VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow writes: VDARE.com was not involved at all in the August 12 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA (although in the resulting SJW pogrom we lost a conference and our PayPal account anyway) but we have said that we regard the subsequent Main Stream Media Narrative as the greatest elite inversion of reality since Americans were persuaded to believe that Iraq was responsible for 9/11 and we have chronicled its subsequent collapse with care.
A Virginia state review has already suggested that incompetence in the Charlottesville Police Department allowed the situation to get out of hand i.e. the Antifa to attack the Alt Right [Review says police were uncertain of 'rules of engagement' as violence grew in Charlottesville, by Ned Oliver, Richmond Times-Dispatch, November 15, 2017]. (Pictured right, Charlottesville Police Chief Al S. Thomas Jr.) The City of Charlottesville’s review, conducted by former federal prosecutor Timothy Heaphy, is reportedly to be released before the city council meeting on December 4. Attorney Sam Dickson, whose Unequal Justice: Martha Stewart Jailed For Lying To Police—But Ferguson “Witnesses” Not Prosecuted we published in 2015, decide to submit a statement to Heaphy. He reports that it was acknowledged but that he was not interviewed. VDARE.com has added links.
As with the concurrent J20 trial, what is at stake here is whether America’s Totalitarian Left is to control the streets as completely as it now controls academe.
Submitted to Timothy Heaphy, Attorney at Law, Conducting an ''independent review” on behalf of the City of Charlottesville
Personal Background
My name is Sam G. Dickson.
I am a lawyer licensed to practice in the State of Georgia.
I have practiced law for 45 years. I am the author of three books on law published by the Harrison Company and at one time was listed in ''Who's Who in American Law."
My practice has been a general one, although the last 20 years of it have focused on the litigation of land titles.
On occasion I have represented Americans of so-called ''conservative'' or ''right-wing'' views, including some associated with very unpopular groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.
I am not now, nor never have been, a member or a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan which I see as an organization that has been an embarrassment to White Southerners.
While I am and have been adverse to Klan groups, my personal position has not impacted my belief that such groups and their members are American citizens and are entitled to full rights guaranteed to them by the Bill of Rights.
I am not a conservative.
I am not a ''right-winger.''
Nor am I a liberal or a '' left-winger.''
As a matter of fact, I hold so-called ''liberal'' beliefs on more issues than I hold so-called ''conservative'' beliefs.
Although I am not a conservative or a right-winger, I was asked by some participants in the rally planned at Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia, in protest of the removal of the statues of General Lee and General Jackson to attend and possibly to speak.
I have spoken on issues involving the South and its history on a number of occasions.
I initially was not planning to attend the rally.
The reason for this was the title: ''Unite the Right.''
My own personal belief is that issues should be approached on their own merits. I don't warm to ideological formulations. I do not see any connection between issues such as homosexual marriage, environmental protection, the graduated income tax, capital gains tax, estate tax, abortion, immigration, racial equality, etc. The ideological formulations of ''conservative'' and ''liberal'' have split our country into two warring camps that cannot engage in reasonable and effective civic discussion on any of the supposed litmus tests dividing them.
However, as the time for the rally approached, I was prevailed upon to attend because of concerns that the ''Antifa'' was planning to oppose the rally and because of the effort of the City to deny those who wanted to stage the rally their First Amendment right to do so.
I have seen the Antifa in action before in November 2016, when I observed masked Antifa activists perpetrating criminal attacks upon two separate gatherings in Washington, D.C. These attacks included throwing what the Antifa calls on its websites ''Poopootov Cocktails'' (bottles filled with feces and urine) and also an assault on a couple in which six masked thugs beat the man bloody and others sprayed his girl friend with Raid. The precautions on Raid cannisters state that if the pesticide gets into someone's eyes, it can cause them to go blind.
The Antifa are not funny. They are not amusing. They are a criminal organization as can be seen in what they themselves place on their websites. The Antifa has been identified as a terrorist enterprise by New Jersey Homeland Security. [See Exhibit ''A'', attached. (PDF)]
Knowing the potential for violence from the Antifa, I wanted to be present to help those in attendance take precautions. While not licensed to practice in Virginia, I thought my training as a lawyer might also be of service to those going to the rally.
Enough about me.
My Trip to Charlottesville
When I arrived in Charlottesville, friends picked me up at the Amtrak Station and drove me to McIntyre Park located several miles from where the rally was to take place.
The organizers of the rally had asked people to park their cars at the park so as to minimize contact between those attending the rally and the Antifa.
The fact that those protesting the removal of Lee and Jackson statues did this belies the claims of the media, Charlottesville Mayor Signer and Virginia Governor McAuliffe that they sought violent conflict.
Unfortunately, the Charlottesville police and the State troopers thwarted the efforts of those organizing the rally to minimize contact with Antifa.
When I boarded the shuttle bus that was to take us to Lee Park for the rally, I heard people complaining that the police had been asked if they would protect the cars parked in the lot but were told by the police that we were on our own and no protection would be provided. (The Antifa have a history of vandalizing automobiles.)
This was my first indication that the police were going to deny us the protection of the law.
The police stopped the shuttle bus on which I was riding some distance from Lee Park and made everyone get off and walk.
The so-called ''counter-protesters'' (as Signer, McAuliffe and the media invariably call them, eschewing the term ''Antifa'') were present where the bus was stopped at the orders of the police authorities.
This was my second indication that the police were going to deny us the protection of the law.
I know from my law practice that standard proper police procedure in such situations is to separate hostile crowds.
This was not done by the Charlottesville police and the Virginia State Troopers.
Instead, they insisted upon placing us in close proximity to the Antifa, an organization that, as an elementary google search would have shown, brags online about its violent assaults on American citizens with whose views the Antifa disagrees. [See Exhibit ''B''attachments copied from the Antifa's ''internet store.'(PDF)]
I also noted that the Antifa activists into whose presence we were obliged to leave the shuttle bus were wearing masks in blatant violation of the anti- mask law.
The Antifa selIs masks and offers advice to its members on its websites on how to conceal their identity when they assault those with whom they disagree.
The police authorities were standing to one side and made no attempt to require the Antifa to remove their masks.
It shall be unlawful for any person over 16 years of age to, with the intent to conceal his identity, wear any mask, hood or other device whereby a substantial portion of the face is hidden or covered so as to conceal the identity of the wearer, to be or appear in any public place, or upon any private property in this Commonwealth without first having obtained from the owner or tenant thereof consent to do so in writing. [More, Code Of Virginia]This was my third indication that the City of Charlottesville and the State of Virginia were withholding the protection of the law from us and were condoning violence against us.
I then began making my way to the rally with the other people who had been on the shuttle van.
All around us were Antifa. They were in a state of hysteria. Despite their masks one could catch glimpses their twisted, hate-distorted faces behind the masks.
The Antifa were trying to provoke us to violence. They jostled us, got right in our faces, tagged along at our sides yelling and screaming. They said things like, ''Come on, Nazi! Don't you want to fight? Are you yellow, Nazi? You're a coward, Nazi! Not gonna fight, sissy?''
The police made no effort to tell these people to stop trying to provoke violence and to back off from in-your-face confrontation.
This was my fourth indication that the City of Charlottesville and the State of Virginia were withholding the protection of the law from us.
I tried to hasten my step as the Antifa became more numerous and more agitated as I walked toward the venue for the rally.
Then I saw masked Antifa firing tear gas into people walking toward Lee Park. One of them hit a guy in front of me. The tear gas drifted back from him and into my eyes.
The repeated use of tear gas on us by masked Antifa took place in the presence of uniformed police.
Not one police officer made any gesture to enforce the law by arresting the people perpetrating these assaults. Indeed, there wasn't even a move by the police to tell the Antifa to put the tear gas canisters away.
Incidentally, one of the tear gas incidents actually involved acid that was sprayed into the face of one rally participant who has suffered significant damage to his eyes. I have seen no interest on the part of the media, the City of Charlottesville and the State of Virginia in identifying and arresting the perpetrator of this crime. The police just observed this criminal conduct and made no move to intervene.
I never observed any of those walking to the rally responding to the taunts and assaults of the Antifa. The provocations and the criminal assaults were entirely perpetrated by the Antifa against those trying to attend the rally.
Admittedly, the people in whose immediate presence I was throughout the day are drawn from a fairly well-educated stratum of society and are not people likely to commit crimes. However, I personally did not see any other of our people respond.
Some response may have been made by someone outside of my personal view, but I saw none. This remained true for the remainder of the time until I left McKinley Park after the rally was over.
The police failure to halt tear gas assaults by Antifa on peaceful rally attendees was my 5th indication that the City of Charlottesville and the State of Virginia were withholding the protection of the law from us.
Flame thrower: I did not personally observe an Antifa activist armed with a flame thrower assaulting rally attendees.
However, I heard about this later in the day and have subsequently seen footage of it on You Tube.
Once again, the internet footage shows a truly serious assault...and the police doing nothing. The Antifa activist wielding the flame thrower is shown approaching people peacefully trying to attend the rally. He stops just short of the distance at which the flame would actually hit the target.
[See Exhibit ''C''[PDF] and the YouTube clip below. This film footage gives the lie to the claim subsequently made by the man who committed the assault by flame thrower that he was defending himself against a rally attendee who fired a gun at his feet. The media has greedily lapped up this lie as has his attorney, a member of the Black Panther Party.]
Any miscalculation by the man holding the flame-thrower, any excited misstep by the person being assaulted, and someone could have been terribly, terribly hurt...severely burned, scarred for life, blinded.
The police did nothing to stop these flame-thrower assaults. Another shocking example of the lengths to which the Mayor of Charlottesville and the Governor of Virginia went in their denial of basic police protection to American citizens.
With relief I finally made it to the entrance to Lee Park. The mood of the Antifa was now whipped up into a frenzy as they appeared to become emboldened by their success and the failure of the police to take any action. I was deeply concerned at possibly being violently attacked.
Lee Park had been cordoned off with metal barricades, the only sensible measure taken by the police authorities I observed the entire day.
The barricades divided the potential audience into two areas on the left and the right. The barricades did not create a single enclosure but two separate enclosures.
I initially made my way to the area of the right (as one views the statue of General Lee). About two-thirds of the crowd seemed to be in the left-hand area and one-third in the area where I was.
The Antifa and its supporters were hovering and pressing around the exterior of the barricades. Their shouts and cries created a lot of background noise.
They had obtained 2 permits for rallies of their own at nearby venues that day. The police made no effort to separate the Antifa from us and to move them to where their rallies were to take place.
It is noteworthy that Mayor Signer made no effort to revoke the rally permits of the Antifa despite the undeniable fact that the Antifa have a proven record of violence and sell masks and weapons on their websites where they boast of their history of criminal attacks and urge their followers to assault American citizens holding views antithetical to their own extreme left ideology.
I have never seen any evidence that any group or person planning to attend the Lee Park rally expressed the intention to engage in criminal activity. This is in stark contrast to the threats of violence one sees on Antifa websites.
There was a guy holding a swastika flag in the area where I was standing. I asked someone why he was there and was told that there was no way to make him remove it and that he had already been asked to leave but had refused. The flag was deeply creased and appeared to have been freshly removed from a package.
This lone participant kept to himself and has never been identified.
I note that while around a hundred people attending the rally have been publicly identified by the Antifa and its supporters, no one has ever identified this swastika flag bearer nor even seems interested in who he is.
I suspect he may have been a provocateur placed by the Antifa given the Antifa's lack of interest in identifying him when he should be foremost in their list of targets.
Someone from Atlanta recognized me and told me I should move to the other side because that was where a number of other people from Atlanta had gathered.
We made our way around the right barricade and toward the front of the crowd enclosed by the left barricade.
As we walked I observed a smoke bomb thrown from the ranks of the Antifa into the middle of the crowd in the left side barricade.
It went off and smoke spiraled into the air and into the faces of those gathered for the rally.
Some brave soul snatched it up and threw it outside of the barricade.
I observed the police standing around making no effort to apprehend anyone in the crowd of Antifa from which the bomb had been thrown.
Almost immediately upon my arrival at the front of the crowd in the other barricade to join the other Atlanta people, two law enforcement officers began walking up and down the front barricade.
One of them was speaking into a hand-held loudspeaker in an ''official'' (i.e. monotone, undifferentiated) voice reading aloud a proclamation. The device did not project the sound as well as one would have hoped.
I found it difficult to understand what he was saying despite my being right in front of him. (Admittedly, I have poor hearing.)
I did understand enough to know that he was reading a script that someone had provided him declaring the rally to be ''an illegal assembly'' and ordering all people to leave or face arrest.
I was concerned because I knew that most people present were probably unable to hear over the bedlam of the Antifa screaming what the officer was saying and therefore would not know what was going on.
I tried to speak to the two officers but they contemptuously walked past me as they moved up and down the barricade intoning the proclamation.
The crowd was confused and did not seem to know what was transpiring.
Personally, I believed that the proclamation was unlawful. I had observed no one among the rally participants committing any crime. I had only seen them be the victims of crimes, crimes that had been observed by the police with indifference.
However, I knew that most of the rally attendees would be strapped to pay for lawyers to defend them against the State of Virginia. They would have to scurry back and forth for arraignments, hearings, trials, etc. Even if they were found innocent and the action of the State of Virginia was declared an illegal violation of their First Amendment Rights, they would have arrest records.
I assume the proclamation had been written by Governor McAuliffe or the State Attorney General in advance because there had been no criminal activity by the participants and the text was obviously in writing.
Furthermore, I anticipated the Antifa might access the arrest records and this would enable them to threaten employers and get people fired or expelled from colleges as the Antifa and people like them have done around the country.
After being ignored in several attempts I was able to speak briefly with the officers.
I told them I was a lawyer and was known to many people in the crowd. I asked them if they would allow me to make an announcement explaining what was happening and urging the crowd to leave peacefully.
To say that I was rudely rebuffed would be kind.
When the police rejected my offer and told me to get out, I spoke with the little crowd of Atlanta attendees and asked them to help get the crowd to move out before the police started arresting people.
The rally dispersed shortly after 11:00 a.m. This time is important in view of the efforts of Mayor Signer, Governor McAuliffe and the media to link the death of Ms. Heather Heyer to the rally itself or to the arrival of the rally participants at Charlottesville.
Despite the refusal of the police to allow us to assist in emptying the park, we were able to get most of the crowd of 700 to 900 people to leave.
I walked in front while the others as a convoy followed back to McIntyre Park and the cars.
The Antifa continued to jeer and to attempt to provoke fights as well as to teargas people in the group.
The police, as happened all day long, did not enforce the law. The police failed to arrest those making the criminal assaults and threats. We were denied police protection.
The police allowed people engaged in criminal behavior to go about wearing masks. They watched these masked thugs teargas other people. They made no visible effort to apprehend the Antifa who threw the smoke bomb.
We finally made it back to the parking lot where people got in their cars and dispersed.
By about noon everyone had left.
Two hours later the traffic incident occurred which led to the death of Heather Heyer.
Her tragic death, despite the efforts of Mayor Signer, Governor McAuliffe and the media to insinuate that it did, had no connection to the arrival of rally participants that morning nor was it connected to the departure of the attendees after the unlawful dispersal of the rally.
The driver of the car that is alleged to have struck Ms. Heyer apparently had not gotten the warning to park his car at McIntyre Park in the organizers' unsuccessful effort to minimize contact with the Antifa and the potential for violence.
It seems that he parked in town and was trying to make his way out of the scene of the mob violence tolerated and abetted by the City of Charlottesville's Mayor and the State of Virginia's Governor.
As has been definitely established, his car was attacked by at least one masked person who tried to smash out his windshield with a baseball bat.
It appears reasonable to assume that he possibly was fleeing in belief that his life was in danger and did not seek deliberately to hit anyone.
The fact that he drove past sidewalks full of ''counter-protesters'' and did not hit them argues that he was not seeking to harm anyone and that what happened was an accident. He could have injured or killed scores of them by just swerving 10 feet to the right had that been his intention.
If this is so, then who is to blame for Heather Heyer's death?
The people to blame are not those who tried to have a constitutionally protected rally and who came to Charlottesville that morning.
Those partly to blame are the Antifa who went about in masks committing crimes with an improvised flame thrower, tear gas canisters, a smoke bomb and baseball bats.
But as reprehensible as the Antifa thugs are, they do not bear primary responsibility. The Antifa are self-confessed criminals engaged in violence against those who disagree with them. However, this is not news. Many other cities, colleges and universities have been able to deal with the Antifa and to keep things under control.
For instance, the police at Auburn University faced an identical situation only a few months before. The Auburn, Alabama, police, however, differed from the police in Charlottesville in how they handled the situation.
The Auburn police enforced the Alabama anti-mask law. The Antifa were compelled to unmask themselves. As a result, there were only two arrests...both of them Antifa activists.
Primary responsibility for the death of Heather Heyer lies upon Mayor Signer and Governor McAuliffe who had a duty to maintain law and order and who, for reasons of their own, broke their oaths of office and failed to enforce the law.
When those charged with maintaining law and order wink at lawless conduct on the scale of what transpired at Charlottesville, when someone orders the police to stand aside and look the other way as American citizens are attacked with a flame thrower, a smoke bomb and tear gas, when the police allow criminals to walk around wearing masks as they attack people's cars with baseball bats...
When a Mayor and a Governor fail and refuse to enforce the law, as happened at Charlottesville that day, then events are set in motion that lead to an innocent person such as Heather Heyer being killed in the chaos and unlawful behavior that erupts. Such things happen when law and order are allowed to break down.
So unprecedented and outrageous was the decision of Mayor Signer and Governor McAuliffe to suspend enforcement of the law in Charlottesville that it extended for more than 24 hours.
The next day, Sunday, at 2:00 p.m. one of the organizers of the rally, Jason Kessler, tried to hold a press conference.
He was shouted down and physically attacked by another mob of Antifa. The press conference was shut down and did not take place. Numerous police officers were present. They made no move to stop the physical intimidation that terminated the press conference. A couple of them did make a gesture of helping Kessler get into a car to avoid severe physical injury at the hands of his attackers.
All of this was caught on camera. It had to be. Numerous press outlets were there.
It is worthy of note that the media whose right to freedom of the press was likewise violated through the physical intimidation and violence of ''the counter-protesters'' have remained uniformly mum about this incident.
There was no angry outcry about freedom of the press or lynch law mob violence from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Huffington Post, CNN, MSNBC and company.
Also: one must remember that this took place 27 hours after the shutdown of the rally and Governor McAuliffe's proclamation of a ''State of Emergency.''
27 hours later...and McAuliffe and Signer were still unable to protect an American citizen trying to hold a press conference from a violent and unlawful mob.
If the family of Heather Heyer want to seek justice for her untimely death, they should sue the two people who caused it by condoning mob violence: Mayor Signer and Governor McAuliffe.
We do not know and may never get a ''smoking gun'' like a written document showing us who gave the orders to the local municipal police and to the State Troopers not to provide protection to those attending the rally.
However, the likely sources of the order or orders are obvious.
Hundreds of municipal police officers and State Troopers did not, all on their own, separately and independently, make hundreds of decisions not to enforce Virginia's anti-mask law or to stop tear gas and flame thrower assaults.
All these policemen did not decide of their independent initiative to do nothing as a smoke bomb was thrown and as masked people went about wielding baseball bats.
It strains credibility to think that out of the hundreds of police and State Troopers, not one of them ever had any impulse to enforce the law.
It would be an insult and a defamation to countenance such a preposterous inference for one minute.
The police were acting under orders. Who gave those orders?
The independent investigation of the event should focus on obtaining copies of the orders and identifying the source which logically are most likely Mayor Signer and Governor McAuliffe.
An investigation that does not address this critical issue will not fulfill its purpose.
Conclusion
I believe the following observations to be self-evidently true:
The indisputable fact is that many of these people attended an early rally on May 13, 2017, in Charlottesville, a rally that caught the Antifa by surprise and therefore proceeded without event.
Without the presence of the Antifa, that earlier rally took place without any act of violence.
If your investigation report charges the people trying to hold their rally in Lee Park as inherently violent and prone to criminal behavior, this will be a blatant lie.
First there will be copycat acts of violence as others whip out their teargas canisters after seeing criminal acts of spraying people with tear gas go unpunished.
Then there will be the natural, if wrongheaded, desire to top what the guy down the street has done.
The potential for mob behavior and mass violence will grow when the first acts of lawlessness go unpunished by the lack of a police response.
It is clear that the authorities themselves were aware of this because the City sought to rescind the permit for the Lee Park rally based upon its apprehensions of violence from those opposed to the rally.
It is not possible for the City and its officials to claim ignorance of the potential for violence from the Antifa.
Their awareness is a matter of record.
If the City had concerns about the possibility of this violence—concern so great as to necessitate revoking a permit and defending a case in federal court—why then were the police not put on notice and told to act quickly in the event of criminal behavior?
In view of the City's decision to rescind the permit and its position (that the permit had to be rescinded because of the potential for violence) in the subsequent First Amendment lawsuit that vindicated the First Amendment right of the ralliers, the City cannot maintain with a straight face that it had no warning.
There has to be a person or persons responsible for the decision to order the police not to make arrests.
Your investigation presumably has the power to review the paperwork of the City of Charlottesville.
For you to make an ''independent investigation,'' it is first and foremost in what you must do for you to obtain the documentation from the City's records and to interview police officers to determine who made this fatal decision.
Those responsible for the decision to suspend law enforcement bear primary responsibility for all that flowed from that decision...from the first threats and teargas assaults all the way down to the tragic death of Heather Heyer.
Your revelation of who instructed the police not to make arrests will enable the citizens of Charlottesville specifically and then the citizens of the State of Virginia to evaluate how their elected officials and public employees are doing their jobs.
That revelation will enable the nation at large also to grasp the truth of what happened in Charlottesville and to determine accurately who should really bear blame for this fiasco.
This is a simple and obvious factor that played an enormous role in the unfortunate turn of events on the day of the rally.
It is important that the officials of the City of Charlottesville and the State of Virginia be held to a standard requiring enforcement of the law regardless of the popularity or unpopularity of the views of those conducting a political rally.
Nothing in the history of the South's resistance to desegregation during the 1950s and 1960s can be cited that rises to the level of what happened under Mayor Signer's and Governor McAuliffe's watch.
Never were masked people in the presence of policemen allowed to perpetrate crimes over a 3-square mile area for a period exceeding 24 hours.
Never.
The much-cited stories about Southern segregationists like Sheriff Bull Connor of Birmingham pale in comparison to what happened at Charlottesville.
Your report, if it is to have credibility, must address this issue.
The Antifa have been allowed to defy with impunity the Anti-Mask Laws all around the country.
To my knowledge only in Auburn, Alabama, have these laws been applied to the Antifa...and then only as a result of the order of a federal judge.
This situation of left leaning political office holders conniving at masked perpetrators attacking those on opposite sides of the political spectrum must come to an end.
An honest up-front report addressing the failure to enforce the Anti-Mask Law of the State of Virginia will not only be an honest and credible report, it will also help pressure authorities in other cities and states to enforce such laws.
The motive and bias are clear and undeniable.
Given the indisputable fact that the City was aware of the potential for violence from the Antifa, an even-handed (but still unconstitutional) approach would have been for the City to cancel ALL of the permits for rallies that day.
However, the City sought to shut down only 1 of the 3 rallies, the single rally in support of retaining Lee's statue.
It made no effort to shut down the other 2 rallies.
It was selective as to who was allowed to exercise his right to freedom of speech and who was not.
The ''state of emergency'' was declared at 11:00 a.m. the day before.
If the Governor of Virginia believed that the situation in Charlottesville was so horrific as to require the declaration of a state of emergency, it makes no sense that over a full day later a mob of violent people was still being allowed to perpetrate assaults and shut down a press conference.
The fact that this incident took place in the presence of many uniformed police officers shows that the authorities were still refusing to provide protection to those whose views they dislike.
Even after the violent criminal behavior the day before the police apparently were still under orders not to enforce the law.
Your investigation must address this issue.
The pattern of discrimination based on political ideology continues.
The First Amendment is a law. It is a fundamental part of our law. It is as much a law as the laws prohibiting assaults. The authorities continue to break the law through their ideological discrimination in deciding whom to prosecute and whom not to prosecute.
Your report must address this issue and determine at what point American citizens with views disliked by the authorities are to regain their right to police protection.
We are not there yet. Even months after the events of that day.
When will Charlottesville return to law and order?
We need to know when we as American citizens can count on our physical safety in Charlottesville being protected and your report should inform us as to the time and date when this will occur.
This statement made the 17th day of November, 2017.
SAM G. DICKSON, Attorney at Law
Box 55123 Atlanta, Ga. 30308
Sam Dickson (email him) is a lawyer and activist.
