NEO-NAZI SPEECH INTERRUPTED AT SACRAMENTO CITY COUNCIL

For the past month, Sacramento’s City Council meeting and locals attending their meetings have been antagonized and berated with antisemitic ramblings. Neo-Nazi and failed Vallejo school board candidate Ryan Messano, 43 of Vallejo, has come to meeting after meeting to spout conspiratorial nonsense about Jewish people.  On May 16^th while headed back to his seat, Messano told a local who vocally opposed his Neo Nazi rhetoric that he “would smash” them. Several locals got loudly upset and the mayor had him removed from chambers. 

After he was led out, Messano took to social media to beg his followers for support at the next week’s city council meeting. On May 23^rd he brought an entourage. Four men showed up to support Messano, one of them being neo-Nazi and Proud Boy affiliate Jeffery Perrine, known for shouting about wanting to smash immigrants heads into the ground in Portland. Perrine, like Messano, lost his own local election recently. Another Messano supporter was an unidentified man in a “Goyim Defense League”(GDL) shirt—a neo nazi propaganda outfit that LCRW has covered before. Recently residents throughout the Central Valley and even into the foothills have reported finding Nazi propaganda attributed to the GDL littering neighborhoods and even people’s private properties. 

Activists and other community members were prepared for Messano’s antics on the 23rd. When Messano’s name was called to comment, his path was blocked by activists holding a banner and his time to speak was taken up and drowned out by chants. Messano and his crew of Neo-Nazis continued to yell and argue with locals and activists until the mayor had the room cleared and police separated the groups.

Messano has attended every Sacramento City Council meeting since April 18^th. At every one he follows a carefully-constructed playbook. He begins with a pointless quote then moves into building a conspiracy at the podium. On April 18th, it was about how COVID was used to collapse the economy.

“This is why you people got kicked out of 109 countries”he said at the culmination of the rant. Then Messano directed his ire at mayor Steinberg.

“You jews, this is the game you play” he said before being shouted down.

Messano was referencing a neo-Nazi conspiracy theory that claims Jewish people have been “kicked out” of every country they have migrated to. At the meeting on May 16^th  he claimed that white people are discriminated against and that the term “white supremacist” is a slur against white people, ending his ramble with “antisemitism used to mean you hate the Jews. Now it means you are hated by Jewish bankers”

The 23^rd was far from the first time Messano was kicked out of a public meeting. In April of 2018 he was dragged out of a Vallejo City Council meeting by police after making homophobic remarks and calling the locals in attendance “communists.” the same thing happened in 2022.

Messano’s homophobia likewise is well known. He attended Don Grundman’s 2019 “straight pride” event in Modesto, where he lied to a reporter, saying “twenty years ago, in America, homosexuality was illegal.”