By Maria Tsvetkova<\/p>\n
NEW YORK, March 5 (Reuters) \u2013 A Florida university said on Thursday law enforcement is investigating a Miami Herald report that prominent members of the local Republican Party and conservative student leaders exchanged racist, antisemitic and homophobic messages in an \u200bonline group chat.<\/p>\n
The Herald reported on Wednesday that leaked logs of a WhatsApp group \u200cchat that began in the autumn showed participants included Republicans such as Abel Carvajal, secretary of Miami-Dade County\u2019s Republican Party, and student leaders of Florida International University\u2019s Turning Point USA chapter, a conservative youth group founded by slain activist Charlie Kirk.<\/p>\n
Florida International University President Jeanette Nunez said in a statement on Thursday that\u00a0the university \u201cdoes not \u200cand will \u200bnot tolerate violence, hate, discrimination, harassment, racism or antisemitism.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said \u2060the allegations are being investigated by \u2060the Miami university\u2019s police department with local, state and federal law enforcement. FIU is a state-funded university known for its engineering and business programs.<\/p>\n
One participant in the exchanges, William Bejerano, posted a lengthy message proposing dozens of acts of extreme violence against Black people, \u200bwhom he described using a racial slur, including beheading and crucifixion, the Herald reported.<\/p>\n
The newspaper said Bejerano hung up when he was reached by a reporter seeking comment. He did not \u2060immediately reply to a message from Reuters sent over \u2060social media.<\/p>\n
Dariel Gonzalez, who was at the time recruitment chair of the \u200bCollege Republicans, used a slur to refer to Jewish people and said it was fine to have \u200bsex with Jews. \u201cJust don\u2019t marry them and procreate,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
The group chat was \u200cstarted for conservative students by Carvajal, who participated occasionally and deleted some messages, according to the newspaper.<\/p>\n
Carvajal told the Herald he did not see the racist messages when they were posted and was shocked when he read them. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment from \u2060Reuters.<\/p>\n
Kevin Cooper, the chair of the Republican Party of Miami-Dade County, condemned the group chat in a statement on Thursday and said the party\u2019s board had started proceedings to remove Carvajal.<\/p>\n
Late last year, \u2060three controversies involving leaked text \u200cmessages from private online group chats rocked U.S. political circles, revealing \u2060racist, antisemitic and violent statements from figures across the ideological spectrum. Right-wing \u200bU.S. think \u200ctank the Heritage Foundation saw more than a dozen staff leave \u200bin December \u2060amid allegations from former supporters that it aligned itself with those accused of antisemitism.<\/p>\n
Researchers say that participants in group chats can feel a false sense of privacy and safety despite the fact that the messages form a permanent record and can be leaked. WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta Platforms, actively promotes its privacy protections and end-to-end encryption.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova in New York; Editing by Donna \u200bBryson and Cynthia Osterman)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Maria Tsvetkova NEW YORK, March 5 (Reuters) \u2013 A Florida university said on Thursday law enforcement is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-180478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}