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Jury orders organizers of antisemitic Charlottesville rally to pay $26M in damages
[IsraelTimes] After a monthlong civil trial, jurors remain deadlocked on two key claims in case against 2017 ’Unite The Right’ rally where neo-Nazi
...adherents of a philosophy that was seen even at the time as pure evil, which makes them either consciously and purely evil, or attention-seeking ratbags. Pick one, or both....
s chanted ’Jews will not replace us’
The pre-verdict version of this article was not so bold, calling them only white nationalists, though they neglected the scare quotes.
A jury ordered 17 “white nationalist”
...scare quotes throughout are mine...
leaders and organizations to pay more than $26 million in damages on Tuesday over the violence that erupted during the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017.
That’s the one where the gun toters were from several chapters of Redneck Revolt/John Brown Gun Club — which calls itself Antifa’s militia wing — pretending to be white supremacists. In a just world, they would be the ones tried and fined...
After a nearly monthlong civil trial, the jury in a US District Court deadlocked on two key claims but found the “white nationalists” liable on four other claims in the lawsuit filed by nine people who suffered physical or emotional injuries during the two days of demonstrations.

Attorney Roberta Kaplan said the plaintiffs’ lawyers plan to refile the suit so a new jury can decide the two deadlocked claims. She called the amount of damages awarded from the others counts "eye opening."

"That sends a loud message," Kaplan said.

The verdict, though mixed, is a rebuke to the white nationalist movement, particularly for the two dozen individuals and organizations accused in a federal lawsuit of orchestrating violence against African Americans, Jews and others in a meticulously planned conspiracy.

White nationalist leader Richard Spencer vowed to appeal, saying the "entire theory of that verdict is fundamentally flawed."

He said plaintiffs’ attorneys made it clear before the trial that they wanted to use the case to bankrupt him and other defendants.

"It was activism by means of lawsuits, and that is absolutely outrageous," he said. "I’m doing fine right now because I had kind of accepted in my heart the worst that could happen. I had hope, of course, but I’m not terribly surprised or crestfallen."

Jurors were unable to reach unanimous verdicts on two pivotal claims based on a 150-year-old federal law passed after the Civil War to shield freed slaves from violence and protect their civil rights. The Ku Klux Klan Act contains a rarely used provision that allows private citizens to sue other citizens for civil rights violations.
Such an queer basis for a lawsuit. I’d be inclined to vote against it on that basis alone, but I wasn’t asked.
Under those claims, the plaintiffs asked the jury to find that the defendants engaged in a conspiracy to commit racially motivated violence and that they knew about the conspiracy but failed to stop it from being carried out. Jurors could not agree on those claims.

The jury did find the defendants liable under a Virginia state law conspiracy claim and awarded $11 million in damages to the plaintiffs under that claim. Jurors also found five of the main organizers of the rally liable under a claim that alleged they subjected two of the plaintiffs to intimidation, harassment or violence that was motivated by racial, religious or ethnic animosity. The jury awarded the plaintiffs $1.5 million in damages on that claim.

The final two claims were made against James Alex Fields Jr.,
...also in our archives as James A. Fields, diagnosed schizophrenic among other things, poor man. Hopefully he is getting the treatment he needs in prison...
an avowed Hitler admirer
...so many schizophrenics admire Hitler, Napoleon, and so forth. Given it’s a function of their madness, one can’t judge them for it as one would a sane preference in that direction...
who intentionally drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one woman and injuring 19.
Queerly enough, Heather Heyer apparently died of a heart attack, not of being hit by a car. But the injured definitely discovered why steel wins over flesh...
The jury found Fields, who is serving life in prison for murder and hate crimes, liable on an assault or battery claim and awarded six plaintiffs just under $6.8 million in damages. The jury awarded the same plaintiffs nearly $6.7 million on a claim that Fields intentionally inflicted emotional distress on them.

Hundreds of white nationalists descended on Charlottesville for the Unite the Right rally on Aug. 11 and 12, 2017, ostensibly to protest city plans to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Actually, they were there to protest the erasure of American history, of which this was one small example from just that year.
During a march on the University of Virginia campus, white nationalists chanted "Jews will not replace us,"
...or more likely “You will not replace us” — the Jew chant makes no sense unless one assumes the crowd must have been Jew-haters because they're white, donchaknow...
surrounded counterprotesters and threw tiki torches at them.

Then-president Donald Trump
...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party...
 touched off a political firestorm when he failed to immediately denounce the white nationalists, saying there were "very fine people on both sides."
A deliberately manufactured firestorm based on a deliberately incomplete transcription of President Trump’s considerably more nuanced statement, as I recall, the first of many equally manufactured firestorms.
The lawsuit — funded by Integrity First for America, a nonprofit civil rights organization formed in response to the violence in Charlottesville
...more a Progessive Democrat dirty trick organization funded by the usual lefty uber-rich cabals than a civil rights org. We all know that those are like...
— accused some of the country’s most well-known white nationalists of plotting the violence, including Jason Kessler, the rally’s main organizer; Spencer, who coined the term "alt-right" to describe a loosely connected band of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and others; and Christopher Cantwell, a white supremacist who became known as the "crying Nazi" for posting a tearful video when a warrant was issued for his arrest on assault charges for using pepper spray against counterdemonstrators.

The trial featured emotional testimony from people who were struck by Fields’ car or witnessed the attacks as well as plaintiffs who were beaten or subjected to racist taunts.

Melissa Blair, who was pushed out of the way as Fields’ car slammed into the crowd, described the horror of seeing her fiancé bleeding on the sidewalk and later learning that her friend, 32-year-old Heather Heyer, had been killed.

"I was confused. I was scared. I was worried about all the people that were there. It was a complete terror scene. It was blood everywhere. I was terrified," said Blair, who became tearful several times during her testimony.

During their testimony, some of the defendants used racial epithets and defiantly expressed their support for white supremacy
...the pernicious doctrine that laws were intended to be obeyed, that society works better when people don't pour shreiking from their places of worship every Friday for a weekend of rioting over insults real or imagined; and that cannibalism, beastiality, incest, murder, theft, rape, and similar activities are bad. A Dead White European (which invalidates his opinion) philosopher once opined that societies thrive when a person's word can be relied upon, and that a society which puts individual happiness first will invariably fail. Strangely enough, other successful societies, such as China, Japan, Korea, and those kinds of places could also be lumped with white supremacist societies, since they push the same values...
. They also blamed one another and the anti-fascist
...anybody you disagree with, damn them...
 political movement known as Antifa
...the armed wing of the Democratic Party...
 for the violence that erupted that weekend.

In closing arguments to the jury, the defendants and their lawyers tried to distance themselves from Fields and said the plaintiffs had not proved that they conspired to commit violence at the rally.

Before the trial, Judge Norman Moon issued default judgments against another seven defendants who refused to respond to the lawsuit. The court will decide damages against those defendants.

More about Integrity First for America. Amusingly — or not, as the case may be — not one of the words in the name is true of the organization:
Tech Billionaire Who Bankrolled Numerous Disinformation Projects Linked To $620,000 Donation To Fusion GPS’s Legal Fund
Dated December 21, 2020
[DailyCaller] An anti-Trump group funded heavily by Reid Hoffman, a liberal billionaire tech titan who’s bankrolled political disinformation peddlers, contributed $620,000 to a legal fund for Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm behind the controversial Steele dossier, financial filings show.

According to IRS
...the Internal Revenue Service; that office of the United States government that collects taxes and persecutes the regime's political enemies...
 filings, The group Integrity First for America (IFA) made the contribution in 2018 for the legal defense fund of Bean LLC, the holding company for Fusion GPS.

IFA, which launched in October 2017, is the first entity to be identified as one of Fusion’s benefactors. Initially billed as an anti-corruption group that planned to investigate Donald Trump
...His ancestors didn't own any slaves...
’s business dealings, IFA has since turned it focus on litigation against white supremacist groups.

It is not clear whether Hoffman was aware that IFA has helped Fusion GPS.

The New York Times

... which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
 reported in October 2017 that Hoffman planned to give more than $1 million to IFA. IFA’s board chairwoman, Monica Graham, told Agence La Belle France-Press in February 2018 that the initial funding for the group came from Silicon Valley funders. She singled out Hoffman as a significant donor.

IFA received $2.9 million in contributions in 2017 and nearly $9 million in 2018, according to its filings with the IRS.

Hoffman has funded multiple anti-Trump and anti-Republican initiatives, some of which have faced accusations of pushing politically-charged disinformation.

Hoffman apologized in late 2018 after The New York Times reported that he was a top funder for a project spearheaded by the tech firm New Knowledge, which created fake online personas aimed at influencing conservatives voters in Alabama’s Senate special election in December 2017.

According to The Times, the project’s operators created thousands of fake Russian accounts that followed Republican candidate Roy Moore. The mass following generated national media coverage and fueled the narrative that Republicans were the party favored most by Russia.

New Knowledge worked closely with Fusion GPS, according to a book by Fusion founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch. The firm also contributed to a Senate Intelligence Committee report about Russia’s efforts to push disinformation on social media.

Hoffman was an early backer to ACRONYM, the progressive tech company behind the botched app used in the Iowa Democratic caucuses earlier this year.

Another Hoffman-funded entity, American Engagement Technologies, published misleading Facebook ads from accounts designed to stifle Republican voter turnout in the special election. Facebook announced in January 2019 that it was investigating New for Democracy, another group Hoffman financed that was accused of publishing misleading news stories ahead of the 2018 midterms.

Dmitri Mehlhorn, who is reported to be Hoffman’s top political adviser, was on the board for News for Democracy. He is also on the board of IFA.

Susie Buell, a Democratic activist who is close to Bill and Crooked Hillary Clinton
...former first lady, former secretary of state, former presidential candidate, Conqueror of Benghazi, Heroine of Tuzla, formerly described by her supporters as the smartest woman in the world, usually described by the rest of us as The Thing That Wouldn't Go Away. Politix is not one of her talents, but it's something she keeps trying to do...
, is also an IFA board member.

One of IFA’s founding executives is Mary Mapes, a former CBS News producer who was fired in 2005 over her work on a report on fabricated documents that said George W. Bush dodged serving in the Vietnam War.
Posted by: trailing wife 2021-11-24
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=618290