Free Expression Foundation, Inc. Press Release
June 23, 2020
On June 17, 2020, the Free Expression Foundation, Inc. (“FEF”), filed an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of declaring the Anti-Riot Act of 1968 unconstitutional. A year ago, in a well- reasoned decision in the case of U.S. v. Rundo, et al., District Court Judge Cormac Carney, influenced by one of FEF’s prior amicus briefs, struck down the Act as an unconstitutionally overbroad regulation of protected speech and assembly. The government appealed.
Rundo is an important and interesting case, troublesome both factually and legally. Robert Rundo and three other California residents, members of an organization called the Rise Above Movement, had been invited to provide security at a Pro-Trump rally in Berkeley, California due to expected violence from Antifa extremists. The legal rally was held, Antifa showed up, attendees of the rally wore red MAGA hats, waived “Don’t Tread on Me Flags,” and shouted “Build the Wall.” This, of course, got the Antifa worked up and scuffles broke out, between RAM members and Antifa, among others. A score of people, mostly Antifa and their friends, were detained by Berkeley police. Rundo was stopped by police but let go. Everyone went home. That would have been the end of the story except for the events at Charlottesville, Virginia.
The Charlottesville Unite the Right rally, which was attended by four different California RAM members, triggered a wave of highly negative media coverage with demands that “something be done about White extremist violence.” After an urgent directive came down from Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Justice department brushed off the long dormant Anti-Riot Act and launched coast-to-coast prosecutions of supposed sinister conspiracies to cause riots. And the Joint Terrorism Task Force (“JTTF”) swung into action. The four California RAM members who had attended the Unite the Right rally, who had returned home and were peacefully going about their lives, were arrested and dragged off to federal court in Charlottesville, Virginia where, despite the stalwart efforts of the Federal Public Defender’s office, they ended up with negotiated plea bargains of three to four years in prison. They faced up to 10 years. They remain in prison, where for many days they were kept in solitary confinement and ill-treated.
About the same time the Charlottesville RAM members were arrested, Rundo and the three other California RAM members were also arrested. In Rundo’s case, about 15 JTTF agents broke into his apartment in the middle of the night, threw him up against a wall, ransacked his apartment including punching through walls, and took him off in handcuffs. He and the other RAM defendants (one was let out on bail) then languished in prison for nearly ten months, until through the efforts of the California Federal Public Defender’s office and FEF, Judge Cormac Carney struck down the Act as unconstitutional and ordered the defendants released.
During all this belligerent activity by the government based on an unconstitutional statute neither the ACLU nor any other Civil Liberties group lifted a finger to help the alleged “right-wing extremists.” In fact, these organizations turned a blind eye despite pleas for help. There is, accordingly, a certain irony that after the latest spate of arson and violence by Antifa types, the following letter was circulated by the American Civil Liberties Union:
Dear Comrades/FPDs/CJA lawyers:
The national ACLU has been following a recent spate of federal prosecutions under the Anti-Riot Act, 18 USC 2101 and 2102. This statute was enacted in 1968 and infamously used against the Chicago 7, but rarely since then. But in recent days, US Attorney’s Offices have been charging people, including Black activists and protestors, under the statute.
The ACLU has long been interested in striking down the statute as unconstitutional because it criminalizes protected speech. We would like to (1) track current prosecutions under the Anti-Riot Act and (2) offer to file amicus briefs or participate as co-counsel for the limited purpose of briefing the First Amendment issues or simply assist behind the scenes in these cases.
If you catch one of these cases, we would love to hear about it. You can contact me at the email address below.
Cecillia D. Wang
Pronouns: she, her, hers
Deputy Legal Director
Director, Center for Democracy
The point to emphasize in all this is that the RAM young men, most innocent of any crime at all, have been railroaded into years of prison and stress-filled and unfair criminal trials by the profound neglect, distortions, and other failures of the media, the FBI, the Justice Department, and what could be called the Civil Liberties establishment — those organizations that raise millions of dollars pretending to defend Free Speech. (We should, however, be grateful for judges such as Judge Cormac Carney, who still are watchful guardians of the First Amendment and equal justice before the law.)
FEF, as the only amicus in the RAM cases so far, has now filed four amicus curiae briefs in support of striking down the Anti-Riot Act as unconstitutional and freeing the RAM defendants (in the Virginia case) and exonerating the RAM Defendants (in the California case): one in the California District Court, two in the Fourth Circuit, and one in the Ninth Circuit. A true friend of the court, FEF has supported the arguments of the defendants’ counsel not by merely repeating them but by providing several different angles on the manifest defects in the Act, including, for example, by providing extensive research on the Act’s legislative history directed at suppressing legitimate, if robust and unpopular, public dissent. In particular, FEF has presented an argument nearly unnoticed by any of the other parties that should drive a stake through the heart of this sinister statute: that the Act does not even properly describe a crime. This is so because the Act, originally enacted in 1968, was amended by Congress in 1996 in a way that makes complete gibberish of the statute. It reads now like a bad Monty Python skit. So our government has for decades been threatening, and now prosecuting, people for political reasons based on a statute that not only violates First Amendment principles in a host of ways but does not even state a crime.
It bears emphasis that the Anti-Riot Act is not only unconstitutional but unnecessary, as there are many other criminal laws on the books, state and federal, for prosecuting assaults and other bad conduct at group assemblies. Among the many problems with the Anti-Riot Act is that it gives enormous discretion to the government to pick its prosecutions based on political factors. And that is exactly what the government has done.
As noted, these RAM prosecutions are interesting and troublesome both factually and legally. FEF is a fledgling 501c3 non-profit that is trying to make them more interesting – by having the Anti-Riot Act on which they are based stricken all around the country, by an appeal to the Supreme Court if necessary — and less troublesome to those who want to vigorously and fearlessly exercise their First Amendment rights.
FEF needs and will wisely use your financial assistance, which will be tax deductible in accordance with the tax laws. Here is FEF’s website for donations: Freeexpressionfoundation.org. You may also send check or money order to FEF, P.O. Box 1479, Upper Marlboro, MD 20773.
For Liberty and the Rule of Law,
Paul Angel, Chairman of FEF
Glen Allen, Esq., Counsel for FEF
The fact that the Charlottesville “incident” has been the excuse for the brutal clampdown on White Nationalists that ensued makes me wonder if James Alex Fields Jr. was just a braindead fellow or a kind of Lee Harvey Oswald manipulated by the system/government to have an excuse to act in the way they did.
Let’s face it, James Fields Jr’s action is indefensible. It could only have produced the reaction it did. Who benefited from that?
What SPECIFIC action do you have in mind?
The only specific action worthwhile is the one within the law. Running people over or shooting them doesn’t achieve anything and gives our enemies plenty of rope. That is why I described the action of James Fields Jr. as the one befitting a lunatic or a saboteur.
The best we can do is try to spread the message talking (privately or in public should the occasion arise) and writing. Share information in the form of valuable articles or books. This is a battle for the minds of fellow whites. Of course, sometimes I feel like grabbing a gun and taking out some obnoxious “celebrities”, but I know that doing that I will not achieve anything.
A wise man picks not only his battles but also the time and the place.
Have a good weekend
Fields is innocent. There is no doubt about that.
Fields action “indefensible?”
Are you a retard?
Antifa was going to KILL him.
He simply wanted to get away from them, and at no time
did his speed exceed 26 MPH.
If it had been me, I WOULD have floored it and never looked back.
That’s not what he did.
He gingerly tried to get away from the bloodthirsty lunatic mob.
You are a cretin.
Hello there.
I never saw a video of the incident, so I didn’t know if he was being attacked or if he did it just because. I assumed (perhaps wrongly) that he drove into the crowd as this was the only information I got from several outlets.
If you have evidence (I mean footage) of what you said it would be very good if you can post it.
I don’t mind admitting an error, but I do mind to be insulted without being given the benefit of the doubt. I acted upon the information I had. Knowing that the enemy would do ANYTHING to create an incident and blame us, it was quite logical to me that the whole thing was a set-up.
I may be wrong, but that does not make me a cretin.
By insulting me as you did, you only show a sad lack of education and restraint.
Good grief! Are you so absolutely persuaded of your own virtue that you can pout about someone else’s “sad lack of education and restraint” within fifty typed words of your admission that you didn’t know what you were talking about when you signaled your moral superiority to the poor guy whose only crime was trying to escape a police-backed mob of blacks and Antifa Jews and whites whose failure to kill him was a measure more of their incompetence than their restraint?
These comment threads, Angelicus, are already full to overflowing with the prattlings of morons and the insinuations of trolls. You have made it plain, on this and other threads, that if you are not the one, you are certainly the other. Under the circumstances, your presence hereabouts is superfluous. Please consider locating a troll-free overpass elsewhere, and take up residence beneath it.
I replied politely to the insults of a moron (like you) who did not give me the benefit of the doubt. I admitted I was wrong (something that the likes of you will never do). What else do you want?
You seem to be very knowledgable about my comments or contributions. People like you, self-appointed monitors and judges, seem to be very keen in their endless search for trolls and “infiltrators”. Good luck with that.
Don’t waste your time replying/insulting me because I will ignore it as it deserves.
Just a bit of frankness. Your less than wholehearted expressions of regret came when only no other course of action was possible.
I am. I read them. I wouldn’t have remarked upon them if I hadn’t.
No problem there then.
Footage is easily available. You are being insulted because you are admitting you are making a statement about an event without proper knowledge. That is, I’m afraid, worthy of being labeled a retard
You proved to be worthy of your nickname “Nobody.”
Sometimes we (as human beings) made mistakes. In my case, my mistake was not researching the Charlottesville incident properly. Eric, very politely, unlike the other nitwits who choose to insult me, explained the situation very clearly.
Being a reasonable and well-educated person (two concepts unknown to you), I did the right thing. A) I admitted I was wrong. B) I apologized.
A retard would have neither of the above. Because, my brain-dead friend, as I said before “I may be wrong, but that does not make me a cretin”. Your words say more about you than me.
Angelicus: I’m sorry to see you being attacked.
I have always found your comments to be interesting and instructive.
It isn’t a crime to not know something.
I hope you will disregard these attacks.
They are unjustified in my opinion.
Jeff Sessions, who I respected as a United States senator for his firm stance against both illegal immigration and massive legal immigration from the Third World, exemplifies the mental illness (I can’t think of a better word) that afflicts so many white people today.
It is just not possible that he didn’t understand the significance of the candlelight march in Charlottesville, in which young white American men chanted, “The Jews will not replace us.”
Nor is it possible that he failed to understand that those young white American men were to be replaced by immigrants “of color.”
But instead of supporting their cause, which he could have done by simply doing nothing, he chose to come down on them like a ton of bricks.
There seems to be a “betrayal of your own people” gene built into many, if not most, white people. And the only way to deal with that peacefully is to recognize and call them out as the despicable back-stabbers and sniveling cowards they are. They need to be shamed, and that means speaking to them harshly, not diplomatically.
They also need to be called out for their lack of intelligence.
I suspect that Jeff Sessions’ idea of being a federal prosecutor was to show his “integrity and mettle” by enforcing the law “without fear or favor.” For him — as for so many whites, including Trump — being “impartial” means going overboard against, or being indifferent to, people who are politically on their side. So we hear Trump constantly brag about all those jobs for blacks, Latinos and Asians (Asians haven’t had jobs? Really?) But nothing about the whites who elected him.
In the cucked white mind, image trumps reality. Cracking down on white nationalists allowed Sessions to imagine that he was being “fair and balanced.”
And since when has the law ever been fair and balanced anyway? Lawyers like to think of themselves as “Philosopher-Kings,” but they don’t have the intellectual credentials to make such a claim. Law school is training not in logic, ethics or metaphysics, but in sophistry and cant. God save us from lawyers. They do not even have the ability to be socially or politically wise.
So the end result, in Sessions’ case, could only be one thing: Abject virtue signaling to the barbarian horde. And this from the very best of the Republicans.
Is there a better example out there of why politics as usual will not save us?
As usual Eric, you were spot on. Excellent.
Jeff Sessions proved to be another despicable traitor, like ALL American white politicians.
Just one question. You said: “Fields is innocent” How is that possible? The whole world saw him running over those low-lives (I could not care less for them. As I said before, I am only concerned with what damages as a whole the White Nationalist movement)
Regards
Angelicus: I looked at videos taken of the incident and listened to accounts by different participants. What I remember seeing is as follows. Fields drove down a street at normal speed, then found it was blocked by protesters. Those protesters started to attack his car. He backed up hard, and then, for some reason (which I’ll discuss later), he decided that he would not be able to escape in that direction. So he drove forward again.
As he approached several cars that were in front of him, protesters started trying to break his windows. He then lurched forward at not more than 25 mph and rear-ended the car in front of him. That car in turn hit another car.
Heather Heyer was nowhere in sight. But the claim is that Fields caused her to be hit.
At first, they made it sound like he ran her down. Later, I was given to understand that she had a heart attack. She was grossly overweight. But the lying Communist (I know longer see the point in saying “liberal” or “Democrat”) media showed a picture of her at a younger age when she was slim and pretty.
The only question I had at that point was this: What stopped Fields from backing all the way out of that street, getting to an intersection, and escaping that way?
I found out that a “protester” with a semi-automatic rifle had pointed it at him before he turned onto that street. That made him panic. He probably thought the protester with the gun was behind him. So he felt trapped.
The protester with the rifle (a college instructor) even bragged about how he had been pointing it at people.
You also need to consider the context of the Charlottesville incident.
Unite the Right had gotten a permit to peacefully protest the pending removal of a Confederate statue at a park in C’ville. The city revoked their protest permit at the last minute, after people had already made travel plans from all over the country.
Unite the Right sued and a federal district court judge found in their favor. When Unite the Right arrived at the park, the C’ville police shut down their demonstration, then made them exit so that they would encounter Antifa. They ran a gauntlet of physical attacks with sticks, clubs, plastic bags of urine and acid, etc. They had no choice but to defend themselves and the whole thing turned into a riot.
Heather Heyer was murdered. She was murdered by the governor of Virginia (who played a role, but I don’t remember exactly how; only that it wasn’t constructive), the mayor of Charlottesville, the city council of Charlottesville, and the police chief of Charlottesville.
James Fields was not guilty of anything. But a kangaroo court sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The lesson pro-white advocates learned was that they could not do pre-announced IRL (in real life) demonstrations without being “set up” by the authorities and mobbed by Antifa. All they could safely do was unannounced IRL events that took place quickly and were over before anything bad could happen. In other words, what Identity Europa has had to do in Europe.
Isn’t it nice to know that white people cannot safely demonstrate to advocate for ourselves and our American heritage nowadays? Even planning such an event will bring the FBI and fake “conspiracy” charges down on you. To be pro-white in America is to be a terrorist.
I could be wrong in my analysis. But that’s my take on the situation.
Hello Eric: Thank you SO MUCH for this informative post of yours. I was obviously wrong and unbelievably gave credit to the enemy press in a roundabout way, something that makes me very angry. I do apologize for (unwittingly) slandering James Fields Jr., another victim of the Jewish-Marxist anti-white establishment.
Yes. Charlottesville served to show White patriots/nationalists that it is useless, if not stupid, to expect any fairness from a system that hates us and is working towards our destruction.
George Floyd’s death has served to expose the unmitigated hatred that most blacks have for us and the criminal agenda of the Jewish controlled media and large corporations. In their arrogance, they dropped the mask and showed that they do not even care anymore to keep the appearances. That in itself is good because it must have opened the eyes of thousands of White people around the world who (in their stupidity or ignorance) were oblivious of such hatred. At least I hope so.
You are right. We whites are guilty of the ultimate sin of being white. Is simple as that. The hateful Jewish/Christian idea of the “original sin” has found a new meaning.
Thanks again for the excellent information about Charlottesville. I got it wrong.
Regards
Angelicus: You’re welcome.
As I said above, the attacks on you are unfair. Not only because it isn’t a crime to not know something, but because the alt-right/white nationalist community was — and still is — divided about the significance of Charlottesville.
There was no support for the organizer — Jason Kessler — and the aftermath of the event included recriminations against David Duke and Richard Spencer, arguments over optics, the breaking up of friendships, etc.
Many condemned the organizers and participants for no other reason than that C’ville resulted in a backlash against us that continues to this day.
Considering that many were not sympathetic to James Fields — and given the distortions in the media about the event — it shouldn’t surprise anyone that someone like you, casually observing from the outside, would be mistaken about what happened.
Some of us are furious that Fields was railroaded, and there is a lot of emotion connected to that.
But making you the enemy instead of our real enemies is not the way to go. We need to work a lot harder on getting along with each other.
Incidentally, I want to correct myself. I understand that Fields was given a 400 year prison sentence, not life without parole (not that it makes much of a difference).
Eric = Thank you very much for your kind words. Yes, the hateful attacks on me were totally uncalled for, proving that there are some unhinged people among us dedicated to disturb our dialogue. As I said to that obnoxious creep “Pierre de Craon” who would not let go, I am going to ignore them. I did the right thing by acknowledging my mistake and apologizing for my unfair remarks, but that was not enough, his unrelenting attacks and the hatred he displayed show him for what he is.
Going back to Charlottesville, it is easy to do blame the organizers (Jason Kessler) with the benefit of hindsight, but that is not fair. According to your information, it is evident that the organizers did everything by the book and that they were deceived and betrayed by the authorities. The fact that the bastards from the police channelled the patriots into a place where the Antifa thugs were expecting them says everything.
By the way, I have been listening to a group of White Nationalists who have a very clear picture of the situation in the US. Their podcasts are very uplifting, particularly Mike’s from “Facing the New Dangerous Reality” from June 24. in case you were interested here is the link:
https://americannationalradionetwork.podbean.com/
Regards
Angelicus:
Thanks for telling me about the website. I’ll check it out.
TBH, I think we are screwed.
Your’re right…..Sessions was pretty much the best we have……
and he cucked.
The GOP are cuck masters.
Super cucks.
Short of civil war I do not see a way out.
I did not know that Jeff Sessions ordered the crackdown on the Charlottesville Unite the Right protest until I read this article, I just never thought about it. Sessions had been good on the immigration/illegal alien problem but the Feds pogrom against the Right began at the UTR rally and Jeff Sessions deserves the blame. He has Asian grandkids and perhaps that motivated him to lash out against “racists” i.e. patriotic Americans standing up publicly in the best traditions of American public discourse.
This was a good article but there was one glaring omission which I couldn’t help but notice –
Paul and Glen never mentioned what pronouns should be used to address them!
How else are we supposed to know? He/she/they/it?
*Yawn* Waiting for the White Nationalist smartphone.
Has anyone with a modicum of credibility published the contents of this directive or even read it closely enough to be able to report its wording, either exactly or in paraphrase? Even more important, has there been authoritative confirmation that the directive’s source, instigator, begetter—call him what you will—was Attorney General Sessions?
Put otherwise, is there credible evidence for claiming that Trump (or Acting President Kushner) left the handling of the Unite the Right event and the mishandling of its aftermath solely to the discretion of his Justice Department? If there is, I haven’t seen it.
Have Trump’s actions as president, either individually or in sum, borne witness to an outlook at odds with what Sessions is here and elsewhere being blamed for? Has Trump taken any action or made any statement that might be reasonably interpreted as constituting a repudiation or even mitigation of Sessions’s directive or the Justice Department’s actions triggered by it? If he has, what was it?
By the least rigorous standard imaginable, one must go back to the Coolidge administration to seek an instance where a Cabinet secretary made a major decision on a significant matter of administration policy without the direct instruction or, minimally, the prior authorization of the president or of the individual close to the president who did the president’s thinking for him. By a more realistic standard, the J. Q. Adams administration would be a better starting place to locate such an instance.
Back in September 1957, President Eisenhower hammered a dozen or so extra nails into the long-closed coffin of state sovereignty when, for precious little cause, he nationalized the Arkansas National Guard and deployed the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to point live weapons at white mothers and fathers who stood helplessly in front of their even more helpless and frightened children while nine black kids were conducted, like European royalty, into a previously segregated public school classroom by those combat-ready troops. All this was done in supine obedience to a famous albeit meritless Supreme Court ruling of 1954, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.
To most of the unbesotted citizens of this country, this event constituted the creation of a new and brilliantly apt illustration to accompany a definition of the word “overkill.” In the sixty-three years since then, Americans have grown so accustomed to having members of their country’s military threaten them at gunpoint over matters of merely local significance that the arrival of troops hardly sparks interest, let alone outrage, any more.
Yet here we are today, watching Jew-led, antifa-supported black criminals burning and stealing and defacing this land from coast to coast and denouncing a chief executive who they claim is a fascist tyrant—and what happens? A big fascistic nothing. With sixty-three years of precedent, however undesirable, for federal intervention to do effectively whatever Washington damn well pleases, the entirety of the Trump-Kushner response has been a Tweet storm calling for law and order. Yet his apologists insist that we should believe he is really on “our” side.
Why should a reasonably observant man, a man who has not thoroughly internalized the Jewish disdain for pattern recognition and for reasoning from effect to cause and vice versa, not conclude that it is Trump, not Sessions, who was responsible for the pro-Antifa prosecutorial response to Charlottesville? Or put the other way round, ought we to swallow whole the MSM line that his once-only reference to wrongs on both sides (or words to that effect) marks him plainly as a sympathizer with the cause of “white supremacy,” even a supremacist himself?
In a related instance of pandemic-grade wishful thinking, I have encountered literally dozens of fellow Vietnam vets for whom Robert McNamara stands as the ultimate devil figure, the man responsible for sending them to Vietnam. But when I say “what about Lyndon Johnson, don’t you blame him, too?” nine times out of ten the reply amounts to “poor Lyndon! Mac led him around by the nose.”
The force of self-delusion runs strong in human nature.
In sum, I see no reason to pretend that anyone except Trump is responsible for maintaining the war on white people and the white history of this country. Those who would lay the blame elsewhere ought to be politely told that hearsay and anecdote are insufficiently persuasive. Hamlet’s attitude, “I’ll have grounds more relative than this,” should be our attitude, too.