutions, identifying them as Jewish and, in one case, transgender.
At least one of them, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, was wrongly identified as Jewish.
Similar flyers are posted on various extremist groups’ websites and have also been distributed over the past few months in at least eight other states including Alabama, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, North Carolina, Texas and Vermont, according to local and national news outlets.
The flyers were folded inside plastic baggies and weighted down with stones or rice. A Miami Beach Police spokesman did not say where any of the ones in that city were left, but Mayor Dan Gelber said in a tweet that they appeared at “hundreds of homes in our community.”
The top of the flyer shows a Jewish star and a pentagram, a symbol commonly associated with satanism. They include a link to a white supremacist website with various Hitler speeches, conspiracy theories and other antisemitic content.
The bottom of the flyer claims “these flyers were distributed randomly and without malicious intent.”
Similar conspiracy theories date back centuries, attempting to blame Jews for various economic or health issues, while simultaneously claiming Jews control the world’s media, financial and other institutions.
“To the garbage that distributed this anti-Semitic flyer around South Florida this weekend: Your flyers DO NOT intimidate us,” Bal Harbour Mayor Gabriel Groisman tweeted Sunday. “We are a STRONG and PROUD people. There are Jews on all sides of the political spectrum, but TOGETHER we ALL rise arm-in-arm against you.”
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