by Matt Margolis, PJ Media:
Finally a federal judge who believes in justice or something close to it. Could this be a crack in the dike of the tyranny of the DOJ? Is this the beginning of the end of Antifa pattern of violence and silence? We can hope.
To understand what’s at stake, let’s take you back.
At UC Berkeley in 2017, Antifa and their local black bloc franchisees set fires and rioted to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking on campus.
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The anti-free speech violent protesters set off munitions, broke windows, beat people, and scared the university away from allowing any right-wing speakers to be heard on campus—unless they paid for their own security. Antifa radicals, calling themselves By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), framed themselves as brave and heroic for silencing speech of people they detested at the very birthplace of the campus free speech movement.
It was the first round of the speech wars between people on the right who were trying to speak and those on the left who called them “fascists” while calling themselves “anti fascist” and using violence to literally shut them up.
Several people were arrested for the melee, but guess who were the only ones prosecuted?
In an opinion issued February 21, California Federal District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney stiff-armed the DOJs Terrorism and Export Crimes Section out of Los Angeles and nailed them for selective prosecution. The decision to dismiss the federal charges against two men who at some point became members of a group characterized as “white supremacist” was based on the fact that Antifa did as bad or worse that day and at other events where both groups were represented and Antifa wasn’t prosecuted.
The judge wrote, “prosecuting only members of the far right and ignoring members of the far left leads to the troubling conclusion that the government believes it is permissible to physically assault and injure Trump supporters to silence speech.”
Selective prosecution has been happening to Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer, and other non-white supremacist groups for years. The Portland area Patriot Prayer group held “free speech” events that were entirely non-violent, with speeches, flag waving and the like. These events would only turn violent when Antifa showed up to silence them. The Proud Boys, who hold free speech events, suffered from the same selective prosecutions because they like Donald Trump and it was socially acceptable to silence “fascists.” Both groups were denounced by Portland officials and told never to set foot in Multnomah County. Antifa got a pass.
Put another way, if Antifa don’t start nuthin’ there won’t be nuthin’. And it’s about time someone in a black robe saw that for what it is.
Carney wrote:
There is no doubt that the government did not prosecute similarly situated individuals. Antifa and related far-left groups attended the same Trump rallies as Defendants with the expressly stated intent of shutting down, through violence if necessary, protected political speech. At the same Trump rallies that form the basis for Defendants’ prosecution, members of Antifa and related far-left groups engaged in organized violence to stifle protected speech.
The judge denounced the riots but said the feds couldn’t go after one group without going after another, more violent contingent.
The judge said, “protecting First Amendment rights, however, is not always easy. People sometimes use their First Amendment rights to spread vitriolic and hateful ideas and beliefs.” He said that the higher purpose is the preservation of the First Amendment.
“The struggle of preserving the First Amendment in the face of speech many find outright dangerous is pronounced during times of uncertainty, division, polarization, and fear—challenges we unfortunately face today,” he wrote. “But the answer cannot be for the government to single out and punish the speech that it and many in the country understandably find repugnant,” he rightly noted.
