White supremacists are returning to Charlottesville. But this time, they're on trial.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

As hundreds of white supremacists prepared to descend on Charlottesville in 2017, they hashed out logistics in private chat groups. They suggested a dress code of polo shirts during the day and shirts with swastikas at night. They worried about mayo on sandwiches spoiling in the August heat. And they swapped tips on how to turn ordinary objects into lethal weapons, according to messages cited in court papers.

Such detailed planning is central to a lawsuit filed by nine Charlottesville residents who allege physical harm and emotional distress during Unite the Right, the deadly two-day rally where a torch-carrying mob chanting “Jews will not replace us!” awakened the country to a resurgence of far-right extremism. After four years of legal wrangling, a civil trial begins Monday in a federal courtroom in Charlottesville, where a jury will decide whether the organizing of the rally amounted to a conspiracy to engage in racially motivated violence.

“Defendants brought with them to Charlottesville the imagery of the Holocaust, of slavery, of Jim Crow, and of fascism,” the plaintiffs say in the complaint. “They also brought with them semi-automatic weapons, pistols, mace, rods, armor, shields, and torches.”

The planners’ messages, part of a leaked trove from the group-chat platform Discord, are laced with slurs against Black and Jewish people, along with violent fantasies of cracking skulls and driving into crowds. One meme showed “John Deere’s New Multi-Lane Protester Digestor,” a made-up vehicle to steamroll opponents — a macabre forecast of the car-ramming attack that would kill 32-year-old counterprotester Heather Heyer and injure at least 19 others.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/charlottesville-unite-right-rally-lawsuit/2021/10/23/3a99652a-32a4-11ec-a880-a9d8c009a0b1_story.html

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. It's about time they went on trial. Murdering SOB's. n/t

[marble falls]

2. And some folk whinge over 45's not breaking rocks in some SuperMax somewhere ...

... along with Butthead Jr and Bevis.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. A 19th-Century Law Dismantled The KKK. Now It Could Bring Down A New Generation Of Extremists.

I am really looking forward to following this lawsuit. It will set the tone for the 4 lawsuits against TFG filed against TFG under the KKK act.

Link to tweet

The case is a sweeping attempt to use the KKK Act of 1871 to dismantle this amorphous online world and implicate its members in the August 2017 violence at the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. It’s a civil case, seeking damages for not only physical violence and violations of civil rights, but the emotional violence of online and physical harassment that began before the rally and has continued long after.

The case has nine plaintiffs, all residents of Charlottesville who counterprotested at the rally. Elizabeth Sines, whose name the case carries, joined the suit because of the emotional trauma she suffered as a witness to the violence. Others, such as Marcus Martin, Natalie Romero and Chelsea Alvarado, were severely injured. Plaintiff Hanna Pearce joined because a picture of her and her son was posted on the neo-Nazi news site The Daily Stormer.

There are 24 defendants. Some of them are names you probably know already, like Richard Spencer, president of the white nationalist conspiracy group National Policy Institute, or Charlottesville’s hometown racist, Jason Kessler. Others you may not know by name, but may have heard of their groups: Identity Evropa, League of the South, the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. All are accused of organizing a motley collection of white supremacists into a violent mob....

After lying dormant for several years, the KKK Act is currently being used to sue conspirators in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and in December 2020, the NAACP filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump and the Republican Party under the act, alleging that they conspired to interfere with the voting rights of Black Americans in Michigan.

As a member of the bar, I am so proud of the lawyers who brought this case. They are both great examples of my faith and great members of the Bar. They has spent $40 million in donated time pursing this case.

This will be fun to watch and rulings in this case will be used in the four KKK cases pending agianst TFG.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

4. Prof. Tribe is pleased with the attorneys handling this case

Link to tweet

[msfiddlestix]

5. Important development at long last

So happy to read an appropriate angle in prosecuting these cases is being pursued.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

6. 'Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch': Maddow mocks Nazis bankrupted by legal fees

Link to tweet

"You say he's representing himself?" asked Maddow. "Serving as his own lawyer? You don't say. Whatever else has happened in your life today, I bequeath you this, little warm fuzziness, the Nazis are representing themselves in court, acting as their own lawyers. That always works out great. Good for them. Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch."

She noted that another Charlottesville person is being forced to find other legal options after his lawyers quit because he started spewing anti-Semitic threats against one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs.

Other neo-Nazis involved in different cases have been able to hold onto their lawyer, Maddow said, because the lawyer "agrees with them because he himself wants to 'oppose Jewish influence in society.'"