This story is part of an ongoing project with KQED in San Francisco and other NPR stations to chronicle the extent of extremism in California. There will be future reporting throughout the state published by the various newsrooms in the coming months.
Police suspect that former Chula Vista resident Robert Wilson could be responsible for an incident that shocked the public on several continents in February, when an antisemitic message was displayed on the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
Wilson is a public figure of the Goyim Defense League, an American neo-Nazi hate group that spreads antisemitic messages online, with flyer distributions and through street demonstrations. GDL members participated in at least 450 antisemitic campaigns across 42 states last year, according to the Anti-Defamation League, and are connected to 11 arrests or criminal cases nationwide.
The 41-year-old Wilson, who is originally from Canada, was supposed to stand trial in San Diego County for allegedly assaulting his next-door neighbor while yelling homophobic slurs in late 2021. inewsource reported in February that Wilson escaped prosecution and fled to Poland last year, where he has continued to spread white supremacist messages.
In September, a social media image went viral showing Wilson standing outside the Auschwitz Memorial in Poland while holding a sign with an antisemitic statement.
Antisemitic rhetoric and hate incidents are on the rise across the U.S. and in other countries. In the Netherlands, laser displays featuring white supremacist messages started appearing on buildings a few months ago. One of the first incidents occurred during a nationally televised New Years’ Eve celebration, when the text “White Lives Matter” was projected on the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam, along with antisemitic language.
On Feb. 6, blue lasers were used to display a message on the house in Amsterdam where thirteen-year-old Anne Frank chronicled her experience during the Holocaust. The antisemitic text, appearing on the building in Dutch and English, stated that Frank was the “inventor of the ballpoint pen.” The message referenced a false conspiracy theory that alleges Frank’s diary was a forgery, claiming it was written with a ballpoint pen, which was not common in Europe until after World War II.
Days later, a video of the incident appeared in a Telegram group that included members of the Goyim Defense League.
The Anne Frank House organization, which runs a museum on the property, said at the time that they “learned of this with shock and revulsion.”
“With the projection and the video the perpetrators are attacking the authenticity of Anne Frank’s diary and inciting hatred,” the organization said in a statement. “It is an antisemitic and racist film. We are acutely aware of what this means for the Jewish community and for the city of Amsterdam as a whole.”
It didn’t take long for citizen sleuths to start digging for possible perpetrators. A research group known as Capitol Terrorists Exposers, which uses digital forensic techniques to track down right-wing extremists, unearthed what they believe to be an original video of the incident, which was posted by “Aryan Bacon” — the name Robert Wilson uses online. The video also includes footage from what appears to be a road trip to Amsterdam.
The founder of Capitol Terrorists Exposers said she used videos posted to Wilson’s social media channels to trace the path she believes he took from Poland through Germany to Amsterdam shortly before the incident. One video features a person believed to be Wilson looking at magazines inside a German gas station the day before the Anne Frank House message was displayed.
Read the full article on inewsource.org.
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