Antisemitic Trope Surfaces In Fairfax Council Member's Facebook Group

FAIRFAX CITY, VA — Fairfax City Councilmember So Lim removed an antisemitic post that had appeared on the City of Fairfax Community Facebook group Tuesday morning. The private group was launched in March 2020 for residents to share news and resources during the pandemic.

The post originally appeared on the group page around 8 a.m. The text of the post sought to connect the debate going on about changing street names in the Mosby Woods neighborhood to a "one world society" aimed at destroying culture. The post included a link to a video and the "Soros organization chart."

The Anti-Defamation League has identified conspiracies linked to George Soros, a Hungarian-American Jewish businessman and Holocaust survivor, as a trope used by extreme right-wing and racist groups to spread hate and disinformation. The ADL also says the trope is based in antisemitism.

The Facebook account where the posts originated had not been updated since 2013 and didn't contain any photos or information about the account owner.

The City of Fairfax Community Facebook group is not an official city group. Lim launched the private group on March 20, 2020, and is its moderator. In that role, she removed the post shortly before noon Tuesday.

"For me, as a manager of that Facebook page, I feel like whoever wants to say anything that has to do with the issue that I should allow them to speak whether I disagree or agree," Lim said in a phone interview on Tuesday afternoon. "Then after I let the post go up, I had several people complain, 'Take it down. It's offensive. It's fake news, etc, etc.' So I took it down."

Lim admitted that she should've researched the content of the post before she approved it, adding that she was concerned about how the debate over changing street names in the city was dividing the community.

"I think it's very important to point out the fact that just because you disagree with the change in the name doesn't make you prejudiced or antisemitic," she said. "I want to make sure that people are able to speak their mind without that fear."

Yeonas Development Corp. established the Mosby Woods neighborhood in 1961-1962 and named it in honor Confederate officer John Singleton Mosby. Many of the streets in the community bear names that are associated with the Civil War, including Plantation Parkway, Confederate Lane and Reb Street.

In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on March 25, 2020, and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests across the country, many communities began to confront the problem of systemic racism and how the Civil War was represented.

The Board of Supervisors voted in 2020 to remove the monument dedicated to a Confederate officer from the grounds of the Old Fairfax County Courthouse in the city. The Fairfax County School Board also voted to change the name of Mosby Woods Elementary, which is located along the city's northern border, to Mosaic Elementary.

At about the same time, Fairfax City, which is steeped in the history of the Confederacy, took some initial steps to reassess its representation of the Civil War:

• A historical marker on Main Street dedicated to the "Birthplace of the Confederate Battle Flag" was removed.
• The Fairfax High School principal changed the name of the street the school is located on from Rebel Run to Lion Run.
• The City of Fairfax School Board changed the name of Lanier Middle School to Katherine Johnson Middle School. Sidney Lanier was a Confederate soldier who, in the decades after his death, was embraced as the "poet of the Confederacy." Johnson was a NASA mathematician whose story was the subject of 2016 film "Hidden Figures."

In January 2021, the City Council launched the "Connecting Fairfax City for All" initiative to conduct listening sessions and promote conversations about how the city presented its history. The goal of the project was to determine whom should be memorialized in the city's public spaces and public land. This included examining Confederate-related street and place names, historical markers and even the city seal.

The Stakeholder Advisory Group presented its final report and recommendations to the mayor and City Council on Sept. 9, 2021. In addition to proposing alternatives to the city seal, the report recommended that the council immediately implement a process to change the following street names:

• Mosby Woods Community: Mosby Woods Drive, Plantation Parkway, Raider Lane, Reb Street, Scarlet Circle, Singleton Circle
• Major Arterial Roads: Lee Highway, Old Lee Highway
• Additional Roads in the City: Lee Street, Mosby Road, Stonewall Avenue

At its April 12 meeting, the City Council voted 5-1 to adopt a new street naming and renaming policy, with Councilmember Sang Yi voting in opposition. The approval gives the council the ability to rename streets based on city initiatives.

On June 14, the City Council will hold a public hearing on whether the specific names identified by the Stakeholder Advisory Group should be changed. An additional public hearing is scheduled for June 28, when councilmembers will vote on whether to take action on the new proposed names.

Lim joined city staff and other councilmembers at the April 18 open house at the Sherwood Community Center to answer questions from the public about the proposal.

Many people Lim spoke to were torn about whether to rename the city streets.

"Some people are for it. Some people are against," she said. "But again, I wanted to make sure that people should be able to speak their minds without fear of judgment or assuming that just because you don't want it, you're prejudiced."

View a schedule of the Fairfax City's renaming process.