Jon Minadeo II, the North Bay’s most notorious neo-Nazi, has resurfaced in Petaluma after several years living out of state, trailed by a federal lawsuit accusing him and his associates of violent hate crimes.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that monitors extremist groups, has sued Minadeo, his organization known as the Goyim Defense League and five others on behalf of Deago Buck, a biracial man who says he was assaulted during a multi-day neo-Nazi rally in downtown Nashville in July 2024.
Minadeo, who grew up in Marin and Sonoma counties, has spent years promoting antisemitic propaganda through the Goyim Defense League — a loose network the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as one of the country’s most prolific distributors of hate literature.
He was previously arrested in Poland for demonstrating outside the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, sentenced to 30 days in a Florida jail on a littering charge after throwing antisemitic flyers onto people’s properties, and was banned from Bibb County, Georgia, after a disturbance at a synagogue.
Authorities in California have said they generally lack legal grounds to prosecute Minadeo for his hate speech activities, which are largely protected under the First Amendment.
The law center’s suit, filed in mid-June in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, may be the strongest challenge yet to the online and in-person operations Minadeo has built to spread antisemitic and racist messages.
“In holding them accountable for what they did in Nashville, we would love to be able to find a way to curtail their efforts in flyering and in providing an online platform,” said Scott McCoy, the law center’s lead attorney on the case.
The lawyer representing Minadeo and other defendants disputed the allegations and argued that the plaintiff was the aggressor.
“The lawsuit is brought by Deago Buck, who physically attacked one of my clients and started a fight when they were holding a peaceful march,” said Drew Justice, who is based in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. “Mr. Buck’s lawsuit admits that he struck first, but he claims that my clients somehow forced him, through their speech, ‘instinctively’ to commit the attack. The truth is that he is a human being, with free will, and that no one forced him to do anything.”
The other defendants are identified as Ryan Scott McCann of Ontario, Canada; Nicholas Alan Bysheim of Calvert County, Maryland; Louie Dunn of Oklahoma County, Oklahoma; Colby Alexander Franks of Hardin County, Tennessee; and Zane Fenton Morris of Volusia County, Florida. They are accused of assault, battery, malicious harassment and violations of the Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction-era civil rights law.
The Goyim Defense League produces and distributes antisemitic flyers — printed with its logo and slogans — that are available for download on its website.
“They’re responsible for a very large portion of the antisemitic flyers distributed around the country,” McCoy said. “So if I’m a neo-Nazi living in Kansas City, say, I can go to the Goyim Defense League site, and I can print out the flyers ready-made.”
Minadeo, under the Goyim TV banner, also hosts live online video streams filled with antisemitic and racist slurs, and sells merchandise featuring hate slogans.
Violence in Nashville
The law center’s suit describes a 10-day gathering in Nashville in July 2024 in which about 25 Goyim Defense League members allegedly spent days harassing residents, waving swastika flags, shouting racial slurs and intimidating people in public spaces.
According to the lawsuit, the group’s campaign began in earnest July 13, 2024, when more than a dozen members surrounded a 20-year-old Jewish man in a downtown parking lot. They allegedly harassed and provoked him for about 10 minutes, while Minadeo prevented him from getting into his friend’s vehicle. McCann, “who outweighed the young man by approximately 100 pounds,” struck him in the face and neck with his elbow, kicked him while he was on the ground, then body-slammed him against the truck — as Minadeo allegedly directed, “Here we go.”
Goyim Defense League members photographed and livestreamed much of the rally.
The next day, the complaint says, the group marched through downtown Nashville in clusters, some chanting “Sieg Heil” and performing the Nazi salute. A group of men allegedly confronted four Black boys, ages 8 to 11, who were drumming for tips on the street, shouting racial slurs until police intervened.
Later that day, one of the men allegedly hurled a racial slur at 19-year-old restaurant worker Deago Buck, who struck the man in response before being attacked by several others. The lawsuit says Minadeo jumped on Buck’s back, put him in a chokehold and gouged at his eyes while another man beat him with a flagpole bearing a swastika. Buck, who is biracial, escaped by biting Minadeo and running into traffic, according to the complaint.
“I think he still has some trauma over it,” McCoy said of his client. “He has not gone back downtown in Nashville since.”
The law center says the group’s harassment continued days later, when about a dozen members disrupted a Nashville Metropolitan Council meeting by shouting antisemitic insults and harassing council members and attendees. That included a rabbi who was signing up for public comment; the intruders allegedly provoked the faith leader with slurs before a government official stepped in. Police removed them from the chamber.
After the 10-day rally, the complaint says, followers posted threatening messages on Minadeo’s website — including one calling for deadly violence and another sharing the Davidson County district attorney’s office phone number with a message suggesting vigilante action.
McCoy said the lawsuit is based partly on the Ku Klux Klan Act, which allows victims to seek damages for racially or religiously motivated conspiracies that deprive them of their civil rights.
“You have to show their motivation is animus based on a person’s race or other protected characteristics,” McCoy said. “If we try this case by jury, we’ll spend a lot of time outlining their beliefs.”
One defendant, McCann of Canada, has already been convicted of the assaults on the young Jewish man and Buck described in the lawsuit and is serving a three-year prison sentence. Another Goyim Defense League member was convicted of making the interstate threats against the district attorney.
According to the lawsuit, at least a dozen people affiliated with the group have been arrested or convicted in connection with Goyim Defense League activities in the last five years. At least two shootings, with three victims — including one at a Nashville high school — have been tied to antisemitic propaganda distributed by the group, according to the law center.
A case-management conference in the civil case is scheduled for Dec. 15.
Minadeo moved to Florida more than three years ago and later lived in Greene County, Missouri, according to the law center’s complaint. But at least two people who know him told The Press Democrat they have seen him in recent weeks around Petaluma. They asked not to be identified for fear of being targeted by his followers.
It’s unclear whether Minadeo has permanently returned to Sonoma County or is visiting.