CALABASAS, Calif. (KTLA) - A man who posted swastikas and racist language on the window of his Calabasas condominium shouted at reporters and told them to “call the White House,” showed video taken Wednesday morning.
Authorities were alerted to the hateful messages Tuesday and unsuccessfully attempted to make contact with the Park Sorrento Condominiums resident, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department told KTLA.
The somewhat incoherent messages were still on the window when reporters arrived Wednesday and attempted to talk to the resident of the second-story condo.
Eventually, a man with a shaved head and a stack of papers came outside and began shouting at reporters below, KTLA video showed.
“Take this, read it. Call the White House,” he said as he tossed the papers down to the ground.
The papers restated many of the same messages posted on the sliding glass door. Some of the statements appeared to target President Donald Trump and Christians.
One message on the condo's door stated, "I am Jewish," and used the phrase "sh--hole country," an apparent reference to Trump's language during a January 2018 closed-door meeting about immigration in which he referred derogatorily to El Salvador, Haiti and African nations.
Authorities said they could not force the man to take down the messages since they were posted in his private residence.
Calabasas Mayor Alicia Weintraub said the city "will do everything we can to get it down."
“This type of material and language has no place in our community," she said. "I know we all feel sick that someone can so freely put up such hateful language in our community."
Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, told the Los Angeles Times that the normalization of Nazi symbols, along with "coarse" social media, were contributing to an increase in hate crimes.
“We have [the] mainstreaming of anti-Semitism,” Levin told the Times. “When society becomes polarized and fragmented and trust in communal institutions declines, the kind of universal recipient of that hate — or at least the first exit on that freeway — is anti-Semitism.”
