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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28944 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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Either The Post Millennial is providing a skewed version of events, or a defense attorney just defeated Andy Ngo's civil case against two of his attackers through blatant juror intimidation. I tend to assume the media takes things out of context, especially openly partisan media, but it's hard for me to believe that a lawyer wearing an "I am Antifa" t-shirt every day in court, rather than formal attire, is anything other than a breach of protocol. Maybe the "I will remember all your faces" line was taken out of context, and she was just talking about her photographic memory. Maybe the Post Millennial was exaggerating when they said that the arguments were all ad hominem attacks. Or maybe this really is as bad as it seems.

Regardless, I'm surprised that the Motte isn't talking about the case.

Regardless, I'm surprised that the Motte isn't talking about the case.

The Motte misses huge swathes of juicy culture war items that I consume a constant stream of elsewhere (attending with low value commentary unfortunately, unlike here).

I’d top post it to this weekly but I often don’t have either the time or the motivation to words words words contextualize the bare reference links. Maybe I’ll use ChatGPT or a local LLM to automate this.

I’d top post it to this weekly but I often don’t have either the time or the motivation to words words words contextualize the bare reference links. Maybe I’ll use ChatGPT or a local LLM to automate this.

*Butlerian Jihad intesifies*

Look, I too am a culture war junkie, and indeed what we talk about here is but a small fraction of all the outrageous shit happening every day, but I actually appreciate the restraint people show here... or, as it turns out, the words words words filtering effect. "Can you believe what Those People did this week?" is explicitly posted in the intro text as an example of something we should be trying to avoid, and I could go on at length about the negative effect on the quality of discourse and viewpoint diversity this would have, but more importantly - all of this shit is the same story over and over, there's nothing interesting to learn from it anymore, so spamming it here will just make the place more boring.

Is there any coverage that at least pretends to be neutral? It sounds like the authors have very permissive ideas about standard of proof.

If we can’t access the primary sources, it’s a bit early to start up the spin cycle.

That's kinda part of the problem. OregonLive's coverage is probably the more conventional Detached Professional Reportage in tone, but uh... you do notice convenient choices of words and focus, if you start looking. Like, just on simple questions of fact:

Hacker, a Portland-based activist who told jurors he often attended protests to observe police, film and photograph, described an incident in 2019 at a 24 Hour Fitness center in Portland. Hacker spotted Ngo and poured water on him while standing near a stairwell above Ngo. He confronted Ngo over what he said was distasteful and irresponsible media coverage of a recent protest that left an acquaintance seriously injured by a known white supremacist. Ngo pulled out his cell phone to record the interaction with Hacker, against gym policy, and Hacker smacked the phone out of Ngo’s hand.

Gym staff eventually intervened and revoked Hacker’s membership.

This isn't quite as overt as the simple lie (and I will call it a lie) from Ngo's book that ymeskhout highlights here, but's damning with pretty faint praise. This does not accurately describe I have absolutely no trust that the OregonLive reporting presented all reasonable evidence of Ngo's claim that Hacker or Richter were involved in the assault, nor any antics in the court itself.

I haven't followed this trial at all and although I'm very sympathetic to Ngo's circumstances in this case (I very briefly talked to him about how to uncover some of his assailants) I wouldn't trust his reporting at face value. He does some great work sometimes (see for example the Wi Spa incident) and for that I'm grateful that he exists, but he still has some bad habits.

From the Post Millennial article about the trial, we have this:

During closing statements, defense lawyer Michelle Burrows told the jurors that not only does she self-identify as both a progressive and an “anti-fascist,” she strongly declared, "I am Antifa" and insisted upon making herself an "I am Antifa" t-shirt, which she said she would wear after the trial. Despite Antifa's significant recorded history of violence, she told the jury that Antifa's unfavorable reputation is untrue and depicted the organized militant group as activists fighting for social justice and civil rights.

Hopefully we'll get a transcript to settle this, but if I had to guess the attorney probably just reiterated the facile talking point of "Do you like fascism? If not, then you must be anti-fascism, and therefore you are Antifa." And also, it doesn't say she wore an Antifa shirt in court, but made a comment about wearing it after the trial.

After announcing her retirement and that this would be her last trial, Burrows told the jurors that she "will remember each one of their faces."

This too seems anodyne to me, especially in the context that it would be her last trial. It's definitely possible that it was deployed as an intimidation tactic but I'd want to hear/see it in full.

Time to re-up my book review of Andy Ngo's book from two years ago. An example of Ngo's dodgy reporting:

I said before that Ngo never explicitly lies in his book. However, he does have a pattern of very bizarre framings and omissions which seem almost deliberately calculated to leave a false and misleading impression on an unsuspecting reader. There are a number of examples but I want to highlight the most egregious one, where I literally got up from my seat when I encountered it. Take this very short paragraph from pg 206-207:

Fletcher is a Portland activist who fought a mentally unstable man named Jeremy Christian on a moving train in 2017 because he believed he was a white supremacist. The incident resulted in the deaths of two other men when Christian began stabbing the people around him in a fit of rage. Fletcher was seriously injured and survived. Christian was convicted of the killings and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release or parole.

Now, you might already know which event this is describing. But assume you don't. What would be your impression of what transpired if you were tasked with summarizing it for someone else had you read only what I quoted? (For the record, the excerpt I copied is literally the only description of this event in the entire book, and I am not leaving out any context.)

If you asked me to rephrase, I would say something like "Fletcher instigated a physical altercation with a stranger on a train because he falsely believed the man to be a white supremacist. The man was mentally unstable and became so enraged and provoked by Fletcher's actions, that he stabbed two nearby uninvolved strangers. Implicitly, it appears that the deaths would not have occurred were it not for Fletcher's over-sensitive 'white supremacist radar'." Did you come up with something substantially different than my summary?

Now read the Wikipedia entry of what happened.

"Some bad habits" sounds like putting it very lightly, if this example of Ngo's reporting is indicative of a pattern.

Yeah, that's fair. It's probably indicative of how demoralized I am about journalism in general because the "bad habit" above is in line with the baseline at plenty of respected mainstream media establishments. I think I mostly wanted to make it clear that I've never seen Ngo actually lie about anything he reported, and how despite my criticism of his reporting practices and framing it's balanced against the fact that he's alone in willing to report on stories other journalists flat out refuse to touch.

I don't know what happened in that one defendant's life to make his face like that, but holy hell.

Severe injuries from a single-car accident while driving a GM C/K-model truck, leading to burns over most of his body.

Looks like a burn victim to me. Why Antifa always seem to have something horribly wrong with their appearance is an interesting question though.

Intersectional movements, whether it's Anti-Fa, HBDism, or Trans-Activism always end up being populated by the marginal members of society because a guy (or Girl) who has prospects doesn't need to make politics their identity, they have other options.

It might be an interesting question if the typical American isn't a trainwreck appearance-wise. Without objective data backing up the comparison, this comment is just "boo outgroup".

There’s definitely geographic differences that might lead some to be in a bubble where they don’t realize what’s normal, but antifa mugshots are at least a standard deviation more unattractive than anywhere I’ve been in America.

Socrates belonged, in his origins, to the lowest folk: Socrates was rabble. We know, we can still see for ourselves, how ugly he was. But ugliness, which in itself is an objection, was among the Greeks virtually a refutation. Was Socrates Greek in the first place? Ugliness is often enough the expression of interbreeding, of a development thwarted by interbreeding. In other cases it appears as a development in decline. Forensic anthropologists tell us that the typical criminal is ugly: monstrum in fronte, monstrum in animo [monster in the face, monster in the soul]. But the criminal is a décadent. Was Socrates a typical criminal?—At any rate this wouldn’t contradict that well-known judgment of a physiognomist which sounded so offensive to Socrates’ friends. A visitor who knew about faces, when he passed through Athens, said to Socrates’ face that he was a monstrum—that he contained all bad vices and cravings within him. And Socrates simply answered: “You know me, sir!”

–Friedrich Nietzsche

Spandrell fashioned an entire thesis around precisely this question: bioleninism

While I’d been based and redpilled for a while, reading Spandrell’s initial posts in early 2018 resonated with me on a deep level.

Sorry, I just experienced a vision of the next generation’s college app essays.

Most just look like average walmart-americans with a crustpunk wrapper.

/pol/ loves doing this (and so do leftists on twitter in the reverse case) where they make a collage of how ugly/fat/weedy/lame all the antifa types are. And sure, they are, but the same goes for the average utility belt militia fatty in camo. Most Americans are overweight, the remainder are sedentary skinnyfat or just skinny. Maybe 5% of the population are 'fit' (meaning they exercise regularly and aren't fat) and maybe 1% have a lean, athletic, muscular physique.

Either The Post Millennial is providing a skewed version of events, or a defense attorney just defeated Andy Ngo's civil case against two of his attackers through blatant juror intimidation.

Probably both.

There's not much available through the public court records system in Portland, but this and this, while very overtly anti-Ngo, suggest that Ngo's trial theory depended a lot on attaching personal connection to direct injury that could be difficult in this sort of gang attack. The photos here suggest that Burrows was in (semi)-formal attire rather than actually wearing the shirt.

On the other hand, it's... very hard to have seen even those oregonlive summaries as anything but an attempt to win a civil suit by using the defendants as character witnesses against the plaintiff, in a 'but he deserved it' sense. And I'm not sure Ngo should have even had to prove directly bloody hands, especially in a civil trial; the various tests in the context of mob violence are a mess, but I'm pretty sure they're wider than but-for. That doesn't necessarily mean intimidation, given that we're still talking Portland -- Hacker previously escaped a criminal charge for theft robbery on a different occasion in a bench trial.

But that option's kinda worse.

I dunno. @FCfromSSC had a post on the broader tactical ramifications from this class of problem, from the context of the Stephen Ray Baca trial from New Mexico. And I don't think any of these are even local nadirs: the end result of the crushing of Christopher Green would have been comedically on-the-nose were Green's injuries more looney tunes and less severe brain damage.

And I'm not sure Ngo should have even had to prove directly bloody hands, especially in a civil trial; the various tests in the context of mob violence are a mess, but I'm pretty sure they're wider than but-for.

Apparently, there are two standard jury instructions re causation in civil cases in Oregon: Oregon Uniform Civil Jury Instructions (UCJI) UCJI 23.01 (but-for causation) and UCJI 23.02 (substantial factor causation). "[T]he uniform substantial-factor instruction applies only when there are multiple causes of a plaintiff's injury that act together or independently to cause an injury. In other negligence cases—the majority of cases, according to Joshi—the but-for instruction is appropriate. 342 Or. at 162, 149 P.3d 1164." Haas v. Est. of Carter, 316 Or App 75, 87–88, 502 P3d 1144, 1151 (2021).

This case would seem to be one of multiple causation, so the substantial factor instruction should have been given. I don’t know if it was.

Yeah, unfortunately the trial records (and maybe the full text of the current Oregon UCJI?) are pretty heavily paywalled. It's not a negligence case, and very nearly the prototype for a situation where substantial-factor would normally be considered appropriate, but it's hard to find more specific data.

Oh, if he did not include a negligence cause of action, then the causation question probably was not at issue in the first place. If it was just a cause of action for battery, then the operative law seems to be:

For a person to be liable for the intentional tort of another, two legal requirements must be satisfied. First, the defendant must have participated in or aided and assisted in the assault in some way. Paur v. Rose City Dodge, 249 Or. 385, 389, 438 P.2d 994 (1968). Second, the defendant's participation in the assault must have been with the requisite mental state, i.e., defendant must have intended the harmful or offensive contact or least understood that the assault was going to be committed against Olsen at the time defendant aided G.

Olsen v. Deschutes County, 127 P. 3d 655 (OR: Court of Appeals 2006).

Again, I have no idea what evidence was presented to the jury on this.

At least by the web record search, the specific torts were "Assault, Battery, Emotional Distress", and as far as I can find allegations that they were directly involved in the attack, but there's not much more (freely accessible) information available.

My understanding is that one of the two defendants affirmatively identified Ngo to others, and called for his beating. He was then attacked. Maybe I've misconstrued the circumstances, but it doesn't take much to see how someone whipping up a mob to attack you, after they have identified you, could be civilly liable.

There was no chance of him getting a fair trial, unfortunately. He is hated in Portland and any lawyer worth a damn should be able to stack the jury accordingly.

Why would it be a surprise that a Portland jury acquitted antifa types? Next you'll tell me you were shocked when a jury of black women acquitted OJ Simpson of killing his white wife. Jury trials inherently limit justice to things that the median jury-selected resident of the locale in question considers criminal behavior. Your average Portlander probably does not consider beating up right-wing activists to be criminal. When some BLM activists tore down a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston, captured on video, they might have known they'd be acquitted by a jury in the left-wing city of Bristol.

In the end, jury trials are impossible in fractured societies. We already have extensive data on this, see here from the UK:

Black and ethnic minority jurors are significantly less likely to convict a black or Asian defendant than a white defendant in certain cases. “Race leniency” appeared to reflect a belief among black and Asian jurors that the courts treat defendants more harshly if they are from an ethnic minority, the report said.

The same is obviously true for political ideology and worldview. In India, jury trials were famously abolished after a naval commander killed his wife's lover, and was acquitted 8-1 for murder. In Malaysia, they were abolished after the government got worried that a 'witch doctor' who killed and dismembered a politician who had sought her advice might go free.

Conservatives often defend jury nullification, so can't be shocked when it's used against them. You either have a law that's vibes-based, in which jurors decide whether they feel like someone has done something wrong, or you have a law that's fact based, in which professionals determine whether somebody committed a crime. Mixing the two is a recipe for problems, often even in homogenous societies, but especially in diverse ones.

Jury trials inherently limit justice to things that the median jury-selected resident of the locale in question consider criminal behavior. Your average Portlander probably does not consider beating up right-wing activists to be criminal. When some BLM activists tore down a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston, captured on video, they might have known they'd be acquitted by a jury in the left-wing city of Bristol.

Apropos of nothing, but John Hacker was previously found not guilty in a bench trial for criminal charges of robbery in a fact pattern that... I'm very hard-pressed to believe wasn't clearly guilty.

Which rather broadens the scope of the problem beyond that presented in your criticism, here. I've got an old post about the boxes of liberty, and it doesn't look much better when paralleled to Oregon state or Portland city politics.

I'm very hard-pressed to believe wasn't clearly guilty.

As is true of most states, in Oregon to convict a defendant of any theft offense, including robbery, the People must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant intended to permanently deprive the victim of property. See State v. Pusztai, 348 P. 3d 241 (Or: Court of Appeals 2015). So, proving robbery in that particular case would not necessarily be easy.

Edit: That was exactly the basis for the acquittal. See starting at 4:30 here

... There's video of Hacker shouting that he will break Ngo's phone, along with two gym employees testifying that Hacker had Ngo's phone in his possession while trying to leave the gym and only returned it to Ngo after being stopped by those gym employees. The judge explicitly considering and justifying his judgement by considering whether Hacker went into a short-lived fugue and then having no idea why he had the phone... sounds a bit more than the typical level of consideration.

Yes, there is certainly some evidence to support the charge, which is why the grand jury returned the indictment. But Hacker also testified, and we don’t know what that testimony was. Nor do we know what else the gym employees testified to. The threat to break the phone does not mean a whole lot, given that he did not actually break it.

None of which is to say that there wasnot sufficient evidence to convict, but merely that, without seeing more of the evidence, it is a dubious claim to say that it was some sort of open and shut case. I don’t know for sure how Oregon treats circumstantial evidence, but in CA, a jury is instructed, "before you may rely on circumstantial evidence to find thedefendant guilty, you must be convinced that the only reasonable conclusion supported by the circumstantial evidence is that thedefendant is guilty. If you can draw two or more reasonable conclusionsfrom the circumstantial evidence, and one of those reasonableconclusions points to innocence and another to guilt, you must accept theone that points to innocence."

The judge explicitly considering and justifying his judgement by considering whether Hacker went into a short-lived fugue

I didn't see that on the video, though I had it on fast forward so I might have missed it. What is the time stamp for that?

I didn't see that on the video, though I had it on fast forward so I might have missed it. What is the time stamp for that?

6:09 is where the judge lists potential alternate intents, with an approximate transcript of :

"Maybe he returned the property only because he didn't want to lose a 24-hour fitness measurement."

"Maybe it was just because [garbled] I don't even know why I have this phone, I just pulled it away, I'm gonna give it back."

I don't get where you get fugue state out of it. That seems to be a reference to the very commonn phenomenon of a person doing something while in an agitated state and then turning around a minute later and saying to himself "what the fuck did I do that for."

Overall, it seems to be a very standard " the defendant acted wrongfully, but there is not enough to show, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he committed the specifuc crime he is charged with."

Again, that is not to say that someone could not reasonably conclude the opposite.

Conservatives often defend jury nullification, so can't be shocked when it's used against them.

"Jury decides based on what someone did, that they shouldn't be punished" is jury nullification. "Jury decides, based on the jury being threatened with physical harm, that someone shouldn't be punished" isn't.

Does what the defense attorney said legally count as jury intimidation?

How could it possibly not?

In a trial where somebody talks about how a group called Antifa tracked him down and physically assaulted him for his political opinions, the defense attorney wore a shirt saying "I am Antifa" and then directly told the jury that she'd remember their faces and that it's a good thing that antifa beats up people who disagree with them. The only way I could see this not counting as jury intimidation is if she gets the charges decided by a jury consisting solely of antifa members.

Honestly best case for Andy. He can tell a story about what appears to be a rigged and bias judicial system which generates way more money compared to what he could get from likely judgement proof antifa members.

Good for Andy, bad for American faith in the 3rd box of liberty.

Unverified secondhand quote seen on /r/kotakuinaction2:

So how did he lose? Looks like he won 4 out of 6, or 67%.

Ngo sued six people. One settled, three refused to put on a case and will have default judgements entered against them, and two were found not liable.

I hope that the three that refused to put on a case have the sense to stay out of the State of Oregon, since they will owe Ngo a lot of money.

These people are judgement proof because they don’t have assets.

He'll never see a dime of the money, but those people will also be forced to live quite limited lives.

I don’t think this will cause those people to live quite limited lives. That was going to happen anyhow.

Isn’t that a civil case and not a criminal case? So lower standard of proof?

Though I’m guessing he makes more money on this case publicity than he could collect from those guys.

The article reads a little rough but I don’t think the lawyer wore the shirt in the courtroom. Though overall sounds like witness intimidation.

It may be appropriate though to put the lawyer to the bar. Some of the quotes do seem like open threats in court. But that’s a tough area to play.

Yeah, I made a mistake. What she apparently did was say she was going to wear it after the trial's conclusion.

I thought about. However, I'm just too black pilled to bother discussing that here. It's impossible for me to engage with anyone trying to come up with "charitable" excuses for such blatantly evil outcomes, and what it says about my outgroup. I'm on thin ice as it is for speaking my truth here. Just not worth the extra bans I'd rack up for how angry it makes me.

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