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comments, ephemera, speculation, etc. (protected political speech and personal opinion) 2021- 2021-11-24 b APPROACHING THE TRUTH I What Really Happened at Charlottesville, Part IIThis is Part II of a review of Anne Wilson Smith,
Charlottesville
Untold: Inside the Unite the Right Rally, Part I can be found here. On the evening after police cancelled the rally, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe held a press conference and said:
As Mrs. Smith writes, the Governor’s remarks were outrageous for at least five reasons:
The word “bias” does not begin to capture the character of media reports: They portrayed the victims as aggressors and the aggressors as victims. The general tone can be gathered from headlines: “Charlottesville Reels After a White Supremacist Rally Turns Deadly” – Politico “Shocking Photos from the Violent White Supremacist Rally in Charlottesville” – BuzzFeed News “How A White Power Rally in Charlottesville Turned Deadly” – The Daily Beast “Ted Cruz Condemns Charlottesville Terror: ‘The Nazis, the KKK and White Supremacists are Repulsive and Evil’ “ – PJ Media “Terror in Charlottesville: Woman killed as car rams into anti-racist protesters at White nationalist rally” – Salon “Two Virginia State Troopers Killed in Helicopter Crash Tied to White Supremacist Rally” – Fox News The crash was due to mechanical failure and happened five hours after the rally was stopped. Everywhere, the impression was that Unite the Right attendees were violent fanatics. Many stories did not even mention that the rally was to defend the Lee statue; readers were left to assume that the only purpose was “white supremacy” or “Nazism.” For his own safety, Kessler spent the evening after the rally at a family member’s home, watching the day’s events as reported by Fox news.
Pres. Trump speaks Many of Pres. Trump’s detractors complained that he did not address the public quickly enough once news broke of the “deadly white supremacist rally.” Trump explained: “Before I make a statement, I like to know the facts.” Other politicians in his party had no such scruples. Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted: “Very important for the nation to hear @potus describe events in #Charlottesville for what they are, a terror attack by #Whitesupremacists . . . . The organizers of events which inspired & led to #charlottesvilleterroristattack are 100% to blame. . . . They are adherents of an evil ideology which argues certain people are inferior because of race, ethnicity or nation of origin.” Senator Cory Gardner tweeted, “Mr. President — we must call evil by its name. These were White supremacists and this was domestic terrorism.” Senator Orrin Hatch said: “We should call evil by its name.” None of these public figures seemed to know or care that the rally had been organized to defend a monument. That evening, the President said “We’re closely following the terrible events unfolding in Charlottesville, Virginia. We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides.” As we have seen, most of the displays of hatred and violence originated on the side of the counter-protestors. But relative to other public statements by prominent persons, Pres. Trump’s words were remarkably fair. Two days later, the President gave an interview. He rambled a bit, but made at least four important points left out of most media accounts:
Pres. Trump was denounced by many whose comments on the events were far less truthful or fair. One such denunciation came from Joe Biden, who later claimed he was inspired to run for president by Trump’s supposedly inadequate reaction to the “white supremacist violence” of Charlottesville. Jason Kessler was “ecstatic” when he first heard Trump’s remarks, noting that the President had spoken “simple truths that the American public had not been given.” He briefly imagined it might be possible to win the battle for public opinion. Later, he managed to get interviews on a few alternative news outlets with hosts such as Alex Jones and Gavin McInnes, but even there his reception was hostile. He recalls that “they wanted to slit my throat.” The backlash In the days following the suppression of the rally, as Mr. Kessler explains, “Heyer’s death was used to stoke a moral panic about the boogeyman of ‘White supremacy’ which has led to an unprecedented, un-American wave of political censorship against right-wing political dissidents and immigration patriots.” Even an ADL representative acknowledged: “I cannot think of another incident to which the backlash has been nearly so widespread.” Facebook, Twitter, PayPal, GoFundMe, Uber and the gaming chat app Discord all removed countless accounts associated with the rally and its attendees, as well as some that were not. Mr. Kessler explained the process behind the de-platforming trend: There are groups that:
Companies do not investigate such claims before acting on them. Banning Unite the Right participants and many perceived allies was an important precedent for banning a sitting president from nearly all social media after the Capitol was breached on January 6, 2021. Mrs. Smith writes:
Another aspect of the backlash to Unite the Right was the doxing campaign against participants. Hours of video of the events of August 11 and 12 were uploaded to the internet almost immediately, and Antifa and its sympathizers got to work identifying participants:
One rallygoer estimated that “hundreds of people” lost jobs or became estranged from their families because they were at the rally. Mrs. Smith interviewed some of them for Charlottesville Untold. One man was reported to Child Protective Services by Antifa in an attempt to have his children taken from him. Andrew Dodson, an engineer who develops clean-energy technology, was driven to suicide by his ordeal; the man who doxed him was invited to appear on NBC News! Criminal cases A number of criminal trials resulted from Unite the Right, and the difference in treatment for participants and counter-protesters was stark. Corey Long is a black Charlottesville resident who doused some rally participants with what one described as “some kind of paint thinner” and attacked them with an improvised flame thrower made from a bottle of hairspray. A man on the receiving end testified he had feared becoming a “human torch.” Celebrated by media outlets such as the New Yorker and The Root, Long was sentenced to just 20 days in prison. Richard Preston is a Ku Klux Klan member from Maryland. When he saw Long brandishing his flame thrower at passing demonstrators, he drew his handgun, pointed it at him, and screamed at him to stop. Loading a round into the chamber, he fired a single warning shot into the ground next to Long, hurting no one. He then holstered his gun and walked away. One person assaulted by Long called Preston a hero, suggesting his action saved lives that day. Mr. Preston was sentenced to four years in prison. But perhaps the most egregious example of both media mischaracterization and politicized criminal justice involved a black man named DeAndre Harris and four white men charged with assaulting him. As the author writes:
Carefully omitted from such accounts were the events that led up to the photo. It is common for Antifa militants to entice blacks to participate in violence by giving them simple weapons. DeAndre Harris had been given a “Maglite,” a long, heavy brand of flashlight, by an Antifa activist on the morning of the rally. Just before the viral photo was taken, Harris was following a group of departing attendees back to a parking garage in the company of Corey Long (who used the homemade flamethrower) and another black man. Sneaking up behind the attendees, Mr. Long tried to steal a Confederate flag while DeAndre Harris hit rallygoer Harold Crews over the head with his Maglite. Brad Griffin of Occidental Dissent describes what happened next:
A witness to the fight writes: “[Harris] clubbed one of our people and took off running . . . . They didn’t pick him out because he was Black. They picked him out because he ambushed someone from behind.” DeAndre Harris was subsequently able to raise over $166,000 on GoFundMe, supposedly to cover his medical expenses. Soon after, he mysteriously starred in a professionally produced rap video “driving a Mercedes Benz and sporting a $2,000 pair of Nike Air Jordan Retros.” For two months, police failed to arrest him. Finally, the man he had struck from behind, Harold Crews, took the initiative to press charges. Harris was found not guilty of misdemeanor assault and battery by a judge who accepted his claim that he had intended to hit the flagpole, not Crews. The four men who retaliated against Harris received sentences of two, six, six, and eight years’ imprisonment. Brad Griffin compiled a series of videos reconstructing the exact sequence of events surrounding the assault on Harris:
James Fields can hardly be said to have received a fair trial either. Just two days after the event, Pres. Trump treated his guilt as an established fact: “the driver of the car is a murderer.” A month later, the US Senate declared him a domestic terrorist. Potential jurors were inundated for over a year with coverage by a hostile media. More than one courtroom observer noted that his attorney failed to defend him aggressively. Despite considerable grounds for doubt regarding his intentions, he received a sentence of life plus 419 years. Civil suits — offense There were even more civil suits than criminal cases. Jason Kessler was, of course, sued, along with other rally organizers and participants who allegedly conspired to deprive onlookers and bystanders of their civil rights (see below). Mr. Kessler remembers calling every law firm in Charlottesville and not finding a single one willing to defend him. When he tried to do legal research at the law library of his alma mater, the University of Virginia, he was banned from campus. Eventually a sympathetic lawyer contacted him. He has spent most of the last four years trying to defend himself and to hold the city of Charlottesville accountable.
On the second anniversary of Unite the Right, Messrs. Kessler and Parrot filed suit against the City of Charlottesville and three named officials, charging that stopping the rally was a denial of free speech. Six months later, Federal District Judge Norman K. Moon dismissed the suit, ruling that law enforcement has no obligation to protect people when other parties attempt to suppress their speech. Mr. Kessler called this “a pretty novel ruling. We were floored when we got it.” Within a few days, he appealed, and is waiting for a ruling. The principle at stake is called the “heckler’s veto.” This happens when authorities stop protected speech on the grounds that it might provoke a violent reaction. Mr. Kessler and many civil libertarians believe the government should not be able to appeal to such possible violence as grounds for failing to protect free speech. “The [prohibition of the] heckler’s veto has in some ways been established for a long time, then in some ways the details of it need to be fleshed out,” says Mr. Kessler. He adds:
Mr. Kessler and his legal team are optimistic. They think their case is strong and that even if they lose the current appeal, the Supreme Court could look into the matter because standards on this issue vary in different federal districts. As part of his efforts, Mr. Kessler has also filed a number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to get records, some of which authorities claim have been lost or destroyed. He notes allegations by the Heaphy Report that former police chief Al Thomas and the Charlottesville PD command staff deleted text messages relevant to their investigation. He asks:
When Mr. Kessler requested text messages from city manager Maurice Jones, he was told that no such messages existed. This assertion was proven false by former mayor, Mike Signer. In his book about Unite the Right, Cry Havoc, Mr. Signer gave details of his exchange of emails and text messages with Maurice Jones. Mr. Kessler cited Mr. Signer’s book to demand release of the data. A week before a FOIA-related trial was to take place, Mr. Kessler received a letter with a link to 1,200 pages of email, along with an apology claiming that Mr. Jones had misunderstood what was included in the request. The fight continues:
Civil suits – defense The most important civil suit against rally organizers and participants is Sines v. Kessler. The suit alleges that 10 organizations and 14 named individuals:
James Fields is listed among the defendants; the plaintiffs claim that the death and injuries from the ramming were the result of a conspiracy between Fields and the rally organizers. Kessler notes:
Many defendants suspect the suit really amounts to “lawfare,” i.e., a “factually baseless attempt to use bad-faith litigation to cripple them reputationally and financially.” This interpretation finds some support in lead attorney Roberta Kaplan’s response when asked what she hoped to achieve with the suit:
The lawsuit is being financed by Integrity First for America (IFA), an organization that boasts that the case “is the only current legal effort to take on the vast [!] leadership of the violent White nationalist movement.” Among their [mostly Jewish] donors are LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, and actress Natalie Portman. Even though public records list no fewer than 33 lawyers working for the plaintiffs, the money will not run out any time soon. Mr. Kessler says that “in nearly four years, IFA haven’t proved a single thing except that they can mug and beat down defendants who can’t afford attorneys and those who can’t afford researchers, expert witnesses, and evidence collection software to defend themselves on the same footing.” Yet media reports continue to portray the plaintiffs as plucky underdogs standing up to a powerful “white supremacist” movement. As part of discovery, defendants have been required to turn over all email, messages, and social media posts about the rally, an onerous burden for some of the more active organizers. Matt Parrot, also a named defendant, calls this:
In conclusion, the author remarks:
The Heaphy Report The City of Charlottesville paid $350,000 for an independent investigation of what happened at Unite the Right. It was carried out by the law firm Hunton & Williamson under the direction of Timothy Heaphy, and resulted in a 207-page report called Independent Review of the 2017 Protest Events in Charlottesville, VA, known as the “Heaphy Report.” As the author of Charlottesville Untold notes, “In a healthy media environment, the results of this review would have been headline news all over the country.” However, because it did nothing to support the official story about a “violent white supremacist rally,” it got little attention. The report is a damning indictment of many public officials, but especially the leadership of the Charlottesville Police Department (who bore primary legal responsibility) and the Virginia State Police. The author paraphrases the report: “Neither agency deployed available field forces or other units to protect public safety at the locations where violence took place. Command staff prepared to declare an unlawful assembly and disperse the crowd. The City of Charlottesville protected neither free expression nor public safety on August 12 . . . . This represents a failure of one of government’s core functions — the protection of fundamental rights.” The Charlottesville police chief at the time was Al Thomas, the city’s first black chief. Two people told the Heaphy investigators they heard Mr. Thomas say, at the first signs of violence, “Let them fight, it will make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly.” The report stated that “Chief Thomas’ slow-footed response to violence put the safety of all at risk,” and accused him of deleting text messages relevant to the investigation and trying to limit what subordinates told investigators. In the wake of the report, Chief Thomas resigned. Matt Parrot notes that the Charlottesville police brass bear primary responsibility for failure, not ordinary officers:
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe later published a book about Unite the Right. In it, he had a great deal to say about:
Readers may not be surprised to learn that the New-York-born McAuliffe was worried that when he first decided to run for governor, he “might have a hard time convincing Virginians I was truly one of them.” Charlottesville mayor Mike Signer also wrote a book about Unite the Right filled with contempt for what he called “rebel flag-wearing defenders of ‘southern heritage.’ ” Mrs. Smith writes:
Such are the men who run the Old Dominion. Mrs. Smith notes another aspect of Unite the Right that has not been adequately noted, namely:
The only shot fired by an attendee all day was
Richard Preston’s warning shot intended to keep Corey
Long from using his flamethrower. (read
more)
See also: The
Charlottesville Operation (If you are
busy, just read the final section: The Heather Heyer
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