Florida Jewish Republican State Rep. targeted with Antisemitic threats as culture war heats up

Florida State representative Randy Fine is no stranger to controversy. In May of 2021, Fine became the target of the Florida chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations’ after he made public criticism of Hamas terror attacks.

Lately, Fine has been a highly visible presence as Republican legislators successfully passed a high-profile “Parental Rights in Education bill” which prohibits public school educators from providing sexual education instruction to children from kindergarten to grade 3. That bill was faced overwhelmingly negative media coverage, as the corporate press ubiquitously adopted bill opponent’s “Don’t Say Gay” slogan.

Fine has said that in the next legislative session he intends to submit legislation that would criminalize providing sex transition treatments to children. Texas has already passed legislation which defines such treatments as criminal acts of child abuse. Fine has also played a role in efforts to prohibit Florida schools from teaching materials based on Critical Race Theory.

These efforts have not gone unnoticed, leaving Fine the target of national level corporate media attacks, and even hateful letters.

A typewritten letter –viewed by this author– sent through U.S. mail and postmarked from San Diego on March 16^th, shows the degree of anger Fine has faced. The letter’s writer identifies as homosexual and claims to be an employee of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), before threatening to arrange for Fine, his staff and family members to be audited amid a torrent of antisemitic abuse.

“I am going to make sure all fines, penalties, and interest are doubled or tripled. Payback is gonna be fun. So [derogatory word for Jews] fatso, keep up with the [derogatory word for homosexuals] bills and I’ll keep up with the [derogatory word for homosexuals] audits. I swear I will take as much of YOUR’s and your staff’s and your [derogatory word for Jews] relatives’ MONEY as I possibly can.”

The letter also notes it was “too bad” that Fine’s “ancestors” were not killed in the Holocaust and calls for Tel Aviv, Israel to be “nuked.”

Fine is no stranger to being threatened for his stances. In September of 2021, a 21-year old Kentucky resident and participant in BLM protests was arrested after threatening on Instagram to “eat [Fine’s] family alive.” At the time of that incident the Florida Department of Law Enforcement noted in an arrest affidavit that Fine gets “dozens to hundreds of comments from ‘Islamic extremists who do not like his position as a Republican Jew.” Fine said he received “death threats all the time.”

This most recent harassment is unlikely to result in police investigation given that it does not actually threaten personal violence, so it may never be clear whether Fine’s harasser is in fact an employee of the powerful federal agency.

Certainly, politics is not bean bag, and no party’s supporters have a monopoly on awful behavior. But the Biden Administration has repeatedly labelled opponents of Critical Race Theory, inappropriate sexual education for children, and school Covid policies as domestic terrorists, including describing them as holding “extremist” beliefs in counterterrorism strategy documents and law enforcement bulletins.

The administration has had preciously little to say about the impact of their own rhetoric on the national discourse.  And as Florida Republicans continue to rack up legislative successes, we can anticipate the tone of criticism to only get worse.