{"id":230935,"date":"2023-03-13T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2023-03-13T12:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=230935"},"modified":"2023-03-07T06:50:17","modified_gmt":"2023-03-07T06:50:17","slug":"lynching-the-deplorables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/03\/lynching-the-deplorables\/","title":{"rendered":"Lynching the Deplorables"},"content":{"rendered":"

The criminal investigation undertaken by the federal government against hundreds of participants in the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol is polarizing the country and shredding civil liberties.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Executing the Law \u2014 by Mr. Fish<\/p><\/div>\n

5 Mar 2023 – <\/em>There is little that unites me with those who occupied the Capitol building on Jan. 6. Their vision for America, Christian nationalism, white supremacy, blind support for Trump and embrace of reactionary fact-free conspiracy theories leaves a very wide chasm between their beliefs and mine. But that does not mean I support the judicial lynching against many of those who participated in the Jan. 6 events, a lynching that is mandating years in pretrial detention and prison for misdemeanors. Once rights become privileges, none of us are safe.<\/p>\n

The U.S. legal system has a very sordid history. It was used to enforce segregation and legitimize the reign of terror against Black people. It was the hammer that broke the back of militant union movements. It persecuted radicals and reformers in the name of anti-communism. After 9\/11, it relentlessly went after<\/a> Muslim leaders and activists with Special Administrative Measures (SAMs). SAMs, established<\/a> by the Clinton administration, originally only applied<\/a> to people who ordered murders from prison or were convicted of mass murder, but are now used to isolate all manner of detainees before and during trial. They severely restrict a prisoner\u2019s communication with the outside world; prohibiting calls, letters and visits with anyone except attorneys and sharply limit contact with family members. The solitary confinement like conditions associated with SAMs undermine any meaningful right to a fair trial according<\/a> to analysis by groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights and can amount to torture<\/a> according<\/a> to the United Nations. Julian Assange faces<\/a> SAMs or similar conditions should he be extradited to the U.S. The Classified Information Procedures Act, or CIPA, begun under the Reagan administration, also allows<\/a> evidence in a trial to be classified and withheld from defendants. The courts, throughout American history, have abjectly served the interests of big business and the billionaire class. The current Supreme Court is one of the most retrograde in decades, rolling back<\/a> legal protections for vulnerable groups and denying workers protection from predatory corporate abuse.<\/p>\n

At least 1,003 people have been arrested and charged so far for participation in events on Jan. 6, with 476 pleading guilty, in what has been the largest single criminal investigation in U.S. history, according<\/a> to analysis by Business Insider. The charges and sentences vary<\/a>, with many<\/a> receiving misdemeanor sentences such as fines, probation, a few months in prison or a combination of the three. Of the 394 federal defendants who have had their cases adjudicated and sentenced as of Feb. 6, approximately 220 \u201chave been sentenced to periods of incarceration\u201d with a further 100 defendants \u201csentenced to a period of home detention, including approximately 15 who also were sentenced to a period of incarceration,\u201d according<\/a> to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office in Washington, D.C. There are six convictions and four guilty pleas on charges of \u201cseditious conspiracy.\u201d This offense is so widely defined that it includes<\/a> conspiring to levy war against the government on the one hand and delaying the execution of any law on the other. Those charged<\/a> and convicted of \u201cseditious conspiracy\u201d were accused of collaborating to oppose \u201cthe lawful transfer of presidential power by force\u201d by preventing or delaying the Certification of the Electoral College vote. While a few of the organizers of the Jan. 6 protest such as Stewart Rhodes, who founded<\/a> Oath Keepers, may conceivably be guilty of sedition, and even this is in doubt, the vast majority of those caught up in the incursion of the Capitol did not commit serious crimes, engage in violence or know what they would do in Washington other than protest the election results.<\/p>\n

Joseph D. McBride went to law school because his brother was serving a 15-year sentence for a crime he did not commit. He provided free legal advice as a law school student to those encamped in Zuccotti Park in New York City during the Occupy movement. Following law school, he worked as a public defender and in the Legal Aid Society. He represents several of those charged in the Jan. 6 incursion, including<\/a> Richard Barnett. Barnett was photographed in Nancy Pelosi\u2019s office with his leg propped up on her desk. Barnett was convicted<\/a> by a federal jury, which deliberated for two hours, on eight counts, including disorderly conduct in the Capitol building. He faces up to 47 years in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced on May 3.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe post 9\/11 model is being applied to American citizens,\u201d McBride told me when I reached him by phone. \u201cThat model is the 19 hijackers. Everyone who is a religious Muslim is a suspect for the next 20 years. They should be waterboarded. They should be put in fucking jail and left in Guantanamo Bay. Lock them up. Throw away the key. Because they are psychopath extremists who believe in Allah and we don\u2019t have time for that. They\u2019re a threat based on who they are, what they look like, what they believe in. When the truth is, the vast majority of these guys don\u2019t do drugs, don\u2019t drink alcohol, they have five kids and they live pretty good lives. But because of the label of \u2018terrorism\u2019 and \u2018Osama Bin Laden\u2019 and \u2018al-Qaeda\u2019, everybody who is a Muslim is now a target. If we get on a plane next to one of these people, we get nervous about it because that\u2019s how much it\u2019s ingrained in us. The same thing is happening, except it\u2019s being applied to a new group of people, primarily white Christians, Trump supporters, for now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPower is going to change hands,\u201d he warned. \u201cThe Democrats are not going to be in power forever. When power changes hands, that precedent is going to travel with it. If somebody else from the other side gets in and starts to target the people who are in power now, their families, their businesses, their lives, their freedom, then it\u2019s over. America goes from being a free democracy to a tribalist partisan state. Maybe there\u2019s not ethnic-cleansing in the streets, but people are cleansing each other from the workplace, from social media, from the banking system and they\u2019re putting people in jail. That\u2019s where we\u2019re headed. I don\u2019t know why people can’t see what\u2019s on the horizon.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Jan. 6 protestors were not the first to occupy Congressional offices, including Nancy Pelosi\u2019s office. Young environmental activists from the Sunrise Movement<\/a>, anti-war activists from Code Pink<\/a> and even congressional staffers<\/a> have engaged in numerous occupations of congressional offices and interrupted<\/a> congressional<\/a> hearings. What will happen to groups such as Code Pink if they occupy congressional offices with Republicans in control of the White House, the Congress and the courts? Will they be held for years in pretrial detention? Will they be given lengthy prison terms based on dubious interpretations of the law? Will they be considered domestic terrorists? Will protests and civil disobedience become impossible?<\/p>\n

McBride said those who walked to the Capitol were not aware that the Department of Justice had created arbitrary markers, what McBride called an \u201cimaginary red line that they draw around the Capitol grounds.\u201d Anyone who crossed that invisible line was charged with violating Capitol grounds.<\/p>\n

He railed against the negative portrayal of the protestors in the media, the White House and Democratic Party leadership, as well as a tainted jury pool in Washington composed of people who have close links to the federal government. He said Change of Venue motions filed by the defense lawyers have been denied.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe D.C. jury pool is poisoned beyond repair,\u201d McBride said. \u201cWhen you just look at what the January 6\u00a0 Committee did alone, never mind President Biden\u2019s speeches about \u2018insurrectionists,\u2019 \u2018MAGA Republican extremists\u2019 and all this stuff, and if you just consider the fact that D.C. is very small, that people who work in the Federal Government are all by definition, kind of victims of January 6 and what happened that day, their institutions and colleagues were \u2018under attack.\u2019 How can anybody from that town serve on a jury pool? They can\u2019t. The bias is astounding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jacob Chansley, the so-called \u201cQAnon shaman\u201d who was adorned on Jan. 6 in red, white and blue face paint, carried an American flag on a spear-tipped pole and wore a coyote-fur and horned headdress, pleaded guilty<\/a> to obstruction. He was sentenced<\/a> to more than three years in prison. Chansley, who says he is a practitioner of ahimsa<\/em>, an ancient Indian principle of non-violence toward all living beings, was not accused of assaulting anyone. He was diagnosed in prison with transient schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety.<\/p>\n

Guy Wesley Reffitt, who did not enter the Capitol building, nevertheless was sentenced<\/a> after three hours of deliberations to seven years and three months in prison on five charges, including \u201ctwo counts of civil disorder, and one count each of obstruction of an official proceeding, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a firearm, and obstruction of justice.\u201d His obstruction of justice charge came from<\/a> \u201cthreatening\u201d his two teenage children to prevent them from reporting him to law enforcement.<\/p>\n

Daniel Ray Caldwell, a Marine Corps veteran, who sprayed a chemical irritant at a group of police officers outside the Capitol and entered through the Senate Wing doors where he remained inside for approximately two minutes, was sentenced to more than five years in prison. He spent, like many who have been charged, nearly two years in pretrial detention.<\/p>\n

Even the charges against Rhodes, who faces 20 years in prison, and other militia leaders of groups such as the Proud Boys are problematic. The New York Times reported<\/a> that, \u201cdespite the vast amount of evidence the government collected in the case \u2014 including more than 500,000 encrypted text messages \u2014 investigators never found a smoking gun that conclusively showed the Proud Boys plotted to help President Donald J. Trump remain in office.\u201d The government has relied on the testimony of a former Proud Boy, Jeremy Bertino, who is cooperating with prosecutors to build an \u201cinferential case\u201d against Enrique Tarrio, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola, the five defendants in the current Proud Boy case. Bertino, on cross-examination, admitted that in previous interviews with the government, he repeatedly told investigators that the Proud Boys did not have an explicit plan to halt the election certification and that he did not anticipate acts of violence on Jan. 6. The FBI had as many as eight informants<\/a> in the Proud Boys that included its leader, Enrique Tarrio<\/a>, during the storming of the Capitol, raising the very real possibility of entrapment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re changing the laws,\u201d McBride said. \u201cLook at the 1512 charge, the obstruction charge<\/a>. That was used for document shredding in Enron. It has no applicability to Jan. 6 whatsoever. They took it. They repurposed it. They weaponised it against these people and made it impossible for them to defend themselves. When you look at the civil disorder charge, they are saying that if January 6 was one big civil disorder, and if you had any type of interaction with a police officer that day that may or may not have caused the police officer to step away from his duties for a moment, you can go down with civil disorder and get five years in jail.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryan Nichols, a Marine Corps veteran, is living under house arrest in Texas after nearly two years in pretrial detention, much of it in solitary confinement, in Washington, D.C and Virginia jails. He faces five felony and three misdemeanor charges. Prosecutors say Nichols assaulted officers and obstructed an official proceeding. He has been ordered to \u201cstay away from Washington, D.C.\u201d except for business related to his case, according to court documents. He has had to submit to \u201clocation monitoring technology\u201d and is denied access to the internet and his phone except to perform functions related to his case. He cannot have contact with anyone involved in the Jan. 6 events, including co-defendants. Nichols must remain in his home 24 hours a day except for medical and court appointments. He is permitted to attend Sunday church services at Mobberly Baptist Church in Longview, Texas. He is facing 20 years in prison. He is scheduled to go to trial on March 27.<\/p>\n

I spoke with Bonnie Nichols, Ryan\u2019s wife, by phone from their home in Longview, Texas.<\/p>\n

Ryan was arrested<\/a> on Jan. 18, 2020. The FBI surrounded their house at 5:30 am in armored vehicles. They unscrewed the bulbs from flood lights and cut the wires to the couple\u2019s security cameras before kicking in the front door. The couple and their two children, then aged 4 and 6, were at Bonnie\u2019s parents house during the raid. The FBI confiscated their weapons, electronics and documents, including Social Security cards.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to cooperate,\u201d she said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know anything was wrong. They asked Ryan to come in for questioning. Ryan went and turned himself in. They arrested him and I didn\u2019t see him again for over a year and a half.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryan, who had no criminal record, ran a nonprofit called Rescue the Universe where he carried out search-and-rescue operations after natural disasters. He was denied bail. He was sent to a holding facility in Grady County Oklahoma for two months before being flown to Washington, D.C. where he was met by some two dozen U.S. Marshals. His feet were shackled. His arms were shackled to a chain around his waist. He was placed in long term solitary confinement and denied video calls or visitation from his family, including his children. He was denied access to his trial documents for nearly a year and prohibited from attending religious services in the jail.<\/p>\n

Ryan, whose most serious offense appears to be incendiary rhetoric calling for a \u201csecond American revolution,\u201d spent nearly 22 months in solitary confinement. Depressed, struggling to cope with the physical and psychological strain of prolonged isolation, he was eventually placed on suicide watch. He was strapped to a bench in a room where a light was never turned off. Guards would periodically shout through a window \u201cDo you feel like killing yourself?\u201d Those on suicide watch who said\u00a0 \u201cyes\u201d remained strapped to the bench. Those who said \u201cno\u201d were sent back to their cells. Ryan was often prohibited from having nail clippers \u2014 the guards told him he could chew his toenails down \u2014 or getting a haircut unless he agreed to be vaccinated for COVID-19. When Ryan appeared before Judge Thomas Hogan, who finally released<\/a> him on Nov. 23, 2022, he told Ryan, with his long unkempt hair and fingernails, that he looked like Tom Hanks in the film Cast Away.<\/p>\n

Every night, for the two years Ryan was held in solitary confinement, Bonnie and her two small boys would say prayers that Ryan would one day come home. She said she and her family have received numerous death threats.<\/p>\n

\u201cRyan deals with insomnia,\u201d Bonnie said of her husband. \u201cHe deals with extreme anxiety, depression and paranoia. He will not even go outside of his backyard because he\u2019s scared that if he goes outside, that they\u2019re going to take him back to jail. He has liver issues from the food that he ate because they fed him baloney sandwiches and trash while he was in D.C. He\u2019s having a lot of medical issues. He also has lower testosterone than a 60-year-old man because he wasn\u2019t able to have any sunlight. His vitamin D levels are low. The list goes on and on. This man does not sleep at night. He has nightmares. He whimpers at night in his sleep because he has dreams that he’s back in D.C. I mean, he\u2019s a mess. This is the result of what has happened to him. He has vision loss. He doesn\u2019t see as good as he used to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryan\u2019s family, like many families of those charged, are struggling financially. Bonnie said their savings are gone. She and Ryan are heavily in debt. She has set up a fundraising page here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are God-loving patriots,\u201d she said. \u201cWho\u2019s going to be next? It\u2019s not about Republican or Democrat or white or Black, Christian, or Muslim. We are all children of God. We are all U.S. American citizens. We are all entitled to our constitutional rights and freedom of speech. We can all come together and agree on that, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

The cheerleading, or at best indifference, by Democratic Party supporters and much of the left to these show trials will come back to haunt them. We are exacerbating the growing tribalism and political antagonisms that will increasingly express themselves through violence. We are complicit, once again, of using the courts to carry out vendettas. We are corroding democratic institutions. We are hardening the ideology and rage of the far-right. We are turning those being hounded to prison into political prisoners and martyrs. We are moving ever closer towards tyranny.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for\u00a0<\/em>The New York Times,\u00a0where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief. He previously worked overseas for\u00a0<\/em>The Dallas Morning News,\u00a0The Christian Science Monitor, and<\/em> NPR. He used to be the host of the Emmy Award-nominated <\/em>RT America show\u00a0<\/em>On Contact.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Copyright 2022 Chris Hedges<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – chrishedges.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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