Berkeley man with ties to supremacist rally out of job

A Berkeley man who was scheduled to speak at last weekend’s white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., has become the second Bay Area resident to lose his job as a result of his connection to the violence-marred event.

John Ramondetta, known as Johnny Monoxide on white supremacist and neo-Nazi social media sites, was a union electrician working in the Bay Area on a project for Rosendin Electric, a national outfit. On Wednesday, a company spokeswoman said he was “no longer employed” at the job site.

The spokeswoman, Salina Brown, declined to say whether Ramondetta had quit or been fired.

Ramondetta, reached by phone, declined to comment, saying only that he “knows California law” and was “conferring with people.” He said he would issue a statement in the future.

He was listed on Unite the Right event fliers as one of several scheduled speakers at the Charlottesville rally Saturday. It was unclear whether Ramondetta attended. Police ordered the crowd to disperse around the rally’s scheduled start time because of clashes among protesters.

Over the weekend, a cook at a Top Dog hot dog restaurant in Berkeley, Cole White, resigned after he was identified on social media sites as having attended the white supremacist gathering. One woman was killed and 19 people injured Saturday when a car allegedly driven by a man who has expressed neo-Nazi views drove into a crowd of counterprotesters.

Ramondetta has achieved a level of prominence on the far right as Johnny Monoxide, hosting podcasts promoting white supremacy, including “This Week in White Genocide.”

He wasn’t always aligned with the white nationalist movement, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups nationwide. In 2011, he was active in the Occupy Wall Street movement in Oakland and later attended a Black Lives Matter protest, the group said.

However, by 2016, Ramondetta had moved to the far right of the political spectrum, the center said. He was quoted as making anti-Semitic remarks and said in an interview with Red Ice Radio that Italians “have a natural racism toward Jewish people.”

Ramondetta had been working as an inside wireman on a local job site, said officials with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union No. 6.

John Doherty, business manager for Local 6, said the union doesn’t share Ramonetta’s political views, but that he has a constitutional right to express them. The union doesn’t have the authority “to discipline or otherwise hold him accountable for expressing his views and opinions as an individual outside the the workplace,” Doherty said in a statement.

He added, “To be perfectly clear, IBEW Local Union No. 6 also condemns white nationalism and white supremacy.”