Staff Reports
Gainesville is under a state of emergency ahead of a Thursday speech from white nationalist Richard Spencer and U.S. Rep. Ted Yoho has a message for his constituents.
Urging them not to attend Spencer’s speech on the University of Florida campus, Yoho drew parallels between Spencer and leftist activist group Antifa, which will be on hand to protest the event.
“I refuse to be anywhere near this event because Richard Spencer and Antifa’s viewpoints are both morally repugnant. I choose not to offer either of them an audience,” Yoho wrote.
Yoho depicted Spencer and Antifa as two sides of the same coin in his lengthy press release, with Spencer’s support of “ethnic nationalism, racial division and white supremacy” counterpointed by “Antifa, a so-called ‘anti-fascist’ group comprised of radical Marxists and anarchists.”
“Hate groups and groups that promote violence and anarchy have no place in our society. They simply have a self-serving agenda and feed off mob-like participation and divisiveness,” Yoho asserted.
While Yoho urges peaceful assembly from the groups descending upon Gainesville, he adds that, should there be a lapse into violence, he “will press state and federal prosecutors to bring charges against malefactors to the fullest extent permitted by law.”
University of Florida officials said it was the violence in Virginia that led them to reject a request from Spencer and his National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think tank, to allow him to speak in September. After they threatened to sue, school officials said they would try to accommodate Spencer if he renewed his request for a different date.
University of Florida President Kent Fuchs earlier this month asked students to stay away from the campus event. He wrote in an email that Spencer and his group seek only “to provoke a reaction.”
— Material from the Associated Press was used in this post.
