The Charlottesville lawsuit that could take down the alt-right

Community

Tuesday February 13, 2018 · 10:28 AM PST

2018/02/13 · 10:28

Kansas City for Charlottesville, Virginia – August 12, 2017. — Protestors in Kansas City speaking out against the Charlottesville rally on Aug.12, 2017

If Roberta Kaplan’s lawsuit succeeds, the instigators of the Charlottesville rally that injured 30 people and killed Heather Heyer will be held legally accountable. More broadly, the alt-right’s funding streams and structures will be exposed.

The nine named plaintiffs, all of whom were injured during the rally, allege the defendants, 15 individuals who organized or participated in the rally, conspired to incite racial hatred and violence. If anyone can win the suit, it’s Kaplan, an all-star litigator on the left. She’s the attorney who argued the case that toppled the Defense of Marriage Act, United States v. Windsor.

This legal challenge to the alt-right is based on a prior successful suit in which proponents of civil rights took on anti-abortion activists imperiling abortion providers.

After the Charlottesville rally exploded into chaos, Ms. Kaplan started thinking of a lawsuit modeled on the one brought 20 years ago against the Nuremberg Files, a website where anti-abortion activists posted the names and addresses of doctors who performed abortions. That suit used civil conspiracy law to prove that the website had led to the murder of doctors, and resulted in a judgment of more than $100 million. Though the damages were eventually reduced, the site was taken down.

Proving conspiracy can be tough, but it’s a tidy way to ensure the chief alt-right actors behind Heyer’s death and others’ injuries will be held to account.

[T]o prove that a conspiracy existed, the plaintiffs’ lawyers will have to show that the leaders of the rally worked together in planning and encouraging racially motivated violence. Under the law, if a conspiracy is eventually established, all of its participants can be held accountable for the actions of its separate members.

What’s already publicly available suggests Kaplan and co-counsel’s biggest allies may be the defendants themselves—or their past selves, given how openly they communicated their intent to inspire, commit, or support violence.

[W]ell before the case was filed, a body of evidence was already public that at least seemed to suggest a conspiracy. In advance of the rally, several of its leaders blithely posted instructions for the protest on their social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter and a chatting application called Discord. On Aug. 10, the day before the march, someone leaked a trove of messages from Discord to the alternative media website Unicorn Riot, which ultimately published them online without naming the source.

The defendants’ first-line defense is the First Amendment: they’d like to hide behind rights to free speech, association, and assembly. That’s as nonsensical as the Ocean’s Eleven crew asserting a First Amendment defense to fight conspiracy charges. This suit is not about what these defendants said but what they used words to do.

Anticipating the possibility that their First Amendment argument falls apart, the defendants’ second argument appears to be more political than legal.

The defendants — an array of neo-Nazis, white identitarians and old-line pro-Confederates — have ridiculed the charges as an act of “lawfare” maliciously intended to silence them and destroy them financially.

“The goal here is to break us and keep us from taking to the streets,” said Jeff Schoep, the leader of the National Socialist Movement. “That should concern all Americans, no matter where you stand on the political spectrum.”

Take a moment to note that the New York Times uses the term “white identitarian.” Is it more palatable than “white supremacist”? The latter is the apter descriptor, not to mention composed of actual dictionary-recognized words.

The next major milestone: surviving defendants’ initial sallies. The defendants, whose number includes the notorious (and odious) Richard Spencer, have filed motions to dismiss for “failure to state a claim,” so now it’s up to the court to decide whether the case will proceed. The rule under which the defendants lodged objections rarely works, so expect this round of filings to do no more than buy them time.

This content was created by a Daily Kos Community member.

Make YOUR voice heard!

The Charlottesville lawsuit that could take down the alt-right

Comments are closed on this story.