From Opening Statements, it was clear to me that the Neo-Nazis intended to use their trial for the deadly 2017 rally in Charlottesville as nothing more than a godsend to proselytize their racist propaganda.
Here is how I decried what I thought was their manifest intent in a comment to a Daily Beast report on October 28:
This trial is just giving these white supremacists a platform to preach their hate, and a media to propagate it in ways beyond their wildest dreams. In fact, they couldn’t care less about proving their innocence. Because, no matter the civil judgement, these willfully bankrupt racists are clearly hell-bent on never paying a cent.
This is why I am stupefied by the shock these Neo-Nazis are still managing to evoke. I mean, the Beltway buzz was such yesterday that you’d think nobody had any clue about what these defendants would do.
Here, as reported by Buzz Feed News on Wednesday, is what has so many “shocked, shocked” about how this trial is unfolding.
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Neo-Nazis Christopher Cantwell and Matthew Heimbach on Wednesday seemed almost to forget for a moment that they were in a court of law and defendants in a civil case that could potentially bankrupt them and take down the white nationalist groups with which they’re associated.
‘What’s your favorite Holocaust joke?’ Cantwell, who is representing himself in court, asked Heimbach, who was called to the stand by the plaintiffs as a witness, during cross-examination.
‘My favorite?’ Heimbach replied, chuckling.
The strategy behind Cantwell’s line of questioning wasn’t immediately clear, and attorneys for the plaintiffs interjected before any jokes were uttered. But Cantwell, who had previously gone on bizarre courtroom tangents, and Heimbach spent nearly an hour talking about their adoration for Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, the dictator’s book Mein Kampf, and their belief that the Holocaust was a hoax.
Hitler, Heimbach testified, ‘did nothing wrong’ in murdering some 6 million Jews.
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I hasten to clarify that I believe the victims deserve their day in court; further, that they will win substantial damages against these defendants. But I fear hell will freeze over before they collect much of anything from any of them.
On the other hand, the media would serve the public more if they covered this trial less. After all, the only thing coming out of it are the defiant antics and antisemitic/racist rantings of the defendants. And those are about as newsworthy at this point as Donald Trump’s rantings at The Villages about the 2020 presidential election.
Related commentaries:
Charlottesville…