By David Futrelle
Three white supremacists have been charged with attempted murder after one of them fired at a group of antifascist counterprotesters after a speech by neo-Nazi celebrity Richard Spencer at the University of Florida in Gaineville yesterday.
The Miami Herald reports:
Just before 5:30 p.m., just as protesters outside Spencer’s speech at UF’s Phillips Center were wrapping up, Gainesville police said the trio started heckling some anti-Spencer protesters with Hitler chants, Nazi salutes and threats. At one point, cops said, convicted felon Tenbrink pulled out a gun and the brothers encouraged him to use it.
He fired a single shot that missed the group, police said, then sped off in a silver Jeep. An off-duty Alachua County Sheriff’s Office deputy spotted the car 20 miles out of town around 9 p.m. and arrested the group. The Fears brothers are held on million dollar bonds in the Alachua County jail. Tenbrink’s is $3 million.
Surprise, surprise: Two of the three were amongst the alleged “very fine people” marching with their fellow white supremacists in Charlottesville.
Tenbrink, 28, and William Fears, 30, were spotted at Charlottesville, the site of the largest white nationalist gathering in years that erupted in violence. Fears identifies himself on Twitter as “Charismatic leader of a White breeding cult” and tweeted “blood and soil,” the notorious Nazi slogan.
This is terrorism, plain and simple. It’s appalling the story isn’t getting more attention in the media.
Here are some tweets with more details on what happened.
3 white supremacists arrested in Florida for shooting at anti-racism protesters https://t.co/zn6bUBqFK3
— Vox (@voxdotcom) October 20, 2017
https://twitter.com/efoster_eric/status/921495556790325248
“Kill them”: Three men charged in shooting after Richard Spencer speech https://t.co/gqCXtWSmD3
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 20, 2017
And these three aren’t the only violent white supremacists who should be getting a lot more attention from the press — and the cops.
Who are the white supremacists assaulting people at rallies in Berkeley, Charlottesville and Huntington Beach? We found some of them: pic.twitter.com/fL5yzyI8Om
— ProPublica (@propublica) October 19, 2017
A Cali racist group—the Rise Above Movement_is full of violent felons. Law enforcement pays it little attention: https://t.co/8AFZS9HVsO
— ProPublica (@propublica) October 19, 2017
The ProPublica piece is a long one but I think a necessary read for anyone concerned with the rise of a violent fascist movement in US.
— 🏳️🌈Spacedad (@SuperSpacedad) October 20, 2017
My thoughts exactly.
Meanwhile, everyone in the White House continues to lie about Trump’s shockingly callous treatment of a grieving Gold Star mother and the congresswoman who has stood up for her.
Specifically, this entire John Kelly story is fiction. Not one bit of it actually happened. pic.twitter.com/eGSQU0S3wc
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 20, 2017
https://twitter.com/TVietor08/status/921452065338953729
Hey @realDonaldTrump I know how much you love calling out FAKE NEWS so here’s your daughter-in-law quoting a transcript that doesn't exist. https://t.co/TheR8FGrWY
— shauna (@goldengateblond) October 20, 2017
"He knew what he signed up for"
Kelly: I told him to say it
DJT: I didn't say it
LaraT: I saw the transcript
Sanders: There's no transcript— Jules Suzdaltsev (@jules_su) October 20, 2017
Don TrumpJr. has thrown himself into the fray though he apparently has trouble telling black women apart.
https://twitter.com/kibblesmith/status/921064156610088962
Rachel Maddow has a pretty convincing theory on why Trump doesn’t want to talk about Niger: that the 4 US soldiers died in part as a result of the Trump administration alienating the government of Chad, which pulled its troops out of Niger after Trump put the country (a longtime ally in the war on terror) on his alleged non-Muslim ban list for an extremely stupid reason.
Maddow connects the dots on how Trump adding Chad to his travel ban may have gotten soldiers killed in Niger https://t.co/PYk203GxVM
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) October 20, 2017
In a whole other arena of terrible, things are even worse in Puerto Rico than official reports acknowledge:
Real death toll in Puerto Rico is probably 450 — much higher than official count https://t.co/msCyhMDyyQ
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) October 18, 2017
But our country still has its heroes. Along with Rep. Wilson and all those working diligently to save lives in Puerto Rico, there is this dude:
A man in an apartment on Connecticut Ave. mooned President Trump’s motorcade to the Embassy of Kuwait tonight, per the pool report pic.twitter.com/ifGC8ycXat
— Hunter Schwarz (@hunterschwarz) October 19, 2017
Here are some cute animals because we all need more of them this week. And every week these days, frankly.
everything is terrible so here’s a baby lion cub learning to roar pic.twitter.com/JZpZGj69FJ
— shauna (@goldengateblond) October 18, 2017
https://twitter.com/awwcuteness/status/921260735119970307
https://twitter.com/ItsMeowIRL/status/921245209526132742
I hope they do go after Hillary. As a distraction tactic, it sure beats the alternative of starting a (possibly nuclear) war.
@Scildfreja
I am so, so sorry about your friend.
It’s beyond me how people can deliberately do something like that, and for what? because animals are daring to exist on “their” land? Entitled bastards. Get a better fence if you don’t like it, or accept that animals will go where they like. We are not the only creatures living on this planet.
Utterly senseless and malicious. Anyone who would do this has something wrong with them.
Uh, no. Show trials for private citizens for the crime of being against Trump is not a good precedent.
Remember the odd times David would look at the twitter followers of the lead(ing)-headed lights of AVFM and see how many of them were fake?
Seems the orange one leans to the same tactic 😛 :
https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/trump-fake-twitter-followers-october-2017/
WWTH: Well, you have your wish. As a distraction it looks like they’re going to be choosing nuclear war instead:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/mattis-us-will-not-accept-a-nuclear-north-korea/ar-AAu9kH5
Now please excuse me for a few hours — I have a fallout shelter to install.
@Scildfreja
Condolences, what sort of person can do something like that and feel like they’re in the right?!
Yes. Because not wanting Trump to use the DOJ to intimidate and prosecute any dissent against him means I want nuclear war. That’s exactly what I said.
The fuck, Surplus?
Look, if we can’t #LockHerUp, there WILL be a nuclear war. That’s just how Logic TM works.
I said, if they were going to try for some sort of a distraction, better they try another goes-nowhere “zippergate” style one than start a war, especially one that might go nuclear. Seems after that someone indicated their preference. I’m really not sure where the confusion is coming from here.
@Surplus
I say this with respect and love, but – speaking personally – this last fortnight has been the worst possible to suggest to me that women, any women, can be used as cannon fodder.
#metoo has brought a lot of us to boiling point, because we’ve been simmering most of our lives. Maybe cooking metaphors aren’t the best, but I’m going with it.
Clinton, whatever you think about her politics, has been a lightning rod for misogyny from practically every political wing. For decades. I, for one, am sick of it. In theory, yes, the life of one is worth less than a nuclear war. In practice, pick another Aunt Sally.
There, I’ve explained politely. Please let it go.
ETA Google if you are unfamiliar with an Aunt Sally. But maybe a male Aunt Sally would be timely.
PS I’ve just read the Wikipedia Aunt Sally article and it is sadly lacking.
I’d love to hear from Brits if I have it wrong, but my understanding of an Aunt Sally is a contrary figurehead, set up to unify local opinion against it. Based on a fairground attraction where you throw things at a female manikin (don’t even get me started). Wikipedia introduced a race element, which I’m ignorant of. Una Stubbs is my Aunt Sally (from Worzel Gummidge).
Enough.
I don’t see why we have to choose between authoritarianism and nuclear war in the first place. That’s setting up a false dichotomy. No one is saying we have to either Hillary Clinton on trial or go to war except for you.
But yeah, what Weatherwax said too. The nonchalance of offering a woman who has been a favorite target of misogynists for decades as a sacrifice is not sitting right with me at all. Women are all too often expected to offer themselves up to appease angry men. That’s really misogynistic and is not likely to go over well around here. I’m sure that’s probably not what you intended but that’s how it comes across.
@WWTH
Right there with you.
@Surplus, your comments to WWTH lately remind me of this:
http://i.imgur.com/i5cuBuK.png
OT, I has a sad. Or an angry. A sangry, there we go. There’s a journalist I’ve been reading for some years now, and I’ve really liked most of his work. Very smart & well-read, & funny too (to me, anyway).
A few months ago he wrote an piece on Assange, here. It contained, among other things, the following (re the Swedish allegations). CW for rape apology:
He’s one of the Assange-forever type leftie writers, so it wasn’t entirely a surprise. But the sheer wilful wrongness, especially from someone who’s far from stupid…. Anyhoo, last week he offered his take on Weinstein: it’s not about gender, it’s about class and power. He lists a number of women in positions of power in Hollywood, asks why they didn’t alert anyone, and then this:
And the main conclusion:
Apologies for the lengthy post. I just needed to vent.
No it isn’t. Consent is either given or it isn’t. There’s no ‘deeming’ or ‘implied’ element.
There’s nothing complex about the legal position over condoms. If consent is conditional on the wearing of a condom, failure to wear or removal of the condom negates the consent.
That was pretty much the issue in the Assange extradition case (despite what he whinges about now, in the appeal he explicitly abandoned any claim that he faced an increased risk of extradition to the US).
Huh?
The inescapable conclusion here is: “The preceding statement is untrue, but I’ll pretend otherwise.”
I mean, claiming case law would generally be followed by a citation, not a claim that one can’t explain said case law.
(Note, I’m not familiar with case law in Sweden, but I will not assume that Fucknut McGee here is either, since there’s no evidence of that apart from his claim)
Also, his claim that
sort of misses that Assange was thoroughly non-cooperative, which was the reason that Swedish authorities did not want to do this to begin with.
So, yeah, seems he’s playing fast and loose with the facts, and he also seems to be a complete creep.
Apart from that, is inauguration a part of legal jargon, or is my stumbling on this sentence legit?
His Weinstein article appears to be subscription-locked, and while they offer a free trial he doesn’t really entice me to bother with it. Creeper hot takes are a dime a dozen, and never worth either time or dimes.
@Alan, Feline,
The notion that consent “carries over” really disturbed me, and has stuck with me ever since I read the article.
I was a fan of Assange myself, but this blind loyalty from some lefties is troubling. If you criticise him, you’re a hypocrite; if you wonder about his ties to Russia you’re invoking Cold War hysteria, etc. etc. Not sure how they reconcile his Twitter feed being full of Pepes & MAGAs…
And yes, Crikey is a paywalled source; apologies for not specifying that. I do realise that Rundle’s take is nothing original or special – as I said, just needed to vent given that I normally like his work. If it was an alt-righter or some such, I wouldn’t have even bothered, but ethical challenges interest and frustrate me.
As for the use of “inaugurated” etc. I’ll let Alan field legal queries 🙂
The (English) laws that relate to time limits and the like tend to use ‘instigated’; maybe that’s what he meant?
@Mish of the Catlady Ascendancy:
Yeah, smells a bit of MRM, doesn’t it. I mean, apart from being a false statement.
Yeah, I was not a fan of Assange as such, but rather the principles he espoused, and because of that I supported him and WikiLeaks. When he fled questioning a lot of people, me included, were of the opinion that he should have just come in for questioning, since the case as presented was weak as fuck, and him walking was nearly guaranteed. Him hiding, claiming that Sweden would illegally “extradite” him, demanding that Swedish politicians guarantee that he’d not be extradited (which would be unlawful interference in the judicial process) and refusing to accept the thing he got (an assurance that legalities would be observed, which in this case included not being extradited) and so on didn’t really endear him to me.
Look, you can’t make your compliance with the judiciary dependent on politicians sidestepping the legal system at same time you claim you can’t trust that the legal system will follow the rules.
Also, his new-found issues with Sweden were… Interesting, to say the least.
All in all, I’m not saying it was an actual admission of guilt, I’m just saying that either he’s guilty of something, possibly something heinous we’ve never heard about, or he’s really bad at listening to his lawyer.
Furthermore, his shit-talking and lies about Sweden pisses me off somewhat, although it does pull out the misogyny and racism in a lot of ostensibly leftist people, so there’s that at least.
Oh, oh, a last thing about Assange. You know how he keeps claiming that he’s been incarcerated for seven years? Bald faced lie, right? He’s been hiding from justice for seven years, choosing to hole up in an embassy rather than face questioning.
Which is why side-eye any journalist that quotes him claiming that without clarifying. The ones making that claim on their entire own? Don’t let them watch your drink.
The first article was readable in full when NoScripted, didn’t try it after allowing Crikey, it was the second one that only had the lead with disallowed scripts. But for me, people’s views on Assange are more worth looking at than their views on Weinstein, because of the complexities and the chaff of the former case, and the straightforwardness of the latter.
For sure, I was thinking about directing that question to him specifically, but since I didn’t direct the comment at you specifically I thought about that question more as being thrown out into the ether. Was definitely not demanding an answer out of you.
Edit:
@Alan Robertshaw:
Possibly. Still feel slightly off to me, but on the other hand that’s not unusual with legal jargon.
Thank you for answering, your willingness to help with these things is appreciated.
OT: The suspense is killing me!
FBI insider: Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner may be arrested on Monday
http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/fbi-jared-kushner-arrested/5752/
To quote a bunch of memes on Facebook, You know who isn’t getting arrested on Monday? Hillary Clinton.
If it’s Kushner, at least he has some experience with federal prison stuff, the apple not falling far from the proverbial tree, etc etc and I don’t like his weasel face anyway. Don’t know why but it bothers me, his face.
Sad for his children but I’m sure Ivanka will have them shielded from the spectacle somewhat. The Trump boys can walk a world of sharp broken pieces of legos barefoot and get eaten by lions, or tigers, or trampled by many water buffalo though. (Is it ok if it’s violent retribution by wild animals at risk of being their hunting trophies or does that still violate comment policy?) The great (ugly) pumpkin is already trying to juggle various flaming poo bag diversions so this should be an interesting thing to watch. Gonna need some popcorn.
Now that Trump has decided The Wall has to be see-through, or Mexican drug smugglers with catapults will blindly launch massive bags of cocaine over the wall which will land on the heads of unsuspecting children playing by the wall on the US side, maybe that wall pipe dream might be a better distraction for him.
@Kat
This combined with the release of Wolfenstein: The New Colossus has made this week quite the therapeutic treatment.
@IP
I’ve taken a peek on those wall designs. The fact that there are multiple versions that look like the comb from Spaceballs, top heavy, have small bars that you can easily pass packets of drugs, are easy to break apart and difficult to repair is so fitting for this Administration. I’m betting that whatever company that actually does this project bails and runs with the cash within a week.