Jon Minadeo Jr., a 38-year-old Petaluma man infamous within the Bay Area Jewish community, has launched an online merchandise store selling hundreds of virulently antisemitic and homophobic T-shirts and apparel in an effort to fund propaganda tours across California and beyond, or what he calls his “activism.”
Dubbed “Goyim Gear,” some of the T-shirts bear the “Happy Merchant” anti-Jewish cartoon, one calls the Holocaust a “hoax” using the Hulu video streaming website font, while another mimics “Godfather” movie art using the words, “The Jew Namer.” Others show portraits of Hitler, one celebrates the Waffen SS and one uses an anti-gay slur.
“All proceeds go to the next N.T.N.T.,” a message at the top of the webpage says, referring to what Minadeo calls the “Name the Nose Tour,” outings on which he and others drive around California shouting antisemitic slurs and conspiracy theories through a megaphone.
Minadeo, with a group known as the Goyim Defense League, went on a Name the Nose tour last summer in Southern California, driving in a white van on which antisemitic messages were scrawled such as “Jews killed Jesus” and “BLM is funded by Jews.”
They hung banners reading “Honk if you know the Jews want a race war” on a Los Angeles highway overpass, shouted conspiracy theories about Covid-19 to people wearing masks and stood outside of a Chabad center claiming that “these Jewish terrorists” were behind 9/11.
Minadeo shouted, shirtless in front of the Chabad Jewish Community Center in Marina Del Rey, “these are the people who are taking away our freedom of speech in America.” The Goyim Defense League took video of him doing so and published it on a video sharing website, which is still active.
The T-shirts are advertised as “some fresh GoyGear” and are described as “100% preshrunk” with a “classic fit.”
Minadeo is known in the Bay Area as a bombastic anti-Jewish propagandist who films his antics and posts them online. Last October, Minadeo and others scaled a fence to hang a banner above a highway in Oakland that read “Why are Jews censoring free speech?” During the summer of 2019 he posted flyers in Novato and Santa Rosa blaming Jews for 9/11, a theme running through his conspiracy theories.
Minadeo monetizes his video sharing website in part via “donations” to his Bitcoin wallet, a Zelle account and a CashApp account, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, a terrorism watchdog organization.
The domain registrar for the new merchandise store is Namecheap, a registrar and technology company founded in 2000, according to its website.
In response to a query from J., Namecheap said it was not responsible for the content on Minadeo’s site and would not be taking any action against it.
“As a service provider, we are not involved in such investigations,” the statement emailed from “Dmytro Ch.” read. “We do not serve as the arbiter of fact in this matter.”
Namecheap said to contact the “hosting provider;” however, the host name was hidden.
A webpage footer says the online store was built using “WooCommerce,” an eCommerce interface compatible with WordPress.
In an email to J. WooCommerce said its software is open-source and available to anyone, so “our options for addressing these situations are limited.”
“In effect, WooCommerce is similar to software such as Microsoft Word, in that people download and use it independently,” the email from Paul Maiorana read.
Minadeo’s website requests payment for the T-shirts and other merchandise be sent, via check, to a UPS store at a Petaluma shopping center.