After his mere presence caused a four-hour protest at UF, a man wearing a swastika armband was attacked Thursday.
Michael Dewitz, who had the Nazi symbol tied onto his jacket’s sleeve with red yarn, left Turlington Plaza at about 1:30 p.m., after UF students and faculty protested him, some yelling expletives in his face.
Dewitz, 34, stood at the corner of Northwest 13th Street and Northwest Eighth Avenue when two white men jumped out of a red pickup truck and struck him and stole his jacket and swastika armband before driving away, said Gainesville Police spokesperson Officer Ben Tobias.
Tobias said GPD is searching for the truck and the men. Dewitz suffered minor injuries but was not taken to the hospital.
Dewitz had returned to UF two days after he was first sighted on campus wearing the symbol, this time drawing a crowd of protesters. He began circling the potato statue on Turlington Plaza at about 9 a.m.
He remained for about four hours, prompting backlash from students offended and angered by the swastika. By noon, the crowd had grown about 100 people.
When some students saw his display, they stood around Dewitz with anti-Nazi signs while others resorted to yelling at the man, who stood calmly.
Marco Fonseca, a 22-year-old UF philosophy junior, held an image of Wonder Woman punching President Donald Trump, with a swastika superimposed on Trump’s face.
“I wasn’t going to give him the space to do what he was going to do,” Fonseca said.
Irene Moore, a 21-year-old UF business managment senior, joined in.
“It was either stand up or punch a Nazi,” she said. “This is the better option, legality-wise.”
As the crowd grew, University Police officers and UF officials looked on. Jaime Gresley, the director of new student family programs, handed out U Matter, We Care cards for students who might be distressed.
Dewitz, who said he supported Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, said his presence was a social experiment meant to prompt discussion.
“I am upset that (the protesters) are upset,” he said. “Because they don’t understand my intentions.”
On Tuesday, when Dewitz was first seen on campus wearing the swastika, a woman in a car screamed at him and tried to run him over, and a man told him he wanted to kill him, he said.
“I don’t wish to hurt anyone,” Dewitz said.
But Rabbi Berl Goldman, of the Lubavitch-Chabad Jewish Student and Community Center, said Dewitz went to the religious center at 8 a.m. Thursday to look for him.
On his way, Dewitz passed a student wearing a kippah, a religious head covering, and gave the student a Nazi salute, Goldman said.
Jacob Zieper, a 21-year-old UF Jewish studies senior, was on his way to minyan, morning prayers, when Dewitz yelled at him from across the street at the corner of Northwest Fifth Avenue and Northwest 20th Street.
“I know he meant it to intimidate me,” Zieper said. “So I went to shul and prayed with my friends. You can’t fight hate with hate. Hate is irrational. You just have got to drown it out with pride and love.”
Dewitz said he lost his job Wednesday after his employers told him they didn’t want to be associated with someone who wore a swastika.
Dewitz said while he understands the swastika is a hate symbol, he sympathizes with the Nazi party because, he argued, they fought communism. In an interview with WCJB TV-20 published Wednesday, Dewitz questioned if the Holocaust happened.
A protestor, who refused to give her name, told an Alligator reporter Dewitz shouldn’t be given a voice.
Goldman said although Dewitz has a right to express his free speech, others could be inspired to act with hatred toward Jewish people based on his display.
“He’s antagonistic,” Goldman said. “He’s wearing a symbol of hate and intolerance. There should be thousands of people shouting him down.”
After the incident, UF President Kent Fuchs sent an email to UF students supporting the protest, but noting UF could not ask Dewitz to leave a public space.
“While I decry and denounce all symbols of hate, the individual...was expressing his First Amendment rights and we could not legally remove him from public areas of campus,” he said.
Sid Dobrin, the chair of the UF Department of English, said he doesn’t believe the freedom of speech encompasses hate rhetoric.
“I don’t tolerate s--- like this,” said Dobrin, who is Jewish. “After I saw this crap on Facebook, I realized I had to do something about it since (Fuchs) is just sending out cards.”
Dobrin, wearing a kippah, emphasized UF has the fifth-largest Jewish student population among U.S. universities.
He mentioned that administration responded when a noose was found in a Weimer Hall classroom Jan. 12, but has yet to remove Dewitz, who he said is also spouting hate.
“By putting that symbol on, he is inherently choosing to rile people like me up,” Dobrin said. “By walking outside with that symbol, he is an aggression.”
Michal Katz (right), an administrative worker at the UF Dean’s Office, displays her Star of David tattoo while standing next to Michael Dewitz (left), who wears a swastika on his sleeve near Turlington Hall. Students surrounded Dewitz, yelling at him and holding signs in front of his face, for about four hours on Thursday.
