Protesters march in 2018 with a police escort to their rally in Lafayette Square at the White House on the anniversary of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — “Check. Check. Check,” Christopher Cantwell, the neo-Nazi surprise athlete, said into the microphone.
Dressed in a blue blouse without a tie or jacket, he proceeded to find out Mein Kampf’s name, removed the n-word, connected his far-right radio show, called himself “handsome” and “professional artist,” and blew up the anti-militant. -fascist in minutes. Not unexpected in the courtroom, Cantwell, who prepared for this moment with the help of two other neo-Nazis in the criminal evenings and past watching Tucker Carlson, said, “I’m not a lawyer. . . [but ] I am the most productive lawyer I can afford. “
He added: “And I didn’t even stay on a Holiday Inn Express last night. “
Christopher Cantwell in an undated backup registration photo through the albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail
It was much more of a racist and conscious tirade than the opening of the historic civil trial that could bankrupt Cantwell and several other white supremacists and dismantle their organizations.
But that’s how one of the 24 organizers and participants of the murderous “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville began 4 years ago what is expected to be an emotion-laden trial that will last much of November. better.
Violence at the “Unite the Right” rally Aug. 11-12, 2017, which was attended by scores of white supremacists at the planned removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, it became fatal when neo-Nazi James Fields drove his Dodge Challenger through a crowd of counter-protesters. Fields killed Heather Heyer, 32, and wounded dozens more. He is serving several life sentences for his crimes.
Four other white supremacists are serving sentences ranging from two to eight years for the beating of anti-racist protester DeAndre Harris the same weekend, but there has also been little duty for violence.
A man drives a Dodge Challenger, a protester organization in Charlottesville on Aug. 12, 2017.
Backed by Integrity First for America, a nonprofit civil rights organization, the white supremacist lawsuit “Unite the Right” aims to address this. It was introduced under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which played a key role in dismantling this organization as it spread throughout the South in the wake of the Civil War. The law allows those who suffer racially motivated violence to prosecute when there is a conspiracy to bring it to light. The law is being used lately in two instances opposed to former President Donald Trump and his allies in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U. S. Capitol, adding one brought through Black Capitol police officers and others through members of Congress.
The IFA’s high-level pro bono legal team, led by lawyers Roberta Kaplan and Karen Dunn, is contemplating arguing that “Unite the Right” organizers did not plan to hold a nonviolent protest 4 years ago, but meticulously conspired to galvanize violence. . in Charlottesville.
At Dunn’s inauguration on Thursday, he talked about the 5. 3TB of virtual data his team received through social media posts, personal chats, text messages and emails showing some of the country’s most infamous neo-Nazis and other white supremacists discussing what weapons they would use. bring to Charlottesville and how they would use them to attack their enemies. He also lamented what they could not locate because some defendants refused to cooperate and hand over evidence, or, in the case of Jeff Schoep, the former leader of the National Socialist Movement, dropped their phones in the bathroom.
“They were dressed in clothes. They walked in formation, carried shields that were then used to pierce counter-protesters and carried flags that were then used as weapons,” Dunn told the jury.
“This case is a case of violence and intimidation that had been planned for months and culminated in a tragic and violent weekend on August 12, 2017, right here in Charlottesville, Virginia,” Dunn added.
He then released a video of the torch-carrying crowd marching through the city shouting, “The Jews will not update us!And “Blood and earth!” He also showed jurors graphic video footage of Fields driving his car through a crowd of protesters and juxtaposed the footage with messages from the defendants about crushing other people and doing whatever it takes for their cause, even if that means jail time.
Kaplan aimed to touch the hearts of jurors, introducing them to the plaintiffs, citizens of Charlottesville, who were sitting in the courtroom and face to face with their white supremacist attackers for the first time in 4 years.
Kaplan spoke about Elizabeth Sines, a law student at the time of the attack who traumatized emotionally; Marcus Martin, a black landscaper whose leg pierced the car he was driving through Fields; Marissa Blair, Martin’s fiancée, who narrowly avoided being hit by the car; and others who have been physically and psychologically injured, adding a Christian pastor, an emergency counselor and a Colombian-American woman whose car-attack facial cars remind her of each and every day when she looks in the mirror of the horror of Aug. 12.
The way Kaplan and Dunn presented their case stands in stark contrast to the chaotic, abrasive, and overtly racist way in which the defendants and their lawyers presented theirs.
Richard Spencer in 2016.
Representing himself because he said the trial had “financially paralyzed” him even before the trial began, white nationalist Richard Spencer told the jury at its opening that he was not behind the fatal violence that erupted in Charlottesville; He argued that because he didn’t know many other defendants well and hadn’t communicated much with them until August 2017, there may simply not be a conspiracy. He said he and Cantwell exchanged a few messages here and there and had lunch together once.
Lawyers for other defendants also tried to distance their clients from those of other lawyers, giving the impression that members of the organization, who had been speaking for months on Discord and other messaging apps, were unknown. The violence stemped from the failure of local law enforcement to separate white supremacists from counter-protesters.
Some said the violence was the fault of antifa, a decentralized collective of anti-racists protesting against the far right, and Black Lives Matter activists.
The variety of the jury in the case was a challenge; It took 3 days to locate 12 qualified jurors for the case. The organization includes men and women, black and white, with strong and opposing perspectives on racial issues in the United States.
“Our whistleblowers have been waiting for this day for 4 long years. In the meantime, they have tried to move forward in their lives as they can. . . however, no matter what they do, and no matter how far they pass from Charlottesville, they continue to bring the pain and trauma of those days in Charlottesville, Dunn told the jury. While this case is about violence and hatred, it is also about justice and accountability. . . justice for the plaintiffs who have lost so much. “
To unload this justice, the plaintiffs and their legal team will likely have to spend weeks of misleading testimony and media attention and, if Thursday’s opening remarks are any indication, hate speech in the defendants’ component directed at them.
“You’ll hear us make some racist jokes. We’re known for those things,” Cantwell said. “But what you might not hear is a conspiracy to enshrine a crime, let alone a violent crime. “