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Defamation Lawsuit Against Alex Jones Allowed To Proceed

VCU CNS | April 11, 2019

Topics: Alex Jones, Brennan Gilmore, defamation of character, Heather Heyer, lawsuit, Unite the Right

After releasing his footage of white supremacist James Alex Fields driving into a crowd of protesters at Unite The Right, Brennan Gilmore became the target of massive online harassment — spurred, the suit alleges, by online provocateur and Infowars host Alex Jones.

On Aug. 12, 2017, Brennan Gilmore had his phone out and happened to be filming a video when a white supremacist drove his car into a group of counterprotesters at a Nazi rally near the University of Virginia campus, killing a woman named Heather Heyer and injuring many others.

Shortly after presenting his footage to the police and posting it online, Gilmore was met with vicious harassment online. He said it was triggered by videos and articles posted by Alex Jones and other right-leaning conspiracy theorists, who claimed Gilmore was an undercover operative for the “deep state.”

More than a year ago, Gilmore, whose footage ultimately helped convict Heyer’s killer, sued Jones and others on defamation charges. The defendants later asked that the suit be dismissed.

The case took an important step on March 29 when a federal judge in Charlottesville rejected the defendants’ motion for dismissal and allowed the suit to move forward.

According to court documents, Gilmore is employed as a foreign service officer for the U.S. State Department and has been on a leave of absence since 2017. He currently works as a business consultant for an information technology company.

For more than a week after the rally, court documents state, Gilmore faced “a barrage of harassing and threatening messages.” It was during this time frame that Jones and the other defendants released their videos and articles.

“I captured that horrible moment on my phone’s camera, shared the video with police and posted it on social media,” Gilmore wrote in an article for the Washington Post. “Not long after that,” he said, he was verbally attacked by Jones, who operates the Infowars website, and “other conspiracy theorists.”

The harassment escalated quickly, court documents said.

“Gilmore describes disturbances such as attempted hacks into his online accounts, the posting of his parents’ address online, a confrontation with a disgruntled stranger on the street, and the mailing of an unknown chemical substance to his parents’ home,” Judge Norman K. Moon wrote in a memorandum opinion.

Gilmore said the harassment from Jones, his publication and his audience caused physical, emotional, and professional damage, including depression and the loss of vision in his right eye. The harassment also may hurt his career at both the technology company and the U.S. Department of State, the lawsuit said.

Gilmore originally sued in March 2018 for both defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The recent court ruling dismissed the claim of emotional distress on grounds that it was not sufficiently severe. Moon said Gilmore is still active socially and professionally.

However, Gilmore’s defamation claims will move forward.

The case involves more than a half-dozen defendants. They include:

  • Scott Creighton, of Tampa, Florida, who owns and writes for the website American Everyman. According to the suit, on Aug. 13, 2017, Creighton published an article on his website and a video on his YouTube channel that Gilmore said was defamatory. Creighton’s YouTube channel has since been suspended.
  • James Hoft, of Saint Louis, who owns and writes for the website Gateway Pundit. On Aug. 14, 2017, the site published an article calling Gilmore a “deep state shill with links to George Soros,” according to court documents.
  • Lee Stranahan of Dallas and Lee Ann Fleissner (also known as Lee Ann McAdoo) of Sarasota, Florida. They appeared in a video posted on infowars.com. It attempted to connect the Charlottesville rally to a Ukraine coup that they say was sponsored by Soros and the Obama administration. The video tried to implicate Gilmore in the conspiracy.
  • Alex Jones, of Austin, Texas, who owns and publishes the Infowars website, along with affiliated radio and video programs. Jones allegedly posted Stranahan and Fleissner’s video on his YouTube and Twitter pages, as well as another video containing defamatory statements against Gilmore. Both alleged articles were posted Aug.15, 2017, three days after the rally.

Moon said Gilmore’s suit can proceed against all of those defendants, but he agreed to drop one defendant from the case: Allen B. West of Dallas, a former congressman. The suit said an article defaming Gilmore was posted on West’s website, but West said he had “no involvement with operating the website.”

“We’re all harmed when these outlets recklessly disregard plain facts, defame the innocent and use the power of social media to amplify a bogus narrative,” Gilmore wrote in his Washington Post article. “With the help of Georgetown Law’s Civil Rights Clinic, I brought this suit because Americans cannot stand idly by while these people terrorize individuals and undermine the pillars of our society.”

A hearing date in Gilmore’s suit has yet to be set.

By Benjamin West, Capital News Service. Photos from Unite The Right by Jesse Adcock, via CNS.

In Charlottesville, Police, Residents, Anti-Fascists, and Miniature Book Fans All Gather

David Streever | August 11, 2018

Topics: Charlottesville, Heather Heyer, James Fields Jr, Unite the Right

A year after Unite the Right, residents of Charlottesville took to the downtown mall to shop, eat lunch, and mourn the loss of Heather Heyer, a counter-protester killed by James Alex Fields, Jr., at the alt-right rally.

Mandatory bag searches, described as “consensual” in a press release on the city website, were strictly enforced for people entering the downtown mall. Hundreds of state and local police marched through and around the mall, as helicopters flew low overhead. Within the cordon, city residents, business owners, journalists, and police ate lunch, took photos, and walked freely. Both outside and within the cordon, members of the clergy, Democratic Socialists, and anti-fascist demonstrators marched and protested both the hate groups from last year and, in many cases, the overwhelming police presence.

Bike police lined up. Photo Landon Shroder

Early in the day, two young parents were walking the mall with their toddler, near one of the checkpoints. They didn’t want their names used, but were happy to talk. When asked if they were scared, the mother said, “Do we look nervous?”

“We live here,” her husband added. “I’m just happy to see everybody out, peaceful. This is what Charlottesville is.”

Robinson’s family reunion was disrupted. Photo David Streever

Just down the block, Abigail Jefferson said she was downtown for an annual family reunion. “I’m from here, we hold our reunion every year,” she said, but the security impacted their event. “It’s been tough to get around. It’s been changed this year. Half my family can’t make it.” She said it was sad, but they might have to change their plans for next year if this would be an annual event.

Blockade. Photo Landon Shroder

Maxicelia and Troy Robinson, owners of Order Up! Mobile Food Cart, felt comforted by the security. “The atmosphere was really apprehensive,” Maxicelia said, but, “The police presence is really reassuring.”

Troy interjected, “We have three kids in college–that’s what’s scary.” While business was down this weekend, they’d seen regular customers, and were happy to be on the mall.

Nearby, RVA Mag ran into Vonzz Long, a friend of DeAndre Harris, the black man assaulted by white supremacists last year, said he wasn’t nervous. “I’m just trying to get something to eat today. Nothing’s going down,” he said.

Vonzz Long & “Lil Hef.” Photo David Streever

Asked about the police presence, a source of contention for some anti-fascists on the other side of the cordon, he said, “It’s perfect. They should’ve done this shit last year. They shouldn’t call it an anniversary, though, it was a tragedy. That’s what’s making me feel weirded out.” He agreed to a photo with his friend, who went by “Young Hef,” before they went on their way.

At Fourth Street, where Fields took Heyer’s life and injured some 30 others, the ongoing memorial to the woman had grown. A local woman who introduced herself as “Lexx, with two x’s,” was adding to the display with a Bible quote about love. She was with an unnamed friend, visiting from Georgia. “Today, I’m here to spend time with the people I love. A lot of hate has been spread,” she said. She wasn’t scared to be on the mall, but her friend said she had been before they arrived.

Lexx. Photo David Streever

“That’s why I brought you here,” Lexx told her. “What happened last year, that’s not who Charlottesville is.”

On the east end of the mall, restaurants and retail shops were closed–except for Ike’s Underground. The proprietor, James “Ike” Eichling, had a hand-scrawled sign out front in support of journalists. “It’s the first time I put out a sign that made a statement,” he told me. “I just wanted to say I support the First Amendment and the people who keep us informed.”

Photo Landon Shroder

He was in good spirits, though. “The police presence is an overreaction, it’s justified, but it’s also a display of guilt over last year’s inaction,” he said. “I was a little upset by the message from someone in authority, the city maybe, to not go downtown for the weekend.” Mostly, he said he was just “pleased to see laid-back people walking, enjoying the town. Their very presence is a declaration that this is what our town is.”

Sign at Ike’s Underground. Photo Landon Shroder

On the west end of the downtown mall, at the Omni Hotel, a very different group was in town. The Miniature Book Society had selected Charlottesville as a place to host their annual conference, where members get together to swap books and talk about their passion.

Photo Landon Shroder

This year’s co-host, Molly Schwartzburg, the curator in special collections at the University of Virginia, said the event had been planned before last August by Rick Hill, who she said “Did all the real work.” Schwartzburg gave the group credit for not cancelling their plans. “Over one hundred members came, our biggest turn-out ever despite all this,” she said. While it was harder to get around today, tours and events had gone as planned for their members, who have come from as far away as Japan. “Between Jefferson, our library at UVA, and our tour of Caroline Brandt’s collection, there’s just so much here,” she said. “And I’ve made sure to send people of the hotel to enjoy the city. Charlottesville is a great city for book lovers.”

One of a few arrests. Photo Landon Shroder

While a few misdemeanor arrests were reported by Virginia State Police, I only saw one; that of a man identified by Twitter users as John Miska, a Charlottesville resident known for pro-Confederate activism. Miska was detained not for his handguns, but for a package of razors he’d purchased at CVS, along with two flats of Arizona Iced Tea. Anti-Confederate activist Goad Gatsby also witnessed the arrest. “How am I? I don’t know, I just saw a man escorted out yelling, “I made a legal purchase at the drugstore.” This whole day is just traumatizing for so many of us.”

General Lee Statue. Photo Landon Shroder

John Donegan contributed to this report. Cover photo by Landon Shroder; other photos David Streever or Shroder as indicated.

Summer of Hate: As Temperatures Rise, Virginia Weathers An Onslaught Of White Nationalist Uprisings

Madelyne Ashworth | November 21, 2017

Topics: alt-right, black lives matter, Charlotttesville, Confederate Flag, Emancipation Park, Heather Heyer, Jason Kessler, Justice Park, Ku Klux Klan, Lee Monument, Nazis, Police, protesters, racism, Refuse Fascism, summer of hate, Thomas Jefferson Memorial, trump, unite the right rally, UVA, Virginia National Guard, white nationalists, white supremacy

“Shoot! Fire the first shot of the race war, baby!”

The man smiles as he shouts. He wears a blue button-down, blue baseball helmet, and carries a Vanguard America-Texas flag. A small gas-mask hangs from his neck as he stands behind the metal cordon inside Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, VA. Other young white men surround him, holding various shields and plastic face masks with similar symbols representing alt-right and white nationalist groups. They stand behind him, their faces contorted into a singular steely gaze of hatred, looking out at those on the other side of the fence. It’s misplaced. It’s scary. This is the scene as about 500 white supremacists gather around the Lee Monument under a guise of solidarity for Unite the Right.

Originally printed in RVA #30 FALL 2017, you can check out the issue HERE or pick it up around Richmond now. 

I see a young black woman standing on the side of the park, holding a cloth over her face. Her name is Reneigh Jenkins, an organizer with Refuse Fascism, a group that believes President Trump is a fascist. Her voice is hoarse from tear gas and cracks several times while she speaks.

“Are you okay?” I ask her. She puts her hand on my arm and guides me to the sidelines of the park, warning me of flying rocks and projectiles that angry young white men are flinging into the crowd. They cruise overhead, along with colored gas canisters. Some of the young white men swing bats and poles while others brandish pepper spray. “What happened?”

“I never thought in 2017, as a 25-year-old, that I would have to experience anything like this,” she says. “[Trump] is the reason why they feel so emboldened to run these streets and hit people over the head with bats. We’re here peacefully to say that racism is wrong and that it’s not acceptable. I know this country was founded on slavery and the genocide of Native Americans, but this is not acceptable.”

She walks away with her friends, all equally shocked by what they’re witnessing. They melt into the crowd of counter-protesters, almost 2000 of them, shouting and holding signs high above their heads; thinking, hoping, and praying these messages will somehow make a difference for these angry young men. These men who have become dangerously radicalized. These men who, convinced of their victimhood, have adopted white supremacy as a badge of pride and the mark of patriotism.

“Jews will not replace us!” they shout. “Blood and soil!”

Darting through the crowd, I notice a large skirmish across the perimeter fences the police set up to keep white supremacists and counter-protesters from physically confronting one another. Those fences have failed. Police line the fence and stand in formation as if preparing for a military operation, while armored vehicles and the Virginia National Guard awaited orders from the sidelines. As I draw closer, I suddenly realized I can’t breathe well. Tear gas burns and stings my airways as if I were swallowing thumbtacks of fire. People run from the area. I see that same young man holding the Vanguard America-Texas flag ram it into the forehead of a counter-protester. Blood runs down his face like water. More tear gas. More screaming.

As I struggle to breathe, a man pushes a water bottle into my hands and urges, “Put water on your shirt! You have to breathe through wet cloth!” I do as he says. When I turn back around to return the water, he’s gone. A medic treats the head wound on the young man. Police stand motionless.  

Charlottesville is a small Southern city in Central Virginia, situated at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Historic Downtown Mall, stretching about a half mile, is its entire metropolitan area. The University of Virginia is nestled just to the west of the mall, giving Charlottesville some economic stimulation. The remainder of the city is really a town, in all its suburban, quiet glory. It’s the perfect place to raise your children, or to settle down once you’ve retired.

It’s also a place that’s steeped in history. People living outside of Charlottesville’s city center haven’t quite caught up, in that they still hold fast to old-fashioned, Southern perceptions. It’s an odd collision of old and new, conservative and liberal, intolerant and forgiving. Not exactly the place you’d go looking for a domestic terror attack… but they got one.

Of the several white nationalist rallies which occurred this past summer, Unite the Right on August 12 was the most violent. One of the white supremacists in attendance that day committed a domestic terror attack when he got in his car, sped down 4th Street, and drove into a group of counter-protesters, injuring 20 people and killing one woman, Heather Heyer.

Around Charlottesville, people scrambled to call friends and loved ones, hoping everyone was safe.

By comparison, the Ku Klux Klan rally in Charlottesville earlier in the summer was almost laughable. Around 50 old white men with antiquated racist ideas and costumes walked into Justice Park waving Confederate flags to protest the removal of the Stonewall Jackson monument. They made racial slurs about Jews and shouted that the white race is under attack in front of several African American police officers protecting them from about 1000 counter-protesters. They were an obsolete caricature of what they once represented. Klan members no longer hold clout or inspire fear; they’ve become old, tired bigots in clown hats.

The torch wielders, the re-invented skinheads, the young, modern Nazis and neo-Confederates are now the dangerous ones–born-again white nationalists who have inherited a false sense of displacement, who cling to outmoded hate and fling it like children playing with fireworks.

The road to the radical, alt-right violence as witnessed in Charlottesville begins with the poor white working class of America, a demographic of American life that many educated, progressive Americans won’t ever encounter and rarely think about. They occupy small town dive bars and rural landscapes, and are often swept under the rug as an unsavory part of American reality–people who never seem to matter until election time.

They are the people who have been defeated by the system, people who were raised in good Christian families who were taught to love God and Country unconditionally, people who are undereducated and have no idea they have as great a right to condemn the system as anyone else. They are victims of the same politics we all are, yet they have accepted their position in life as fate. A fate which, with the advent of the internet, younger generations have taken into their own hands, opening a chasm from white nationalism may emerge.

–

Later, in the home of Jason Lappa, a local Charlottesville photographer, my reporting team and I sit and wait as Lappa paces through the house, receiving call after call. Two of his friends have joined us in our reporting hideout, escaping the heat and madness of what Charlottesville has become. We munch on chips with our faces glued to Twitter, watching as more pictures and videos of the attack surface. Damani Harrison, a black Charlottesville resident, sits on the couch in disbelief.

“Did you see it happen?” I ask.

“No,” he replies. “I was there right after it happened. It was crazy.” He leaned back in the cool house, watching Facebook friend requests pile up as a result of using Facebook Live during the event. “Did you see what Trump said about it?”

“No,” I say. We sit and listen together. Harrison chuckles from his seat as Trump states that “both sides” were responsible for the violence. “We didn’t kill anyone.”

–

The night before August 12, hundreds of torch-wielding white supremacists marched through the UVA grounds to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, encircling the statue as their tiki torches lit the dark lawn, resembling Nazi rallies of the past.

 

“The torches are to commemorate the fallen dead of our European brothers and sisters–like Robert E. Lee, like Thomas Jefferson, like George Washington–who are under attack by these leftist cultural Marxists, who hate white people, who hate white people’s history, and want to blame them for things that happen in the past that every race on Earth did,” said Jason Kessler, a Unite the Right organizer, alt-right blogger, and conservative internet personality. “Right now we are in a civil rights struggle to save white people from ethnic cleansing, which is happening across the Western world.”

Kessler posted a video of himself at this event on his blog, “Real News with Jason Kessler,” in which he continues a narrative of white genocide, one seemingly endorsed by President Trump, and theorizes that white people are being “torn down and replaced” through current immigration policies. Rhetoric like his has spread across the far reaches of the internet through message forums like 4chan and Stormfront. It spreads to conservative news sites like Breitbart, pushing a seductive yet inaccurate account of the white struggle, what it means, and how it can be helped.

This internet recruitment effort has gained so much momentum, it outpaces that of the Islamic State (IS). A study conducted by George Washington University shows that expansion within white nationalist movements on Twitter has grown over 600 percent since 2012, grossly outperforming similar growth within IS groups on all social media platforms. According to a Pew Research study, there has only been a one percent increase in overall internet access between 2012 and 2016, meaning the change has occurred within the marketing and branding of white supremacy, not due to increased internet accessibility.

According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the unemployment rate for Americans under 25 is over twice the overall rate, coming in at a whopping 10.5 percent. Meanwhile, according to a study by the Urban Institute, over one-fourth of college graduates are overqualified for their jobs; as economic weakness from the 2008 recession lingers, finding a job at all continues to be a struggle. Middle-class college students who come from a line of middle class, hard-working family members are now unable to find jobs that fit the career for which they went to school.

Finishing his UVA degree in 2009, at the height of the recession, Kessler comes from this group of children who grew up in a comfortable lifestyle, only to discover they cannot find jobs to sustain that lifestyle after graduation. As Kessler and other underemployed, disillusioned white college grads watch the middle class disappear, well-spoken white internet personalities directly address their problems: it’s because of race, they say. The non-whites are taking everything from you. For these young white men, it’s an easy answer. And too many of them are settling for it.

–

As the hours tick on during the Unite the Right rally, I come face to face with a group of white supremacists marching down the street outside Emancipation Park, shields barred as if ready for combat. They stare straight ahead, occasionally shouting back at the hundreds of counter-protesters lining their pathway. One man is particularly enthusiastic, as he jumps and shouts, “Fuck you!”

He wears a blue baseball helmet. It’s the same young man with the flagpole, but now his face is covered with tear gas neutralizer. The gas didn’t seem to slow him down. He whips his Vanguard flag into the faces of the crowd, then retreats into the group. He couldn’t be older than 25.

In the last week of September, FBI Chief Christopher Wray told Congress that the FBI has about 1,000 open investigations into potential domestic terrorists, largely people and groups connected to white nationalism and extremist white supremacy. This number is exactly on par with open investigations into IS. The liberal narrative around those recruited by IS is that they are scorned by circumstance, left with no prospects, and joining what is essentially the largest gang in the Middle East sounds better than the alternative. Obviously, this comparison is hyperbolic when juxtaposed to a bunch of privileged American white boys, but the process engaged in by these groups is the same: take someone who hates their life, fill them with rage, put them in a group of people just like them, and give them someone to blame it on.

And I wasn’t surprised to see it.

Being in the middle of things at Unite The Right was shocking, but knowing that it happened wasn’t. This exit from the shadows doesn’t mean radicalized neo-Nazis weren’t there in droves before August 12, 2017. They might not have been as vocal or as certain of their beliefs before being validated by a demagogic president, but they were there. Confederate statues are the Archduke Ferdinand of the United States–a small excuse triggering a much larger battle.

–

“So what are your thoughts on the Qur’an?”

We stand on the East End of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It’s September 16. My team and I have arrived expecting tension and skirmishes between opposing political groups. Instead, we have found… a conversation. A young black man wearing an ‘American Guard North Carolina’ t-shirt faces a white woman in her clergy uniform. She holds her phone as she streams their conversation to a Facebook live feed, an outsider looking in.

“I read it 20 years ago, I’m not claiming to remember everything,” she replies as three other young men stand in a circle with the two debaters, occasionally weighing in on the conversation.

“I’m not Christian, but I can surmise that the Old Testament was violent. Can you surmise that the Qur’an is violent?”

“As violent as the Bible.”

Their conversation goes on so long, people begin to tire of it, leaving the small circle entirely. On this late summer afternoon, the Washington Monument stands proudly as supporters of “Trump, patriotism, and America” gather in small numbers, decked out in red white and blue. They sit together as guests like Florida gubernatorial candidate Bruce Nathan speak to a passionate crowd. Various counter-protesters hover at the outskirts of the gathering, including this member of the clergy, occasionally venturing into the crowd to make their presence known.

These protesters are not thrown out, pushed away, or attacked. A group of Black Lives Matter protesters walking through are even invited on stage for a couple of minutes to deliver their platform. Despite certain stereotypes, these Trump supporters stand by their claim to support and protect free speech, and ensure that anyone who walked through their gathering has a chance to speak their mind. Unassociated with any white supremacist groups, their death grip on traditionalist American values like liberty and patriotism has actually translated itself into something we didn’t quite expect: tolerance.

No one screams, no one is injured, no one dies. The conversation continues.

And summer turns to fall.

Photos by Jason Lappa

Charlottesville covering Confederate statues in black to mourn victims of domestic terror attack

RVA Staff | August 22, 2017

Topics: Charlottesville, Confederate monuments, Heather Heyer, Unite the Right

*This is a developing story.

The Daily Progress is reporting that Charlottesville’s city council, in an unanimous vote, will cloak the statues of Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in black fabric. This will be in honor of the victims of the domestic terrorist attack by a white supremacist at the Unite the Right rally on August 12, which killed 32 year old Heather Heyer and wounded up to 30 others.

Unite the Right, which attracted white nationalists, supremacists, and alt-right provocateurs, was held to protest the removal of Confederate statues. Charlottesville’s city council voted for their removal in April after a long assessment period. Confederate symbols have become a flashpoint for white nationalists seeking to grow their messaging through the heritage and culture conversation.

The vote to cover the monuments in black came after an explosive city council meeting last night in which three demonstrators were arrested after shouting “blood on your hands” and demanding resignations from city leaders.

 

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