Speaker 1: Cool zone media.
Speaker 2: What happens when a Nazi rally comes to town. Maybe
Speaker 2: it's a little different from town to town, But as
Speaker 2: a resident of Charlottesville, Virginia, I've spent the last eight
Speaker 2: years trying to answer that question. In one very particular instance,
Speaker 2: they Unite the Right rally on August twelfth, twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: It didn't take eight years to find the obvious answer
Speaker 2: to that question. It's violence. Before the day of the
Speaker 2: rally even dawned, there was violence. There was violence at
Speaker 2: rallies all over the country in the months leading up
Speaker 2: to August twelfth, violence encouraged by and at the hands
Speaker 2: of the men who were busy organizing the event that
Speaker 2: would cap off what they called the Summer of hate.
Speaker 2: And when the day finally came, the violence they'd been
Speaker 2: promising to deliver all summer left blood in our streets,
Speaker 2: but not a single speech was made that day. Fights
Speaker 2: broke out in the streets as rallygoers arrived at the park.
Speaker 2: Police watched and waited as neo Nazis who'd taken cross
Speaker 2: country flights looking for a fight, hunched, kicked, bludgeoned, and,
Speaker 2: in at least one instance, choked, counter protesters who stood
Speaker 2: in their way. The rally itself never even really happened.
Speaker 2: Police dispersed the crowd before it ever really got started,
Speaker 2: and it had already been over for hours when one
Speaker 2: man who'd hoped to attend it took his revenge on
Speaker 2: the counter demonstrators, murdering heather Hire and injuring dozens of others.
Speaker 2: And I'll tell you some of those stories one of
Speaker 2: these days. There were a handful of criminal prosecutions, and
Speaker 2: I spent years sitting quietly on a wooden bench, watching
Speaker 2: and dutifully taking notes. But those cases, for the most part,
Speaker 2: were pretty open and shut, and they were resolved fairly
Speaker 2: quickly by the standards of the court.
Speaker 1: The civil lawsuits took.
Speaker 2: Longer, years longer, and they often raised more questions than
Speaker 2: they answered, questions the court is perhaps not equipped to answer.
Speaker 2: But the Court has been quite clear on one question
Speaker 2: in particular, one raised by several different lawsuits. Do the
Speaker 2: police have an obligation to protect anyone? The answer is no.
Speaker 2: I'm Molly Conquer, and this is weird, Blue Guys. This
Speaker 2: wasn't the episode I meant to write this week. I
Speaker 2: was working on something else, entirely, something I'm still working on.
Speaker 2: When I realized it was a longer and more complicated
Speaker 2: narrative than I felt like I could get my arms
Speaker 2: around this week, so I set it aside and started
Speaker 2: scrambling at the eleventh hour for something I thought I
Speaker 2: could pull together quickly, something I already know a lot
Speaker 2: about and won't lose myself for days trying to do
Speaker 2: a lot of new research. But then I saw a
Speaker 2: blog post from an attorney, Glenn Keith. Allen is a
Speaker 2: man whose story should be told on its own, and
Speaker 2: I think I will eventually, So I won't tell you
Speaker 2: more than you need to know here. I'm very comfortable
Speaker 2: describing him as a neo Nazi lawyer. That's what the
Speaker 2: Southern Poverty Law Center called him in a headline of
Speaker 2: an article published in twenty sixteen, when they revealed that
Speaker 2: the attorney working for the Baltimore Police Department had been
Speaker 2: a dues paying member of the neo Nazi group National
Speaker 2: Alliance for decades.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: The SBLC has done a lot of great work over
Speaker 2: the years, But I don't mean to say that my
Speaker 2: ironclad certainty here comes only from repeating their claim. No, No,
Speaker 2: I'm very sure that I can say that Glenn Allen
Speaker 2: is a neo Nazi lawyer because he unsuccessfully sued the
Speaker 2: SPLC for defamation. In the memorandum dismissing his suit, the
Speaker 2: judge notes that not only had Allan failed to show
Speaker 2: there was any falsehood in the claims that had been
Speaker 2: made by the SBLC, he didn't even appear to be
Speaker 2: disputing the claim that he was in fact a neo Nazi.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's that, and.
Speaker 2: There is also the fact that he spent the last
Speaker 2: couple of years being the go to guy when neo
Speaker 2: Nazis need a lawyer. He's represented members of Patriot Front
Speaker 2: in lawsuits in Virginia and Washington State and in their
Speaker 2: criminal cases in Idaho. He currently represents members of the
Speaker 2: Goyam Defense League in a lawsuit in Georgia. He's represented
Speaker 2: white supremacist publications American Renaissance and v DARE. He was
Speaker 2: hired by Nathan Dimigo, the former leader of the neo
Speaker 2: Nazi group Identity Europa, in his ongoing effort to use
Speaker 2: a bankruptcy case to evade paying damages to the victims
Speaker 2: of the United's Right Rally. Allan has also filed petitions
Speaker 2: to the Supreme Court on behalf of members of the
Speaker 2: neo Nazi street fighting gang, the Rise Above movement. And
Speaker 2: then there's the case I'm talking about today. Last week,
Speaker 2: Glenn Allen posted an update to his website to share
Speaker 2: some sad news. He wrote, on April seventh, twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court denied our petition. The Court's decision, although
Speaker 2: not surprising, is regrettable. The Court missed an opportunity to
Speaker 2: advance the cause of First Amendment protection for unpopular speech
Speaker 2: and to admonishi the City of Charlottesville for taking sides
Speaker 2: against Warren and the other pro monument protesters. The cases
Speaker 2: talking about was originally filed by Gregory Conti and Warren
Speaker 2: Baylaw in twenty nineteen. Both men had attended the United
Speaker 2: Right rally in Charlesville, Virginia, on August twelfth, twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: and felt their civil rights had been violated by various
Speaker 2: parties then named as defendants in their lawsuit, the Commonwealth
Speaker 2: of Virginia, the City of Charlesville, the Virginia State Police,
Speaker 2: then Governor of Virginia Terry mccauliffe, the Charlesville Police Department,
Speaker 2: several individual members of both police agencies and city staff,
Speaker 2: as well as the sort of random assortment of individual
Speaker 2: counter protesters. Now I realize as I'm writing this that
Speaker 2: as continuously present as the events of summer twenty seventeen
Speaker 2: have felt here in Charlottesville, I was eight years ago.
Speaker 2: It was national news back then, but it's likely faded
Speaker 2: from the memories of people everywhere else. And if you're
Speaker 2: too young to have been watching the news eight years ago,
Speaker 2: you might never even have known enough to forget. The
Speaker 2: rally was, on its surface about Confederate statues. Back in
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, that was a pretty hot issue. Granted, a
Speaker 2: lot of people had been voicing opposition to the presence
Speaker 2: of those monuments to racism for a century or so
Speaker 2: since they'd been put up, but it became a subject
Speaker 2: of national concern in twenty fifteen after the Charleston church shooting.
Speaker 2: Cities around the country were starting to talk about taking
Speaker 2: them down, and many did. But here in Virginia, a
Speaker 2: state law stood in the way of local decision making
Speaker 2: on the subject. Local governments needed state permission to take
Speaker 2: down a monument or a memorial to any war. The
Speaker 2: law even species hifically prohibited quote the placement of Union
Speaker 2: markings or monuments on previously designated Confederate memorials. But a
Speaker 2: court ruling in late twenty fifteen seemed to hint that
Speaker 2: perhaps the law could be interpreted to mean that it
Speaker 2: only applied to statues erected after that law was passed,
Speaker 2: which could mean it didn't apply to Charlottesville. That legal
Speaker 2: battle lasted years, and it probably isn't interesting to normal people,
Speaker 2: so I won't get into it. But what you need
Speaker 2: to know here is that in twenty sixteen, the city
Speaker 2: of Charlottesville was starting to take real steps toward trying
Speaker 2: to take down the statues of Robert E. Lee and
Speaker 2: Stonewall Jackson, and some people were very, very angry about it.
Speaker 2: At the end of May twenty seventeen, a local resident
Speaker 2: named Jason Kessler filed an application with the City of
Speaker 2: Charlesville for a special event permit. He wanted to hold
Speaker 2: an event on August twelfth, twenty seventeen, in the park
Speaker 2: where the Roberty Lee statue stood. He described the event
Speaker 2: as a free speech rally in support of the Lee monument,
Speaker 2: and on his application he estimated that about four hundred
Speaker 2: people would attend, but it wasn't about the statues, not
Speaker 2: really not. In the end, this statue was a focal point,
Speaker 2: a rallying cry, a lightning rod. Whatever it was, an excuse,
Speaker 2: it was a breaking point. The men who descended on
Speaker 2: this little college town were here to put black people
Speaker 2: in their place. They were here to fight the Jewish agenda.
Speaker 2: They were here to fist fight Antifa. They were here
Speaker 2: to kill communists. Sure a lot of them were proud
Speaker 2: of their Southern heritage, I guess, but that doesn't really
Speaker 2: help explain the swastika tattoos, does it. Where the months
Speaker 2: of messages exchanged, and a discord server where attendees gleefully
Speaker 2: discussed their fantasies about killing counter protesters.
Speaker 1: There were several.
Speaker 2: Conversations in the discord server about whether it was legal
Speaker 2: to run people over. Memes were posted about plowing through
Speaker 2: a crowd with heavy machinery.
Speaker 1: It was all just a joke.
Speaker 2: Everyone was laughing until someone actually did it. The rally
Speaker 2: was supposed to begin at Nune That's what the permit said.
Speaker 2: Attendees would gather in the park near the statue of
Speaker 2: Roberty Lee, and they would listen to speeches from far
Speaker 2: right micro celebrities like Richard Spencer, Baked Alaska, Christopher Cantwell,
Speaker 2: Augustus and Victus, Matthew Heinbach, and Mike Pinovich. But like
Speaker 2: I said, no one ever gave a speech. The streets
Speaker 2: downtown were packed with counter protesters. At the very last
Speaker 2: minute that morning, the event organizer, who'd been the group's
Speaker 2: police liaison, backed of the agreed upon plan to have
Speaker 2: the scheduled speakers shuttled into the park with a police escort,
Speaker 2: and within an hour of that decision, all hell had
Speaker 2: broken loose in the streets near the park. By eleven
Speaker 2: thirty am, the local police had declared the gathering and
Speaker 2: unlawful assembly. State police and riot years showed up a
Speaker 2: few minutes later to clear the park by force. One
Speaker 2: of the only funny pictures taken that day shows Richard
Speaker 2: Spencer's mid tantrum as he's being shoved out of the
Speaker 2: park by a line of riot cops. There's a lot
Speaker 2: to be said about the months leading up to that
Speaker 2: day in August. Much of it has already been said,
Speaker 2: and some of it I'm sure I'll write some other day,
Speaker 2: but today, just in case you don't remember, the summer
Speaker 2: of twenty seventeen. That'll do, because the facts at issue
Speaker 2: in that lawsuit are here at the entrance to the
Speaker 2: park between about nine thirty am in noon. The plaintiffs
Speaker 2: in this lawsuit, Gregory Kanti and Warren Baylaw, are Nazis.
Speaker 2: People throw that word around a lot, so I'll let
Speaker 2: you hear it from them. Here's Warren on his own
Speaker 2: podcast explaining to his wife that they have a responsibility
Speaker 2: to spread Hitler's message.
Speaker 3: The fact is, the fact is, and we all know it.
Speaker 3: I think everybody who watches the show knows it. Hitler
Speaker 3: was a true patriot. He was a complete idealist, a
Speaker 3: entirely selfless man. He was also a genius, and he
Speaker 3: was probably the greatest political leader that Europe has ever seen.
Speaker 2: And here's Greg in one of his many bizarre, straight
Speaker 2: to camera short video rants from his social media.
Speaker 4: The FBI is full of pedophiles, and our countries have.
Speaker 1: Been ruled by twos phraars. And you think that that
Speaker 1: flag is the problem.
Speaker 2: You're not practical, You're just pussy.
Speaker 1: Hitler is our only hope.
Speaker 2: It was hard to find one of Greg's videos that
Speaker 2: clearly expressed his point of view, but that didn't also
Speaker 2: contain so many slurs that it would become incomprehensible once
Speaker 2: I bleeped them out. But they're Nazis. These guys love Hitler.
Speaker 2: They're like really obsessed with Hitler. Honestly, the Hitler worship
Speaker 2: here is actually kind of weird, even in their own
Speaker 2: social circles. Warren Baylaw is actually a second generation National Socialist.
Speaker 2: His father, Alan Baylaw, was a high ranking member with
Speaker 2: a National Alliance before Warren was even born. As for
Speaker 2: Greg Conti, he was coaching field hockey at a Catholic girls'
Speaker 2: school in Maryland before he was fired when the school
Speaker 2: he was Richard Spencer's lackey. In twenty twenty, both Allan
Speaker 2: and Warren Baylaw and Greg Conti were founding members of
Speaker 2: a now defunct neo Nazi organization called the National Justice Party.
Speaker 2: And in twenty seventeen, Warren Baylaw and Gregory Kanti were
Speaker 2: inside the park when the Virginia State Police showed up
Speaker 2: a riot year to enforce that dispersal order. Daniel Schular,
Speaker 2: a photojournalist taking pictures that day for the Tulsa World,
Speaker 2: captured an image that shows both men right up against
Speaker 2: the riot.
Speaker 1: Shields on August.
Speaker 2: Twelfth, twenty nineteen, the very last day of the two
Speaker 2: year statute of limitations to bring the claim under Virginia law,
Speaker 2: the pair filed a federal civil rights lawsuit claiming that
Speaker 2: the police, the city, and the counter protesters had conspired
Speaker 2: to deprive them of their right to hold that Nazi rally,
Speaker 2: that by clearing the park, and that by refusing to
Speaker 2: beat back the CA counter protesters on their behalf, the
Speaker 2: police had violated their First Amendment rights and denied them
Speaker 2: their Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection. There are some
Speaker 2: other more bizarre claims involving wild allegations of a criminal
Speaker 2: conspiracy between Antifa and the government actors, but those rico
Speaker 2: allegations aren't really worth getting into. It's very silly stuff.
Speaker 2: The underlying idea, quoting from the suit, defendants intentionally encouraged
Speaker 2: and facilitated mob violence by counter protesters against lawful Unite
Speaker 2: the Right demonstrators, creating a civil disturbance as a pretext
Speaker 2: to disperse the demonstrators before the Unite the Right rally began.
Speaker 2: So they're saying that police didn't just let counter protesters
Speaker 2: interfere with the rally. They're saying they think police set
Speaker 2: that up so they'd have an excuse to then crack
Speaker 2: down on the Nazis.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 2: Rather than applying simple and proven techniques such as allowing
Speaker 2: Unite the Right demonstrators and counter protesters to use separate areas,
Speaker 2: the defendants forced them together into a restricted space, then
Speaker 2: deliberately communicated to counter protesters that attacks on Unite the
Speaker 2: Right demonstrators would go unpunished. Predictably, and as defendants intended,
Speaker 2: counter protesters attacked and assaulted United the Right demonstrators, and
Speaker 2: the defendants used those violent attacks against lawful demonstrators as
Speaker 2: a pretext to disperse the entire gathering. I mean, citation
Speaker 2: needed for most of that. But here's the thing. No
Speaker 2: one disputes that the police fucked up. The city admits it.
Speaker 2: The police kind of admitted it. The independent review flawed
Speaker 2: as it was found that to be the case. Protesters
Speaker 2: and counter protesters alike were dumbfounded by the complete and
Speaker 2: total inaction of the police who just stood there and
Speaker 2: watched as the violence unfolded. People with blood running down
Speaker 2: their faces were screaming at the police to do something, anything,
Speaker 2: and they really did just stand there. That's not in dispute.
Speaker 2: The legal question here is not did they do that?
Speaker 2: But can they do that? And the answer is unequivocally yes,
Speaker 2: yes they can. There isn't a law on the books
Speaker 2: or a decision in the case law that says they
Speaker 2: have to do a goddamn thing to help you. There
Speaker 2: are a disturbing number of cases bearing this out. There
Speaker 2: are cases in state courts like Loziito versus New York City.
Speaker 2: In February of twenty eleven, the NYPD was on a
Speaker 2: manhunt for a man on a stabbing spree. He'd already
Speaker 2: stabbed several people to death when he bore the train
Speaker 2: that morning, Acting on a tip that the serial stabber
Speaker 2: had been spotted on the subway platform, boarded the same train.
Speaker 2: They saw the man they were looking for and recognized him,
Speaker 2: but they would later say they thought he had a gun.
Speaker 2: Now again, he'd been on a stabbing spree for twenty
Speaker 2: four hours. Do you think if he had a gun,
Speaker 2: he might have I don't know, shot anyone prior to
Speaker 2: this moment rather than stabbing them all to death. But
Speaker 2: they say they thought he had a gun. So they
Speaker 2: locked themselves in the conductor's car and just watched through
Speaker 2: the window as their suspect brutally stabbed a man on
Speaker 2: the train repeatedly in the head, just a few feet
Speaker 2: away from where they were standing, but the victim fought back.
Speaker 2: Joseph Lozito managed to pin his assailant to the ground
Speaker 2: before losing consciousness from blood loss, and it was only
Speaker 2: after Lozito had disarmed and subdued his own attacker that
Speaker 2: the police felt safe enough to come out and make
Speaker 2: the arrest. But his lawsuit was dismissed. The judge acknowledged
Speaker 2: that the attack was shocking and horrific, but quote, the
Speaker 2: law is abundantly clear that no liability flows from negligence
Speaker 2: and the performance of a police function unless there is
Speaker 2: a special relationship. If you're not in their custody, you
Speaker 2: aren't their problem. That example lives large in my mind
Speaker 2: because it's just so immediate and clear cut, Like I
Speaker 2: can imagine them with their little faces pressed up against
Speaker 2: the train window, just watching this happen because they're afraid.
Speaker 2: But that's a New York State court case, so it's
Speaker 2: not really binding here. But here are some that are.
Speaker 5: This is case number zero four two seventy eight Town
Speaker 5: of Castle Rock versus Gonzales I thought the Castle Rock
Speaker 5: was a nineteen twenties dance, but it's also a town
Speaker 5: in Colorado. The cases here on rid of Cerchiarii to
Speaker 5: the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. The facts
Speaker 5: are truly horrible.
Speaker 2: That is antonin Scalia making a little joke before announcing
Speaker 2: a decision. That should make you question what the courts
Speaker 2: think the police are even for. In two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court ruled in Castle Rock ve. Gonzales that
Speaker 2: the police in Castle Rock, Colorado, had no affirmative duty
Speaker 2: to enforce a restraining order, and that their refusal to
Speaker 2: do so had not violated Jessica Gonzalez's Fourteenth Amendment right
Speaker 2: to equal protection. Jessica Gonzalez had a restraining order against
Speaker 2: her estranged husband. He was not allowed near her or
Speaker 2: her home, and he was only allowed limited contact with
Speaker 2: their daughters. But one afternoon in nineteen ninety nine, he
Speaker 2: kidnapped their three daughters. Jessica called the police. The officers
Speaker 2: who responded to her call told her there was nothing
Speaker 2: they could do about the restraining order, and they suggested
Speaker 2: that her husband would probably bring the girls home later
Speaker 2: in the evening. And she should just wait and if
Speaker 2: the girls weren't back by ten pm, she could call
Speaker 2: them again. Around eight thirty, she managed to get a
Speaker 2: hold of her husband on the phone, and he told
Speaker 2: her he had the girls at an amusement park in
Speaker 2: a neighboring city. So she called the police again and
Speaker 2: told them where he was and asked them to put
Speaker 2: out an all points bulletin for the area with his
Speaker 2: license plate number. They refused, and they told her again,
Speaker 2: just wait till ten pm. They'll be home. She called
Speaker 2: again at ten pm and they told her this time
Speaker 2: to wait until midnight, So she went to her husband's
Speaker 2: apartment on her own and found nothing. She called the
Speaker 2: police again at midnight. Finally she went to the police
Speaker 2: station herself to try to talk to somebody in person,
Speaker 2: and nobody cared. They just weren't interested in trying to
Speaker 2: find her children or their father. But he found them.
Speaker 2: At three am, Jessica Gonzalez's a strange husband showed up
Speaker 2: at the police station with a gun. He'd purchased that
Speaker 2: gun earlier that same evening, sometime after he abducted his daughters,
Speaker 2: and certainly before he used it to murder them. After
Speaker 2: police shot him dead inside the police station. They found
Speaker 2: the girl's bodies outside in his truck.
Speaker 5: We conclude that Colorado law did not give responded an
Speaker 5: entitlement to enforcement of the restraining order.
Speaker 2: The Supreme Court ruled that there was nothing in the
Speaker 2: law that required the police to enforce the restraining order,
Speaker 2: and even if there were such a mandate, that wouldn't
Speaker 2: give her the right to have it enforced. And even
Speaker 2: if she did have the hypethetical right to have that
Speaker 2: hypothetical mandate enforced, that right would have no monetary value.
Speaker 2: So there's really no due process claim at issue here.
Speaker 2: And then there's Toshaney the Winnebago decided by the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court in nineteen eighty nine. This one doesn't actually involve
Speaker 2: the police specifically, but it cited repeatedly in the lawsuits
Speaker 2: we're talking about because it held that a government agency,
Speaker 2: any government agency, although in this case it's the Department
Speaker 2: of Social Services, has no affirmative duty to protect anyone
Speaker 2: from any kind of harm that the government itself had
Speaker 2: not created. Joshua D. Shaney was a four year old
Speaker 2: boy whose father beat him so badly he was left
Speaker 2: in a coma. And this was after Social services had
Speaker 2: ignored reports of abuse for a year. When Joshua's stepmother
Speaker 2: went to the police to report seeing the boy's father
Speaker 2: hit him, they brushed her off and referred her to
Speaker 2: social services, and so she made the report to Social services.
Speaker 2: Neighbors seeing and hearing the toddler being beaten, and the
Speaker 2: police sent them to social services. The boy was seen
Speaker 2: in the emergency room three separate times, and doctors reported
Speaker 2: seeing the signs of abuse to Social services all three times.
Speaker 2: After the first hospital visit, the boy was briefly removed
Speaker 2: from the home, but the state agency quickly returned him
Speaker 2: to the custody of his abuser. A caseworker visited the
Speaker 2: home at least twenty times, and her notes show that
Speaker 2: she saw and documented signs of abuse, but no one
Speaker 2: did anything. After Joshua was put into a coma by
Speaker 2: his father's abuse, that social worker said, I just knew
Speaker 2: the phone would ring some day and Joshua would be dead,
Speaker 2: but she didn't do anything. The court ruled that only
Speaker 2: Joshua's father could be held liable for the abuse, that
Speaker 2: there was no liability for the state agency that repeatedly
Speaker 2: returned the child to the custody of his abuser. Further,
Speaker 2: the opinion says the state's failure to protect an individual
Speaker 2: against private violence simply does not constitute a violation of
Speaker 2: the due process claus The The Shainey case is cited
Speaker 2: again and again in cases attempting to hold the police
Speaker 2: or any government agency accountable or standing by and letting
Speaker 2: people get hurt. Because the state is not required to
Speaker 2: help you, they can't be held liable for anything that
Speaker 2: happens to you simply because they actively chose not to intervene.
Speaker 2: The only real exception to that rule are if you
Speaker 2: are in state custody or if the dangerous situation was
Speaker 2: created by that state actor. There are a nauseating number
Speaker 2: of cases establishing the parameters here, but I'll just give
Speaker 2: you one more. Kantie and Baila filed their suit in Virginia,
Speaker 2: so when it was dismissed, they appealed it to the
Speaker 2: Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, And there is a Fourth
Speaker 2: Circuit Court of Appeals case that flushes out their interpretation
Speaker 2: of Toshaney. A nineteen ninety five opinion in the case
Speaker 2: of Carol Pinder the officer Donald Johnson. In nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: Carol Pinder called the police. Her abusive ex boyfriend, Don
Speaker 2: Pittman had broken into her home and he was punching
Speaker 2: her and breaking things and threatening to kill her and
Speaker 2: her children. The officer who responded to her call took
Speaker 2: Pittman into custody and assured Carol Pinder that he would
Speaker 2: be locked up overnight until he could be brought before
Speaker 2: a judge in the morning. She specifically asked she was
Speaker 2: concerned about going to work that evening because Pittman had
Speaker 2: threatened her before. He'd actually only just been released from jail.
Speaker 2: He'd been convicted of attempt at arson for trying to
Speaker 2: set her house on fire just ten months earlier. The
Speaker 2: officer specifically told Carol Pinder that Pittman would be in
Speaker 2: jail all night and that she wouldn't be able to
Speaker 2: file her complaint until tomorrow morning anyway, so she went
Speaker 2: to work. She went to work that evening because the
Speaker 2: officer promised her that this man would be in jail
Speaker 2: until tomorrow morning, when she could speak to the judge.
Speaker 2: But Pittman was released within hours, and while she was
Speaker 2: at work that evening, Pittman set Carol Pinder's house on fire,
Speaker 2: just like he promised. He would do just like he'd
Speaker 2: done once before, and her three children were inside. All
Speaker 2: three of those children died in the fire, and that
Speaker 2: fire was set just eighteen days after the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: decided the Toshaney case, and the Fourth Circuit cites to
Speaker 2: Shaney throughout their opinion. In Pinder, there are only two
Speaker 2: situations where the police officer would have any affirmative duty
Speaker 2: to protect anyone. One is if there is a custodial relationship.
Speaker 2: If you are in their custody, they're a little bit
Speaker 2: responsible for your safety. So if Carol Pinder had been,
Speaker 2: for instance, in the county jail, the police would be
Speaker 2: responsible if her ex murdered her. But making a promise
Speaker 2: to Carol Pinder meant nothing. Promises aren't legally binding. Again
Speaker 2: from the opinion quote, state actors may not disclaim liability
Speaker 2: when they themselves throw others to the lions. They do not,
Speaker 2: by contrast, in title persons who rely on pises of
Speaker 2: aid to some greater degree of protection from lions at large.
Speaker 2: And that's the second exception from the Dushaney case. Right,
Speaker 2: they can't throw you to the lions, meaning they can't
Speaker 2: create circumstances that directly cause harm to come to you
Speaker 2: at the hands of someone else, and that's what's called
Speaker 2: the state created danger doctrine. On that front, the Fourth
Speaker 2: Circuit is pretty clear. They wrote in twenty nineteen that
Speaker 2: they've never written in an opinion recognizing the validity of
Speaker 2: such a claim. It's a very high bar to clear
Speaker 2: in the opinion of the Fourth Circuit, so high in fact,
Speaker 2: that despite their claim that they believe it is a
Speaker 2: valid hypothetical legal idea, it's never actually happened in the
Speaker 2: Fourth Circuit. There are examples in other jurisdictions, but honestly,
Speaker 2: reading these examples, I don't understand why the police in
Speaker 2: these cases are more liable than in some cases. Is
Speaker 2: where the court found that they weren't. There are several
Speaker 2: cases involving people who were very intoxicated. So in one case,
Speaker 2: someone was pulled over while driving drunk, and the officer
Speaker 2: took the driver, who was intoxicated, into custody and they
Speaker 2: took his keys, but the female passenger in the car,
Speaker 2: who was not drunk, was not allowed to have the
Speaker 2: keys to drive herself home. They just left her on
Speaker 2: the side of the road and she was subsequently raped
Speaker 2: and she was able to successfully sue those police officers,
Speaker 2: saying they were responsible for this state created danger. She
Speaker 2: would not have been there alone on the side of
Speaker 2: the road with no transportation if the police had not
Speaker 2: arrested the driver of the vehicle for being intoxicated and
Speaker 2: left her without a way to get home. There was
Speaker 2: another case where police responded to a dispute at a
Speaker 2: bar and they threw one man out, took away his
Speaker 2: key so that he couldn't drive home, and they wouldn't
Speaker 2: let him back in, so he couldn't drive home, and
Speaker 2: he couldn't come inside, and they didn't offer to take
Speaker 2: him home. So he's just out there in the cold
Speaker 2: at night in jeans and a T shirt, and he
Speaker 2: did eventually die of hypothermia. And in that case, too,
Speaker 2: the police were found to be responsible for having created
Speaker 2: the dangerous circumstances in which harm came to him. So
Speaker 2: it does happen. I'm not saying it's never happened. I'm
Speaker 2: just saying the Fourth Circuit says they've never seen it.
Speaker 2: All the cases the Fourth Circuit recognizes where a state
Speaker 2: actor can be said to have had an affirmative duty
Speaker 2: to anyone were cases where the injured party was in
Speaker 2: police custody. A Fourth Circuit ruling in dove Rosa in
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen further clarified their view of what constitutes state
Speaker 2: created danger. Quote, the state, through its affirmative acts, must
Speaker 2: itself create the dangerous situation that resulted in the victim's injury.
Speaker 2: No constitutional liability exists where the state actors had no
Speaker 2: hand in creating the danger, but simply stood by and
Speaker 2: did nothing when suspicious circumstances dictated a more active role
Speaker 2: for them. So deliberate indifference, just standing there and watching
Speaker 2: harm come to someone and choosing to do nothing, that
Speaker 2: doesn't rise to the level of actively creating the harmful circumstance.
Speaker 2: Because doing nothing isn't doing something. Doing nothing is not
Speaker 2: an action, So the act of doing nothing does not
Speaker 2: constitute the affirmative step of taking an action. That sounds
Speaker 2: like meaningless circular reasoning, but I promise you that comes
Speaker 2: back again. The act of doing nothing is not legally
Speaker 2: an action at all, And that probably feels like a
Speaker 2: lot of extraneous detail. But all of this has been
Speaker 2: to say that anyone filing a lawsuit anywhere in the
Speaker 2: United States is going to face a steep uphill battle
Speaker 2: if they're trying to prove that the government had any response.
Speaker 2: It's ability to prevent harm caused by a non state actor.
Speaker 2: The state can't violate your right to free speech, but
Speaker 2: they don't have to help you speak. The state can't
Speaker 2: burn your house down, but they don't have to stop
Speaker 2: your ex from doing it. The state can't deny you
Speaker 2: the right to hold your demonstration, but they can just
Speaker 2: stand there and watch as the situation becomes too unsafe
Speaker 2: to allow it to continue. And that legal battle would
Speaker 2: be even steeper here in the Fourth Circuit, where the
Speaker 2: Rosa and Pinder cases were decided. The Fourth Circuit does
Speaker 2: not believe that it is possible for the state actor
Speaker 2: to be responsible for any dangerous situation unless the injured
Speaker 2: party was already in their custody. And by the time
Speaker 2: greg Contein warren Bylaw filed this suit in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: they had every reason to know it was a waste
Speaker 2: of time. They may not have been familiar with the
Speaker 2: case law, and they didn't have the money to hire
Speaker 2: an attorney, but they did ask a friend who is
Speaker 2: a lawyer to ghost write their complaint, and they surely
Speaker 2: knew that other lawsuits making the exact same claims about
Speaker 2: the exact same events had already been dismissed by the
Speaker 2: same court. Kanti and bylaw filed their suit pro say,
Speaker 2: meaning without a lawyer, and prose litigans are given a
Speaker 2: lot of leeway by the court because they don't have
Speaker 2: a lawyer's help. Their filings are interpreted much more charitably,
Speaker 2: but they aren't allowed to secretly have a lawyer who
Speaker 2: helps them in order to have it both ways, to
Speaker 2: both have legal counsel and be afforded the leniency granted
Speaker 2: to those who don't. Technically, though, you can get a
Speaker 2: lawyer to ghost write your lawsuit and then just sort
Speaker 2: of proceed from there. It's not preferred. Some jurisdictions require
Speaker 2: you to disclose it, and most would prefer it, but
Speaker 2: the ethics committees in many jurisdictions have said, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: you can do this. And because Kanti and Beylaw accidentally
Speaker 2: filed their lawsuit in the wrong jurisdiction, they originally filed
Speaker 2: their suit in a district whose local rules do require
Speaker 2: you to submit a signed form disclosing that you had
Speaker 2: a ghostwriter. So I know that they asked their friend
Speaker 2: Augustus Sole Invictus to draft this complaint, which again they
Speaker 2: then filed in the wrong jurisdiction. In addition to being
Speaker 2: an attorney, Augustus Invictus was a scheduled speaker at the
Speaker 2: United the Right rally, and he's had some legal troubles
Speaker 2: of his own in the years since. Who's recently convicted
Speaker 2: of a felony for intimidating a group of college students
Speaker 2: as part of a mob of torch wielding white supremacists,
Speaker 2: But more relevant to the story at hand, After drafting
Speaker 2: that complaint for Beilan Kanti back in twenty nineteen, he
Speaker 2: was wasn't really very available to keep helping them out.
Speaker 2: He was arrested in December of twenty nineteen for allegedly
Speaker 2: abducting his wife at gunpoint because she was trying to
Speaker 2: leave him. According to her own sworn statements in later proceedings,
Speaker 2: she was coerced into not testifying at trial, so he
Speaker 2: was never convicted on those charges. But at the time,
Speaker 2: back in early twenty twenty, he was pretty preoccupied with
Speaker 2: his own problems, so Kanti and Baila were kind of
Speaker 2: on their own and it was truly a hopeless case.
Speaker 2: By early twenty twenty, when it came time for the
Speaker 2: pair to try to write some motions in their case,
Speaker 2: the same court that would be reading those motions had
Speaker 2: already dismissed four separate lawsuits making the same argument. Well,
Speaker 2: four lawsuits, I guess were two in some change, because
Speaker 2: one of those plaintiffs kept rears changing his claim, and
Speaker 2: he filed three separate, slightly different cases. But the first
Speaker 2: lawsuit brought before the federal court in the Western District
Speaker 2: of Virginia that claimed that the police violated people's rights
Speaker 2: by allowing the violence is the only one of those
Speaker 2: cases that was filed by a counter protester. Robert Turner
Speaker 2: was protesting the Nazi rally when he was pepper sprayed
Speaker 2: and physically assaulted while police just stood there and watched.
Speaker 2: Turner's lawyer seems to have been at least marginally more
Speaker 2: competent than either Jason Kessler or Warren Baylaw's lawyers, so
Speaker 2: he did come prepared to make an argument for state
Speaker 2: created danger, alleging there had been a stand down order
Speaker 2: given to all police on sen ahead of time. It
Speaker 2: is alleged in the suit, and to some degree widely
Speaker 2: believed in the community, that the officers had been instructed
Speaker 2: ahead of time to do nothing, to just let the
Speaker 2: violence happen. And that's a controversial theory. Does it feel true?
Speaker 1: Kind of? Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, There's a lot of circumstantial and anecdotal evidence that
Speaker 2: makes it feel very possible. No evidence was ever produced
Speaker 2: that proved or disproved that any actual standdown order was
Speaker 2: ever given by any police agency to its officers ahead of.
Speaker 1: Time that day.
Speaker 2: Both the city and state police have categorically denied it.
Speaker 2: Two witnesses, though, a police captain and the police chief's
Speaker 2: personal assistant, confirm that after the violence began they did
Speaker 2: hear Police Chief Al Thomas say let them fight. It'll
Speaker 2: make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly, which is
Speaker 2: pretty damning. But it wasn't given as a demand that
Speaker 2: was then disseminated to officers on scene, and by the
Speaker 2: time he said it, it's already what was happening. Whether
Speaker 2: that was the plan or not, there are scores of
Speaker 2: eyewitness accounts, sworn statements, police after action interviews, and video
Speaker 2: from police body cameras that prove that officers were unwilling
Speaker 2: to act. We don't know why people approached lines of
Speaker 2: cops begging them for help, and the officers just stood
Speaker 2: there in silence. Other officers curtly answered that they would
Speaker 2: intervene if and when commanded to do so, but they
Speaker 2: wouldn't say what it would take for that command to happen.
Speaker 2: Some officers reported being uncertain about what they were expected
Speaker 2: to do or unwilling to risk their safety in a
Speaker 2: volatile situation. Some of the police department employees whod been
Speaker 2: deployed to hold intersections where the roads had been closed
Speaker 2: weren't even sworn police officers, so they didn't carry weapons.
Speaker 2: Whether this impacts how you feel about it or not,
Speaker 2: the fact is a lot of them were scared. Whether
Speaker 2: or not an actual standdown order had been issued that
Speaker 2: morning was, according to Turner's lawsuit, an issue of fact
Speaker 2: that could be determined a trial, But in alleging it,
Speaker 2: they sought to establish something important. If true, Their argument
Speaker 2: is that this constitute's state created danger. The dangerous situation
Speaker 2: was the direct result of an order given by the
Speaker 2: police chief, an order that was then carried out by
Speaker 2: the police officers that sounds like it could pass the
Speaker 2: test right. The police directly contributed to the danger by
Speaker 2: following the order to stand down. But that's not how
Speaker 2: the court felt. In the original opinion dismissing Turner's case,
Speaker 2: Judge Norman Moon wrote, the incident in terms of a
Speaker 2: standdown order is nothing more than an artful re characterization
Speaker 2: of inaction as action, and the Fourth Circuit agreed with
Speaker 2: him on appeal. The law has clearly established that in
Speaker 2: action is not enough. Now they're clarifying that the act
Speaker 2: of ordering in action ahead of time doesn't count as
Speaker 2: taking in action at all. That's still just in action.
Speaker 1: Baffling.
Speaker 2: The next three lawsuits all came from one man, Jason Kessler,
Speaker 2: the permit holder for the rally, and what bore you
Speaker 2: to death at this point, because the three lawsuits are
Speaker 2: all slightly different. In two of them, he convinced other
Speaker 2: rally participants to add their names as coplain to one
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 1: It's just him.
Speaker 2: The first time around, he only sued the city, but
Speaker 2: in the second two lawsuits he's adding various city officials
Speaker 2: and police agencies and the claims of all the little
Speaker 2: bit as he goes too. But the strategy is pretty
Speaker 2: much the same throughout. Instead of trying to argue that
Speaker 2: what happened does meet the legal standard under Dashenyan Pinder
Speaker 2: just don't mention it at all and hope no one
Speaker 2: else does either, And so instead he relies on an
Speaker 2: argument about the Heckler's veto, which is the situation that's
Speaker 2: created where the state infringes on someone's free speech because
Speaker 2: their speech is potentially very unpopular and they're worried that
Speaker 2: there will be counter protesting that becomes disruptive. So in
Speaker 2: order to prevent a disruption by people who oppose the speaker,
Speaker 2: they simply prevent the speaker from speaking, And of course
Speaker 2: they can't do that, right. The city couldn't have legally
Speaker 2: denied him the permit just because they were worried the
Speaker 2: counter protest might turn violent. They tried to do that,
Speaker 2: and a federal court issued an injunction and gave him
Speaker 2: the permit back. So that's not what happened. He had
Speaker 2: the permit, and it also would have been a violation
Speaker 2: of his rights and the rights of the other attendees
Speaker 2: at his Nazi rally if the police had responded to
Speaker 2: the disorder by merely removing them from the area, if
Speaker 2: only they were made to leave and everyone else was
Speaker 2: allowed to stay. Kessler suits alleged that the declaration of
Speaker 2: the unlawful assembly was discriminatory because it was motivated by
Speaker 2: the content of the speech at the rally. So he's
Speaker 2: saying that only rally attendees were made to leave the park. Well,
Speaker 2: only rally attendees were inside the park, and the park
Speaker 2: was cleared. It was a very violent, but viewpoint neutral
Speaker 2: barrage of pepper spray. So I won't say nobody's rights
Speaker 2: got violated. I think some people's rights got a little violated.
Speaker 2: But jas Sain Kessler failed to convince the court in
Speaker 2: three separate lawsuits and one appeal that his First Amendment
Speaker 2: rights were infringed upon in this particular way. The opinion
Speaker 2: from the appeals court is brief, noting succinctly that the
Speaker 2: rally goers were engaged in violence prior to the dispersal
Speaker 2: order and quote. Kessler's complaint lacks any plausible allegation that
Speaker 2: the unlawful assembly declaration and the dispersal order discriminated based
Speaker 2: on content, So everybody had to leave.
Speaker 1: It was fair.
Speaker 2: And as much as Kessler's suit tries to dance around
Speaker 2: having to argue against the precedent, said into Cheney, that's
Speaker 2: where we end up. The lower court opinion says it
Speaker 2: plainly the cases he tried to cite don't really apply.
Speaker 2: He had his permit, the state hadn't proactively prevented him
Speaker 2: from holding the event out of fear of public hostility quote,
Speaker 2: but the law is clear that defendants had no constitutional
Speaker 2: obligation to prevent that public hostility. I mean, for God's sake,
Speaker 2: If the law says the police don't have to do
Speaker 2: anything to stop three children from dying in a house fire,
Speaker 2: even if they promised those children's mother that they wouldn't
Speaker 2: let the man who'd previously set their house on fire
Speaker 2: out of jail after he threatened to set their house
Speaker 2: on fire again, then why would that same law entitle
Speaker 2: you to proactive police protection to give Nazi salutes in
Speaker 2: a public park. There is no constitutional right to police
Speaker 2: protection from getting heckled. You can't sue the city because
Speaker 2: everyone hated your Nazi rally. You very well could have
Speaker 2: had your Nazi rally if the guys you invited to
Speaker 2: the Nazi rally hadn't started brutalizing members of the clergy
Speaker 2: in the middle of the goddamn street before it even started.
Speaker 2: But now I'm editorializing so by the time Greg Kantian
Speaker 2: Warren Baylaw file their version of this same suit, Robert
Speaker 2: Turner's suit has already been not only dismissed, but the
Speaker 2: dismissal was upheld on appeal. Again, that's the only one
Speaker 2: of these suits that was brought by a counter protest or,
Speaker 2: so the court is being I guess you could say fair.
Speaker 2: That doesn't feel right, but the court is saying that
Speaker 2: the cops are allowed to watch everybody get their ass
Speaker 2: beat in the streets. It's content neutral. And Jason Kessler
Speaker 2: has had two suits dismissed already, and he filed his
Speaker 2: third lawsuit the same day that Kanti and Baylaw filed THEIRS,
Speaker 2: because it was the last day under the statute of
Speaker 2: limitations to file anything related to that day. But Kanti
Speaker 2: and BiLaw accidentally filed THEIRS in the wrong jurisdiction, so
Speaker 2: by the time it gets transferred to the right court
Speaker 2: almost a year later, Kessler's third and final lawsuit has
Speaker 2: already been torn to shreds and it's been dismissed.
Speaker 1: So all the arguments have been made more than once.
Speaker 2: There isn't much to gain by throwing the same shit
Speaker 2: at the wall. Just to see if it's going to
Speaker 2: stick this time, but they did it anyway.
Speaker 3: So we just did a scattershot thing and sued everybody
Speaker 3: that we thought that we could we could possibly sue,
Speaker 3: and then shoot first, asked questions later. The initial complaint,
Speaker 3: Greg Contey and I had help from Augustus and Victus
Speaker 3: putting it together. But then we've had a lot of
Speaker 3: help with other.
Speaker 1: People and they lost too.
Speaker 2: By twenty twenty three, when the case was finally dismissed,
Speaker 2: Warren Beylaw and Greg Conti weren't even really friends anymore.
Speaker 2: The chaotic end of their short lived Neo Nazi political
Speaker 2: party and the still unresolved allegations that maybe somebody in
Speaker 2: leadership stole tens of thousands of dollars in member donations
Speaker 2: is a story for some other day, But in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, it's just Warren Beylaw who files to appeal
Speaker 2: the decision, and now he finally has a lawyer, Glenn Allen.
Speaker 2: When the Fourth Circuit finally upheld the dismissal laws lawsuit
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty four, the opinion takes the case point
Speaker 2: by point. You don't always get that in an appellate decision,
Speaker 2: but I guess they just wanted to make things abundantly
Speaker 2: clear because these guys were obviously having trouble understanding the rulings.
Speaker 2: It's actually kind of brutal in that detached, icy way
Speaker 2: that legal professionals sometimes eviscerate each other. I'll put it
Speaker 2: in the show notes, but i won't get too deep
Speaker 2: into it, because I'm willing to admit that not everyone
Speaker 2: is going to find it as exciting as I did.
Speaker 2: The opinion opens with a question. This appeal asks a
Speaker 2: straightforward legal question, does the First Amendment protect speech amid violence?
Speaker 2: More specifically, does the First Amendment obligate police officers to
Speaker 2: protect the constitutional rights of protesters amid violence. We've already
Speaker 2: suggested that the answer is no, and the citation they
Speaker 2: give for this is their own prior ruling in Jason
Speaker 2: Kessler's lawsuit, which makes the same arguments about the same facts.
Speaker 2: And the opinion continues Warren Baylaw asks that we hold otherwise,
Speaker 2: and after a brief summary of the facts in the case,
Speaker 2: the opinion reads, maylaw would have us seize on these
Speaker 2: facts to transform the First Amendment from a shield to
Speaker 2: guard against invasive speech regulations into a sword to wield
Speaker 2: against violent speech disruptions. We declined to forge such a weapon.
Speaker 2: Glen Allen was still representing We're in baylaw when they
Speaker 2: tried to get this case in front of the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court earlier this year. And I know that Glen Allen
Speaker 2: knows that the police don't have an affirmative duty to
Speaker 2: protect anyone, because until he got fired for being a
Speaker 2: neo Nazi, he was working as a defense attorney representing
Speaker 2: the Baltimore Police Department. So I have to imagine working
Speaker 2: for a notoriously brutal and corrupt police department in the
Speaker 2: Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, I have to imagine he
Speaker 2: was familiar with cases liked Shaneyy Whin a Bagehope in
Speaker 2: der Vy Johnson, and Castle Rockvey Gonzalez. But he pretends
Speaker 2: not to be writing This breaks perhaps the most fundamental
Speaker 2: pact citizens have with their government. We grant a monopoly
Speaker 2: on violence to the sovereign in exchange for which it
Speaker 2: assumes the duty to provide basic protection to life and limb.
Speaker 2: Once that duty is wilfully abandoned, there is no telling
Speaker 2: where the trouble ends. Well, Glen, I have some shocking
Speaker 2: news for you that pact has been broken. There is
Speaker 2: no pact that the state will protect your life and limb.
Speaker 2: What he's saying is that his client is the victim.
Speaker 2: All the men in that park were just innocently expressing
Speaker 2: their First Amendment rights and I didn't want to hurt anyone.
Speaker 2: They trusted that if someone needed to be hurt, the
Speaker 2: government would do it for them.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 2: Those citizens who are targeted by both criminal miscreants and
Speaker 2: corrupt government are placed between Scylla and charybdis. Upon seeing
Speaker 2: that their government has relinquished the monopoly on violence, they
Speaker 2: have two options. They can resort to self help and
Speaker 2: take matters into their own hands where they can take
Speaker 2: a beating.
Speaker 1: They had to do it, you see.
Speaker 2: They had to punch, kickshove, choke, beat, bludget a maze
Speaker 2: all of those people. They were defending themselves. Never mind
Speaker 2: the videos that show them organizing themselves into little raiding parties,
Speaker 2: departing the safety of the park to dart out into
Speaker 2: the streets to try to get a few hits in.
Speaker 2: But why not? Why did they try to hurt people?
Speaker 2: I know?
Speaker 5: Why?
Speaker 2: Why appeal a case that can't win, a case that's
Speaker 2: already been argued from every angle, based on the exact
Speaker 2: same underlying to the exact same judge. Why even after
Speaker 2: the Fourth Circuit ruled against him, do they bother trying
Speaker 2: to get it in front of the Supreme Court. I mean,
Speaker 2: I know political wins have shifted and everything's upside down now.
Speaker 2: I'm not so naive that I'm saying there's no sliver
Speaker 2: of hope that maybe the Supreme Court would throw a
Speaker 2: Nazia bone just for fun. I could see why they'd
Speaker 2: be hopeful, but even the most optimistic fascist surely understands
Speaker 2: that as much as the current administration might enjoy their
Speaker 2: willingness to fight the race war, there's just no political
Speaker 2: utility in upsetting the settled case law that keeps cops
Speaker 2: safe from having to do the thing we all like
Speaker 2: to imagine, therefore.
Speaker 1: Protecting and serving.
Speaker 2: But they weren't really fighting to win, were they. I mean,
Speaker 2: some of the arguments being made might lead you to
Speaker 2: believe that they don't know what they're talking about, And
Speaker 2: maybe some of that really was since year and they
Speaker 2: thought it would work, But mostly they knew it was symbolic.
Speaker 2: After the Supreme Court denied their petition last month, Baylaw
Speaker 2: finished his rambling substack posts with this message. Lastly, I
Speaker 2: would like to thank every last man and woman who
Speaker 2: attended the United the Right rally on August eleven and twelfth,
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. This lawsuit was a symbolic fight for all
Speaker 2: the young men who sacrificed more at Charlesville than I did,
Speaker 2: All those who spent years in prison, who had their
Speaker 2: careers and reputations destroyed, who ended their own lives, who
Speaker 2: still have the threat of imprisonment hanging over their heads.
Speaker 2: For all their sakes, it was worth it. Just days
Speaker 2: after the United the Right rally, all the way back
Speaker 2: in August of twenty seventeen, Beyla wrote an essay for
Speaker 2: Richard Spencer's alright dot com.
Speaker 1: The post ends.
Speaker 2: With we have with us the awakened fury of the
Speaker 2: force which created and built the United States, the righteous
Speaker 2: anger of white men who will not let tyranny tried
Speaker 2: on our rights any longer. They don't think it was fair.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter what the law says. There are white men.
Speaker 2: They invented the Western world. They created this system of laws,
Speaker 2: or whatever those laws by definition exist for them. The
Speaker 2: court must simply be confused or corrupt, probably corrupt.
Speaker 1: It was a.
Speaker 2: Setup, a cover up, a conspiracy against them. It was
Speaker 2: the Jews, it was the communists. It isn't fair. As
Speaker 2: Jason Kessler said in an interview with Warren Baylaw last
Speaker 2: year on the seventh anniversary of that deadly Nazi.
Speaker 4: Rally, I mean, it's the right thing to do. It's
Speaker 4: what a real political movement does. It's what real activists do.
Speaker 4: They don't just give up and move on. They try
Speaker 4: and fight to the name. And the truth is is,
Speaker 4: you know, we should have won those suits.
Speaker 1: They have to fight back.
Speaker 2: They're all quite sure that they've been wronged, and they
Speaker 2: just can't let it go. I guess, to be fair,
Speaker 2: neither can I. For eight years, I've been trying to
Speaker 2: sort out what really happens when a Nazi rally comes
Speaker 2: to town. I've got a hard drive full of photos
Speaker 2: and videos, diagrams and annotated images, thousands of pages of
Speaker 2: court documents, half a dozen spiral notebooks with my own
Speaker 2: handwritten court room notes. I've written about it for publications,
Speaker 2: for my own website, and for podcasts. I've live tweeted
Speaker 2: a month long trial, and I still don't really know
Speaker 2: the answer. This may be the only thing the court
Speaker 2: has been one hundred percent clear and consistent on. You
Speaker 2: absolutely do not have any right to expect a cop
Speaker 2: to help you if he doesn't feel like it, not
Speaker 2: even if he promised, not even if it would be
Speaker 2: easy for him to do it, not even if it
Speaker 2: would save your life. It's not a violation of anyone's
Speaker 2: rights for a public servant to stand completely still and
Speaker 2: watch you die. It's a little bit funny to see crime.
Speaker 2: Maybe Nazis sending themselves into hysterics insisting that they have
Speaker 2: a constitutional right to see Kyle in the park with
Speaker 2: police protection. They're not entitled to that protection, but neither
Speaker 2: are you. Neither were my neighbors who were beaten in
Speaker 2: the streets. Neither were Jessica Gonzalez's daughters or Carol Pinder's children.
Speaker 2: The police have absolutely no duty to protect us. They
Speaker 2: have plenty of power to hurt us, and they're well
Speaker 2: within the bounds of the law to passively create conditions
Speaker 2: where neo Nazis are free to hurt us with impunity.
Speaker 2: They may have no duty to us, but please try
Speaker 2: to remember we all have a duty to each other,
Speaker 2: so be good to your neighbors and keep each other safe.
Speaker 2: Weird Little Guys the same production of Pool Zone Media
Speaker 2: and iHeartRadio. It's research, written and recorded by me, Molly Conger.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The
Speaker 2: show is edited by the wildly talented Mary Gigan. The
Speaker 2: theme music was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email
Speaker 2: me at Weird Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: I will definitely read it, but I probably won't answer it.
Speaker 2: It's nothing personal. I don't answer any of my emails.
Speaker 2: You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other
Speaker 2: listeners on the Weird Little Guys supreddit. Just don't most
Speaker 2: anything that's going to make you on my words, Little
Speaker 2: Guys
Speaker 1: Mhm