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Notes -
Update on Felony Charges for Tiki Torch Marchers
A month ago I mentioned the announcement that several people from the Charlottesville 2017 torch-light march were indicted on felony charges for "burning an object with the intent to intimidate." There was a lot of skepticism that this would stick given that the statute is being stretched quite far from its incarnation as an anti-cross burning law. @netstack wrote "For the record, I don’t expect the Charlottesville tiki-torchers to be convicted."
Last Thursday it was reported that a South Carolina man entered a guilty plea, the second one to do so. He was sentenced to five years in prison / four and a half suspended:
The significance of this is that it's now precedent for "intent to intimidate" as an avenue for outlawing hate speech, which has traditionally had first amendment protections. I noted that Ron DeSantis's hate speech law signed in Jerusalem also contained verbiage surrounding an intent to intimidate, allowing for protestors to be asked to leave or be arrested/charged if they demonstrate on a university campus for the purposes of "intimidation." There was skepticism that "intimidation" could be stretched so far- but here we are, and it's already happened.
Conservatives are quite capable of lawfare and they have a 6-3 Conservative Supreme Court majority. If 'intent to intimidate' rulings were shutting down conservative political rallies around the country they're quite capable of funding legal challenges and appealing their way to a court where they have a sympathetic majority.
The cynical view is that Conservative legal elites are completely fine with having their embarrassing white nationalist fringe suppressed and don't expect the statute in question to be applied broadly. The less cynical view is that this guy was charged because he was part of a group that surrounded some counter protestors and is alleged to have menaced them with the torch, which means he's being punished constitutionally for interpersonal intimidation and not political speech.
Wanting certain ideas in Israel: The only acceptable idea, and opposing them is extremism.
Wanting the same ideas in the US: Embarrassing extremist.
Is George Soros an extremist anti-Israeli?
The truth is that while Michelle Goldberg types exist, for the most part Jewish progressives who oppose rightist white identitarianism in America also oppose rightist Jewish identitarianism in Israel. They may indulge discussion about an 'ancestral homeland', but they're not protesting against Israeli immigration law or for the removal of migrants in South Tel Aviv either. George Soros is the primary financier of a long legal campaign to limit the deportation of African migrants to Israel, is the primary backer of the Israeli Arab lobby etc. The ADL is torn between being a progressive organization and being a Zionist organization, its own (Jewish) staffers are now openly more and more anti-Zionist.
Is there some hypocrisy? Sure. That's not limited to Jews. Rightist ethnats often think whites should remain in South Africa even though it's actually the ancestral homeland of the Khoisan. They're unsympathetic to arguments that Australia should be ceded back to the natives there. Hypocrisy is hardly uncommon in politics. 'This for me but not for thee' is perennial. What's your point?
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