Well, the judge in the case against Unite the Right tiki torch marcher Jacob Dix has definitively dismissed the charges. Dix is a free man.
Dix had actually been put on trial for "burning an object with the intent to intimidate," a felony in Virginia under a 2002 law that replaced an older anti-KKK law against cross burning. That prior law had been ruled unconstitutional.
The jury in Dix's case came back hung three months ago.
I generally don't regard putting people in cages as an effective solution to social problems. But the judge's rationale for dismissing this case is just atrocious. According to the article below, Judge Thomas Padrick said in court that "this is akin to flag-burning. It's distasteful, and I don't agree with it, but the Supreme Court has defended it. It is Constitutional free speech."
Uh-huh.
Attacking and deliberately traumatizing a group of people in the name of an explicitly violent, misanthropic ideology with a none-too-obscure history of actual genocide is totally the same thing as burning a piece of cloth. So free speech. Much Constitution.
The judge also expressed misgivings about his own instructions to the jury in Dix's trial. He had invoked the idea of "concert of action," which is a legal doctrine that holds people liable for criminal activity when they only abet it, rather than actually committing it. In dismissing the case, he asked "Every one of them committed a felony? Every one of them just because they carried a lit tiki torch and marched in formation and uttered hate speech?"
Is that even a real question? Virginia law defines "burning an object with the intent to intimidate" as a felony. So yes. Yes they did. When that march happened, I wasn't even in the crowd at the rotunda. I was across the street, just off campus, and I felt intimidated. And I'm a fairly large, relatively inconspicuous white male gentile.
Just think for one moment about the effect of that spectacle: the fire, the booming voices, the constant swirling motion, the smell of burning butane. Nobody had the luxury of hindsight then. There was no way to know what kind of harm might come from that. People were getting bits of lighter fluid on their clothes from torches being swung at them, sometimes actually hitting them. And while we can mock the marchers for using bullshitty Walmart tiki torches, there was actual fire involved, and it was coming at people from all directions.
Oh, but the actual, literal fascists merely carried lit torches, marched in formation, and uttered hate speech? Is that all? Good point, judge. Good fucking point.
Judge Padrick also raised an issue that's been brought up by both Dix's attorney and every pissant nazi twerp from sea to shining sea, namely that "we're talking about something that happened seven years ago and no prior commonwealth's attorney would prosecute." Well, that's because the prosecutor in that county in 2017 simply declined to prosecute. When the current prosecutor ran against him in 2020, he specifically promised to go after these people and -- guess what? -- he got elected. Correlation doesn't equal causation, but to me, that at least suggests that there's a good chance that people who live in that county disagreed with the old prosecutor's approach and did, in fact, want to see the "justice system" hold these people accountable.
Lastly, the implication that these cases should just be dropped and forgotten because so much time has passed is just disgraceful. Dix claims he doesn't hold the same beliefs anymore, but he remains unapologetic. During the torch march, he was wearing a t-shirt with a big "88" on it (for the uninitiated: in context, that's *definitely* a Nazi symbol). Now he's whining that the trial cost him "tens of thousands of dollars" while claiming he no longer has that shirt. He says "that was more of a radical time for me. I don't want to apologize for any past mistakes, but I don't hold those same values."
Sure, man. Cool. Refusing to apologize for your "mistakes" is an excellent way to convince the world that you've changed.
The one real upside to all of this is that Jacob Joseph Dix (29) of Clarksville, Ohio, has effectively been doxxed in a big way. I mean, his case has by now gotten significantly more coverage than the other "intimidation by fire cases," though that may no longer be the case once Patriot Front leader Thomas Rousseau gets his day in court for this. Dix is going to find it rather difficult to get work, a date, or probably even friends who aren't also nazis. He will be celebrated as a hero in some circles, but ultimately, that's a fairly small world, and he is going to find it rather difficult to move beyond its borders. But then treating borders as sacrosanct is kind of a big deal to people like him, so maybe that's no loss after all.
#UTR #UniteTheRight #Charlottesville #JacobDix #NeoNazis #fcknzs #fascism
https://dailyprogress.com/news/local/crime-courts/case-against-participant-in-2017-uva-torch-march-dismissed/article_4a426148-60cd-11ef-a6b5-3bb238cf2f82.html
