A Republican Assembly candidate in California is under renewed scrutiny after a video surfaced in 2019 of her spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Denise Aguilar, also known as Denise Aguilar Mendez, is the co-founder of the anti-vaccination group ‘Freedom Angels’ and the survivalist ‘Mamalitia’.
In a now-deleted video, she boasted about participating in the failed Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. It is unclear when she deleted the video, but she later said she was not involved in the riot, although she admits to being in Washington DC that day.
USA Today published a report in March showing that Aguilar appeared in several photos and videos of the riot.
Aguilar is endorsed by both the Republican Party of California and Republican Leader James Gallagher, R-Yuba City.
“I’m looking forward to it!” Gallagher wrote in a post on X in response to a post from Aguilar about a campaign event with him and Sen. Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, in August.
Neither Aguilar’s campaign, the California Republican Party, nor Gallagher responded to multiple Bee requests for comment by deadline.
A conspiracy theory ‘rabbit hole’
The video, posted to the conservative social media video site Rumble on October 17, 2019, and shared on Tuesday by the left-wing Media Matters For America, shows Aguilar talking about the 2019 California wildfires before descending into what they call a “rabbit hole.” mentioned.
“So if you guys didn’t know, in the state of California we had PG&E shutting off power to the Bay Area communities, and it wasn’t for fires. What happened is 2,100 children were rescued from human trafficking,” Aguilar said in the video.
She then accused the utility company Pacific Gas & Electric of being owned by the Rothschild family, which is false and, according to the Anti-Defamation League, is also a common anti-Semitic trope, playing on the conspiracy theory that Jews secretly control the government.. The Rothschilds are a Jewish family known for banking and other business management.
“So Rothschild, there is a family, there are certain families in the United States around the world that are in charge of us. It is the central banking system. They are responsible for our money. The Federal Reserve is not a government agency. It’s actually a private company owned by these families who control our money,” Aguilar said, repeating a false and harmful anti-Semitic stereotype.
Aguilar said “white hats” at PG&E used the 2019 public safety power shutoffs — intended to prevent more wildfires from starting — to “smoke out” child traffickers through underground tunnels.
“And to do that, they had to shut down the power grid. So 2,100 children have been saved. These children were trafficked, some of these children were farmed,” Aguilar said, without any evidence to support her claim.
The Legislative Jewish Caucus responds
Although legislative Republicans did not respond to The Bee’s request for comment, Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, who co-chairs the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, did.
Wiener was an outspoken critic of anti-Semitism, both from the left and the right.
In an interview with The Bee, Wiener called the comments “super anti-Semitic.”
“She is an extreme example of the conspiracy mind that has infected the Republican Party, and it’s just sad,” Wiener said.
Aguilar is running in a safely Democratic district, and Wiener said she is not likely to win the election in November. However, he said he was concerned about her being backed by California’s Republican leadership, given her record on fringe extremism.
“We must be very clear that these forms of bigotry often overlap, and that the takeover of the Republican Party by conspiracy theorists is inherently dangerous for Jews,” Wiener said. “Conspiracy theories have often led to violence against Jews, because Jews are often at the heart of those conspiracy theories.”
He said that while not all Republicans are conspiracy theorists, “there is a certain sect within the Republican Party that promotes dangerous conspiracy theories that invariably lead to the demonization of Jews.”
Wiener said this includes people like conservative billionaire Elon Musk, who has promoted the anti-Semitic “Great Replacement Theory” — that Jews are trying to replace white Christian voters with immigrants — and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who speculated that Jewish controlled space lasers were responsible for the California wildfires.
“It’s all dangerous and it’s not just a fringe candidate for the California Assembly,” Wiener said. “This conspiracy-induced disease reaches all the way to the top of the Republican Party.”
An overview of conspiracy theories and untruths
This is not the first conspiracy theory Aguilar has promoted.
As noted by Media Matters, she also promoted the “PizzaGate” conspiracy theory in 2019, which alleged that a Washington DC-based cabal was running a child sex trafficking ring from a pizza restaurant in the nation’s capital. Those claims were false.
She has also falsely claimed that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election.
Aguilar is one of several women in the right-wing extremist movement who have been active in the Sacramento area and led several protests at the state Capitol, often in collaboration with the far-right street extremist group the Proud Boys. She got her political start by protesting California’s school vaccine requirement in 2019.
Aguilar is running in Assembly District 13, which includes the Stockton area. During the March primary, Aguilar received nearly 38% of the vote. Democratic candidate Rhodesia Ransom received 41.6%, while Edith Villapudua, also a Democrat, received 20.5%. As the top two vote-getters, Ransom and Aguilar will appear in the November general election.
