Riverside City Council candidate acknowledges racist comments — but says he didn’t mean them

For years leading up to his run for Riverside City Council, John Dave Denilofs created videos and made phone calls with messages he acknowledges are racist.

His statements argue that anyone who waves a Mexican flag in the United States should be killed, as should Muslims and “the people who made laws where it’s safe for Muslims.”

He refers to “black people on the street” by the N-word and uses a vulgar term for women.

And he said Donald Trump should declare martial law and kill 6 million people. That’s the same as the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust.

Now, Denilofs says the comments, mostly made in the lead-up to the November 2016 election, don’t reflect his actual opinions.

“I didn’t believe it when I said it back then,” Denilofs said Monday, April 29.

He gives multiple explanations for why he repeatedly espoused views that he now says he didn’t believe.

It was to get as many likes and comments as possible on the Facebook page he ran, “What’s Up Riverside County!!” — That was the game, to get likes,” Denilofs said.

And it was to prove that such hateful thoughts weren’t really common: “If I say ‘kill Mexicans’ and I’ve got 99% of the people disagreeing with me, I’ve proved the world is not that bad,” Denilofs said later in the same interview.

And it was to root out and block members of the Facebook group who did hold racist views: “Whenever someone commented and agreed, they’d be deleted,” Denilofs said.

Other comments come from a YouTube video. According to Denilofs, those were spliced together from a series of voicemails he left to convince a White Lives Matter supporter that he was on the same side.

“I was just saying stuff to make him happy,” Denilofs said.

Denilofs, a 53-year-old retired taxi driver who has Vietnamese ancestry, said he was raised by a white stepfather and identifies as white.

Denilofs said he wouldn’t have made the videos if he knew he would run to represent Riverside’s Ward 7, the southwestern corner of the city. Denilofs is one of six Ward 7 candidates who will appear on ballots for the all-mail election, which will be decided June 4.

People in his personal life know that he’s not racist or sexist and instead stands up for those who need it, Denilofs said.

“I don’t know what to say to my voters,” said Denilofs, who refers to the series of videos as a show. “Do I apologize? No, I can’t, because at the time that I did it, I was doing a show.”

The videos themselves don’t contain any kind of disclaimer that he didn’t believe what he was saying or indicator that it was some sort of satire, nor did Denilofs’ other social media comments at the time.

Some Admins stand by Denilofs

Still he insists that people he picked to administer his Facebook group knew what he was doing and backed him up, he claims.

Some people who helped him run “What’s Up Riverside County!!” vouch for Denilofs. Others say they’re not sure. Group membership approached 100,000 members before he sold it.

Denilofs’ Facebook groups had a hands-off approach to comments that other groups would delete as inappropriate, said Amy Webb, a Menifee resident who described herself as a big fan of Denilofs.

“It’s free speech in all of those groups,” she said.

Webb, who is white, said she appreciated his videos as “rambling but completely true.” When asked about specific comments — advocating death for certain groups and using racial slurs — Webb said she didn’t remember those and didn’t agree with them.

Denilofs helped needy people of any race, she said.

Stoking up controversy to bring people to a group is a tried-and-true tactic, said Webb, a real estate agent active on social media.

“He may do a video that offends 99.9% of people watching it, but it gets people engaged. He wants a lot of reaction,” Webb said. “If I want to bring a lot of people to my page … all I do is post something very, very political that I know is going to turn into World War III on my page. And then my next post is about real estate. It’s like an advertising technique.”

Gloria Willis, another of Denilofs’ Facebook administrators, said she does remember Denilofs using hateful language in his videos, and she remains hurt by comments he and others in his group made.

“I was devastated,” Willis said. “I really can’t understand how anybody could even utter such things if you don’t believe it. I’m so against that type of hatred.”

At the same time, Willis — who is black and active in political groups like Black Lives Matter — remembers Denilofs being respectful of her.

“John put posts that he was honored I was in the group, since I marched with Martin Luther King,” she said. “I can’t speak for what he really believes. But from my conversations with him, he seems to be totally different (from the person in the videos).”

Willis, a Ward 2 resident, said she first met Denilofs at a Black Lives Matter event in downtown Riverside protesting the Ferguson, Missouri, police shooting of Michael Brown, a black man.

Denilofs showed up in a shirt with Riverside’s Raincross symbol and the words, “I support the police.”

Willis stresses that Black Lives Matter doesn’t oppose police — just police misconduct.

Despite their disagreement on the issue, Willis joined several of Denilofs’ groups, where she said she tries to spread positivity and demonstrate that people of color make important contributions.

“It’s very frustrating to see and to hear negative things about Mexicans and blacks and minorities,” she said. “I think as the creator of the group, I think he had a lot of control over a lot of the racist things that were in the group. And — the videos did not help.”

Restraining order

The Southern California News Group, which includes this publication, reviewed the videos after they were sent by Ana Sofia Miramontes, an admin for the Facebook group “What is going on in Riverside County?” Miramontes said she saved them as she built a case for a restraining order against Denilofs, who verbally attacks her in many of the videos.

Court records show the restraining order expires in July 2020, and she plans to renew it, Miramontes said.

That means Denilofs is legally forbidden from attending civic events she attends. As a member of the Riverside Public Utilities board and a representative of the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce for wards 6 and 7, she said, she attends a lot. Already, Denilofs was removed from a candidate forum because Miramontes was there.

“What I would say to the constituents of Ward 7 is that John Denilofs has consistently shown his true colors as a very ignorant and racist and vile person,” she said. “He has a set of loyal people who drank his Kool-Aid, but there are videos going back years that show who he is.”

Denilofs declined to respond on the record to Miramontes, saying he didn’t want to violate his restraining order by doing so.

He insists those who’ve spent time with him know he’s not a racist, but someone who helps the underdog and doesn’t hate any race. He encourages anyone with doubts to meet him in person as he travels the ward.

Part of a pattern

Until the recent explosion of social media, speech like Denilofs’ would have found a limited audience, said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino.

“That’s why these white nationalist messages are so pernicious,” he said. “In the past, it wouldn’t make it into the socio-poltical mainstream because social media wasn’t as dispersed. But now what we’re seeing is a spectrum of bigotry over the internet, where even though you may not see swastikas and Klan hoods in all of them, they’re done in such a way to ensnare people based on their fears and stereotypes.”

It’s not surprising for a man with Asian ancestry to advocate white nationalism, Levin said.

“One of the things we’re seeing is the democratization of hate,” Levin said. “Islamophobia, you can find that across different races. Homophobia, you can find that across different faiths. Antisemitism, xenophobia, homophobia, a variety of other prejudices go across a whole bunch of different lines.”

Levin said Denilofs’ defense — that he didn’t mean what he said — seemed implausible and invalid even if it’s true.

“It’ll be for the voters to decide whether or not, civically and morally, his fingerprints are too close to this bigotry scene,” Levin said.