THE DESANTIS MOMENT:

Two of the men wear white gaiters with the acronym of their white nationalist group, National Socialist Florida, written in the typeface of German WW II propaganda posters. One of the men kneels down in the alley and takes off his backpack. He removes a commercial grade laser projector that retails for about $3,000. Smaller than a loaf of bread, compact, powerful and mobile.

Josh Nunes, the leader of the small band of white nationalist extremists, keeps a lookout for police while the other man aims the laser onto the skyscraper, careful to avoid helicopters flying overhead and possible detection. He projects a rolling ticker tape onto the building that reads, "Why are child friendly drag shows legal? @ Ron DeSantis." Nunes cranes his neck to see how it looks. [...]

Nunes and his group first tried the laser projections last year during a college football game. They projected a message onto the stadium that read, "Kanye is right about the Jews!" The line was a nod to recent anti-Semitic rants by the artist and business mogul Ye, formerly known as Kanye West. On that night Nunes says he brought along the leader of another small neo-Nazi group in Florida to observe and "to see if it was worth picking up."

Nunes and his group regularly coordinate with other far-right groups, forming what the advocacy organization Anti-Defamation League calls an unprecedented level of coordination among white nationalist groups in Florida.

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