A Californian woman who wore a Swastika armband may face hate crime charges after she hurled anti-Semitic insults at and brawled with an elderly man who asked her to remove her Nazi paraphernalia.
The woman was walking around a community centre in Orange County, California on 7 March when she was confronted by an 81-year-old reportedly Jewish man. According to The Los Angeles Times, the man asked the woman to remove her armband, and she responded with anti-Semitic insults.
The elderly man tried to remove her armband, which started a fight between the two.
After police responded to the incident, the district attorney's office recommended the woman be charged with criminal threats, offensive words used to provoke a reaction, and a hate crime enhancement.
Under US law, speech is protected, though there are exceptions. "Fighting words" - words intended to provoke a violent response - are not protected speech. Though the law is not explicit in what words counts as "fighting words," those charges are often reserved for the most offensive insults or insinuations, and rely on the context of an incident.
The US Supreme Court defined fighting words in the 1942 case Chaplinsky v New Hampshire as those “by their very utterance, inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.”
The Anti-Defamation League tweeted a photo of the woman, which showed her dressed in all black and sporting a Nazi Swastika armband. The organisation said the woman was dressed similarly to an "SS officer" - Adolf Hitler's elite Nazi guards who were tasked with carrying out his genocidal "Final Solution."
“We demand that Laguna Woods leaders speak out against this outrageous act of Jew-hatred and condemn acts like this which can and do inspire further incidents of antisemitism and bigotry of all kinds,” Peter Levi, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement on Friday
The incident is the latest in a string of anti-Semitic incidents in Orange County. Last month, anti-Semitic fliers were found hanging in Huntington Beach, Newport Beach and Cypress.
According to the county's Human Relations Commission, hate crimes increased by 35 per cent in the region in 2020, which accounts for the largest annual increase in those crimes in a decade.
Mayor Carol Moore of Laguna Woods issued a statement condemning the woman.
“The city of Laguna Woods stands firmly against antisemitism, bigotry and hate in all its forms, fully and without exception,” she said in a statement. “The conduct alleged in the disturbance is abhorrent, inexcusable, and antithetical to the character and values of our community."
