On political violence and jury threats

 Based on the title of the post, one might presume that the subject of this morning's observation is the insurmountable challenge of the ongoing threat Donald J. Trump poses to law and order in the United States of America.  He is now on trial for a wide range of felonies, and he is about to be indicted again in Georgia.  He has already used his social media platform to post messages like, "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU," in the obligatory all-caps of Trump-speak, with further statements about Judge Chutkan, Jack Smith, and really, his publicly known enemies list, in Nixonian terminology.  After the aforementioned pre-trial, all-caps social media post, which was made after Judge Chutkan had to remind Trump that witness tampering and such are crimes, Smith sought a protective order, which we all know that Trump will disregard, repeatedly, with no consequences.  Chutkan eventually threatened Trump, not with revoking his bail, which is what would happen to literally any person not named "Donald J. Trump," but with... [gasp]... a speedy trial, which is what was supposed to happen anyway.  Yes, there are two sets of rules.  One for Trump, and one for everyone else, and the rules for Trump say that he can do whatever he wants with no consequences, and despite being very wealthy, he doesn't even have to pay his legal bills because he has duped some very stupid people to pay those bills for him, all while using a range of threats to ensure zero possibility of conviction.

So yes, with a title like that, you assume that this is a post about Trump.

It is not.  It is a post about antifa and Andy Ngo.  If you live in the left-wing disinformational bubble, you pat yourself on the back for not believing Trump's lies, but get taken in by the first and second rule of antifa, which is that there is no antifa.  Yes, antifa exists, and it is a terrorist organization.  Andy Ngo was brutally beaten by them.  There is video, and the specific perpetrators were caught.  Their names are John Colin Hacker and Elizabeth Renee Richter.  Ngo sued for damages, and even their defense attorney could not contest that they did it, nor could she pretend that it was self-defense.  There was, after all, video.

It should be an open-and-shut case.  But here's the thing about antifa, and terrorists generally.  If you believe in violence for political ends, you do not believe in the justice system.  Antifa-types froth at the mouth about Trump, who then uses antifa as his foil, but ultimately, they are just different shades of violent totalitarianism.  There is the old joke from The Simpsons, from eons ago when it was funny.  McBain-- the Schwarzeneggerian action hero-- is flying a plane, and he radios to his superior, "McBain to base: under attack by commie-nazis."  The joke is layered.  First, the communists and nazis were diametrically opposed enemies.  Then, there is the meta-joke of the historically illiterate people who still don't understand that, equating the two.

Yet both are violent and totalitarian movements.

Trump is not a nazi.  He is a wannabe autocrat, but no, he is not a nazi.

Nazis had an ideology.  They had beliefs beyond their own desire for power.  I mean, say what you will about the tenets of national socialism, but at least it's an ethos.

That said, Trump has clearly exploited militant nationalism, which was the root of Italian and Spanish fascism, which predated the vegetarian painter with the Chaplin mustache, and antifa members, while not very sophisticated, lean towards Marxist views.

None believe in free speech (despite Trump's hypocritical demands), and all believe in violence as a political tool.

Hence the conclusion of the Ngo/antifa trial.  The defense attorney for Hacker and Richter-- Michelle Burrows-- had a difficult task, as there was actual video of Ngo's assailants beating him, and they could not claim self defense.   Ngo is a journalist, and just because they disagree with his ideological perspective does not give them a right-- neither legal nor moral-- to assault him.  Be careful any time you hear that phrase, "words are violence."  Its intent is to lay the foundation for physical assault in response to, or in expectation of speech by eliding the difference.

There can be no excuse on either legal or moral grounds for what Ngo's assailants did to him.

So what did their attorney do?  In closing argument, Michelle Burrows told the jury, "I am antifa."  She scanned the jury, and told them that she "will remember each one of their faces."

Remember what the case was.  Antifa physically assaulted and brutally beat a man who was the ideological foe of antifa.  On video.

Burrows was sufficiently coded in what she said that she can avoid being charged with directly threatening the lives of the jurors, but jury tampering?

The obvious punishment of disbarment is irrelevant because Michele (oops, sorry, that's "Michelle") Burrows announced her retirement as an attorney.  She must have decided that she would throw away any potential for practicing law to get her terrorist thugs off, ideologically committed terrorist that she is, committing an act of terrorism in the process.

Yet jury tampering is a crime, which she arguably committed, even if she left enough plausible deniability in her threat to avoid charges on threats.  She was, after all, in a courtroom at the time.  The goal was to push the line far enough to intimidate the jury without going far enough to get charged.

Charge her now.  Jury tampering.

Anyone troubled by what Trump is doing needs to take a look at Portland, antifa, and what Michelle Burrows did to get John Colin Hacker and Elizabeth Renee Richter out of accountability for brutally beating an innocent man.

You can either take on Trump and Michelle Burrows, or neither, but if you have principles, you can't just pick one.

Either political violence and jury threats are unacceptable because we need rule of law, or you advocate turning the whole thing over to mob rule.  It really is one or the other, and the left needs to stop ignoring left-wing terrorism.  They get away with it so frequently that Burrows just took it into the courtroom.  They get away with it by following the Keyser Soze principle, also known as the greatest trick the devil ever pulled.  And if that isn't enough for the left, understand that the reality of left-wing violence is precisely what allows Trump to use antifa as a foil and a distraction.  "What about antifa?!"

If Burrows can walk into a courtroom and get Hacker and Richter off by announcing to the jurors that she is antifa and she will remember their faces, and that she doesn't need to worry about the empty threat of disbarment because she quits, what do you think Trump will do?  And by what standard will you object?

McBain to base: Under attack by commies.  Also, under attack by nazis.

Yeah, that version isn't as funny.  Instead, it is just scary.

I will not play the obvious song.  Instead, here's Davy Graham covering the Joni Mitchell classic, "Both Sides Now," from Large As Life And Twice As Natural.