Richard Ciullo, is a 51 year old convicted felon from Toms River, New Jersey. He is also a vile antisemite, who is behind the antisemitic social media page "Rise Up Ocean County" (RUOC) on Facebook.
Ocean County is located along the Jersey Shore, and is a home to one of the largest Orthodox Jewish communities in America.
Since its inception, the focus of the RUOC page has been on spreading Jew hatred with claims that Jews are attempting to take over New Jersey.
The page's obsession with Jews is at times irrational. For example, Ciullo posted an ad from Kars4Kids where he changed the children's faces to Orthodox Jewish children. Kars4Kids is a nonprofit car donation organization with a mission is "to fund educational, developmental and recreational programs for low-income youth”.
Ciullo's RUOC page also regularly shares antisemitic tropes dating back to the Middle Ages claiming that Jews hate all Non-Jews and women.
Richard Ciullo also expresses paranoia that Jews are taking over Ocean County. Through the RUOC page, he is frequently doxing any Jew having to do with real estate transactions.
As the RUOC page following count grew to nearly 20,000, many Jewish users were complaining about it. Ciullo's answer to the accusations that the page is demonizing Jews and inciting violence was by proclaiming he was not antisemitic, but rather, anti-gentilism (a term used by neo Nazi's like David Duke).
When complaints from non-Jews started to increase, Richard Ciullo via the RUOC page claimed that people were being bribed with Jewish money.
Perhaps one of the most troubling posts on the page is video with Richard Ciullo himself narrating a Holocaust poem, appropriating it to attack Jews.
In February 2019, the Simon Wiesenthal Center drafted an ordinance calling out Rise Up Ocean County. After about a year of complaints to Facebook and New Jersey legislators from various Jewish and interfaith groups, Rise Up Ocean County was finally removed.
With the explosive rise in antisemitic content on social media, we commend Facebook for doing the right thing and removing Richard Ciullo's horrifying page off of their platform and cutting off his ability to spread his horrific conspiracy theories against Orthodox Jews. Too bad it took them so long.