America is a free country, and you can be an obnoxious Nazi hater on a soapbox to your heart’s content, as long as it’s just talk.
A gang of these nasties were demonstrating near an Orlando, Florida, shopping plaza on Saturday, January 29, 2022, when a Jewish college student stopped by and gave them a piece of his mind, which he had as much right to do as they have a right to demonstrate.
It started when he stopped his car, got out, and began video recording them. One of them responded by spitting on him. He then “pushed an older demonstrator to the ground,” according to an Orlando newspaper. The Nazis then “punched, kicked and pepper-sprayed him” and smashed his phone. Days later, three of them were arrested (see mugshots below). See story here.
Among those charged is Burt Colucci (photo, left), 45, the “national commander” of the Nationalist Socialist Movement, which ABC News describes as “one of [America’s] largest neo-Nazi groups” (profile here), although it appears to have dwindled to about 100 members (link below).
Colucci is a piece of work. In April 2021, he was arrested in Arizona “for pointing a loaded handgun at a Black man and threatening to kill him and his friends,” but after that incident, a “judge set Colucci’s bond at $7,500 on Tuesday and permitted him to travel to his home state of Florida” (see that story here).
Evidently, he hasn’t bailed out on this latest charge, and is still in jail in Florida, which is the second-best place for him. Yes, I know about bail, pre-trial release, and innocent-until-proven guilty in a court of law; but notwithstanding all of that, if they take the key to his cell in a boat halfway to Cuba and drop it overboard, that’s okay with me.
Maybe someday someone he points a gun at will “stand his ground” and he’ll earn a trip to the best place for people like him. That’s okay with me, too. But I guess we ought to respect the rule of law and give him a fair trial while he’s still around.
