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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsUS Attorney Cuts Neo-Nazis Down To Size With Brutal Press Conference Remarks
https://crooksandliars.com/2019/08/us-attorney-cuts-neo-nazis-down-sizeUS Attorney Cuts Neo-Nazis Down To Size With Brutal Press Conference Remarks
By Aliza Worthington
Another day, another white guy living with his mom threatening to shoot up a synagogue. This one, James Reardon, a 20-year-old Nazi-wannabe threatened to shoot up a Jewish Community Center in Youngstown, Ohio. He was caught because a someone brought the threat he'd posted on Instagram to the attention of the police, and police took it seriously enough to search his house (his mom answered the door.) When they found all the weapons and ammo, they arrested him, having also seen all the anti-Semitic content he gleefully posted on his social media accounts.
On Thursday, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, Justin Herdman, announced charges against Reardon, but what made this presser unusual was his message for the other pathetic Hitler-ites who think that they can not only say whatever they want, but do whatever they want with impunity. Here are some excerpts from Herdman's remarks, which were unusually powerful because of their strength and determination, but also for the way they cut white supremacists down to the size they deserve. Dare I say, the size of insects?
Democracy allows you to test those ideas in a public forum. If you want to submit your beliefs to the American people and get their reaction, please be our guest. Keep this in mind, though. Thousands and thousands of young Americans already voted with their lives to make sure that this same message of intolerance, death, and destruction would not prevail. You can count their ballots by visiting any American cemetery in North Africa, Italy, France, or Belgium, and tallying the white headstones. You can also recite the many names of civil rights advocates who bled and died in opposing supporters of that same ideologies of hatred. Their voices may be distant, but they can still be heard.
Go ahead and make your case for Nazism, a white nation, and racial superiority. The Constitution may give you a voice, but it doesn't guarantee you a receptive audience. Your right to free speech does not automatically mean that people will agree with you. In fact, you have a God-given and inalienable right to be on the losing end of this argument.
[...]
Threatening to kill Jewish people, gunning down innocent Latinos on a weekend shopping trip, planning and plotting to perpetrate murders in the name of a nonsense racial theory, sitting to pray with God-fearing people who you execute moments later - those actions don't make you soldiers, they make you cowards. And law enforcement does not go to war with cowards who break the law, we arrest them and send them to prison.
[...]
Together, we are united to ensure that you commit no further acts of violence in the name of your beliefs. When you wake up tomorrow morning, no matter what time that is, I want you to remember something. You cant set your alarm clock early enough to beat us out of bed. The men and women of law enforcement dont wake up. We never go to sleep. We are always awake. And arm in arm with the public, when your hatred leads you to break the law, we will do everything we can to be there to stop you.
If only our president, attorney general, and Senate majority leader agreed.
You can see a fuller version of the speech here:
Link to tweet
marked50
(1,368 posts)Thanks for posting babylonsister
real Cannabis calm
(1,124 posts)UpInArms
(51,284 posts)The Blue Flower
(5,444 posts)A great, no-holds-barred response to the neo-nazis by law enforcement.
aggiesal
(8,923 posts)Would have been awesome if it had been in the speech.
Let me modify my thoughts
This excerpt is awesome as it is, but it would have been epic if it had been in AG Herdman speech.
He also may have been fired for the statement.
rickyhall
(4,889 posts)Haggis for Breakfast
(6,831 posts)Ask any one of your Congress members to read it into the daily Congressional record on the House/Senate floor. That way it makes it into the published record of the House/Senate proceedings which is widely read by millions.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)marble falls
(57,201 posts)NewJeffCT
(56,829 posts)Is Trump going to order Barr to fire him? Don't want to piss off/scare Donny's base.
proActivist
(75 posts)RAB910
(3,509 posts)onetexan
(13,058 posts)Is doing his job upholding his sworn duty to maintain law & order.
Foolacious
(497 posts)on the recommendation of Senators Portman (D) and Brown (D). I suspect Herdman was simply a name on a list to the Traitor. Having noted all that, you may well be right about Herdman's career after the current "administration" hears what he said in this speech.
uponit7771
(90,363 posts)gratuitous
(82,849 posts)Read it over, and commit to memory some of these sentiments. They are very useful, apply to a wide range of Nazi "arguments," and have the undeniable advantage of being 100% true.
usaf-vet
(6,207 posts)defacto7
(13,485 posts)broadcast to every American especially every American youth. Play this in High School assemblies or at least in every civics class. This is powerful.
yellowdogintexas
(22,270 posts)I thought it wasn't being taught anymore.
It hasn't been a required course for decades. (it was when I was in 8th grade; every 8th grade student in the Commonwealth of KY had a semester of Civics)
Duppers
(28,126 posts)Currently speaking. MLK made some brilliant ones too.
Am saving AG Herdman's speech and sending it out.
SWBTATTReg
(22,166 posts)dchill
(38,532 posts)calimary
(81,458 posts)I look for them as our Indivisible Research & Writing team puts the weekly Call To Action email for our members and friends. The email always starts with an Inspirational Opening.
I just found THIS weeks Inspirational Opening. For sure.
BSdetect
(8,999 posts)Hekate
(90,788 posts)I've just about given up using this smilie because I'm so ashamed of my government, but Justin Herdman is one of the good ones.
Raster
(20,998 posts)Uncle Joe
(58,417 posts)it was most powerful.
Thanks for posting this babylonsister.
FakeNoose
(32,748 posts)What an amazing speech, and so well spoken. Ohio will never be the same again.
czarjak
(11,289 posts)But damned sure proud of it. That, I can tell you.
Fla Dem
(23,741 posts)This should be required watching in every police station in the country.
bucolic_frolic
(43,281 posts)sanity rears its ugly head but will any right wingers comprehend?
Karadeniz
(22,572 posts)amb123
(1,581 posts)Well played, Justin Herdman.
klook
(12,165 posts)Wish this guy had been in charge when those yahoos who stormed the wildlife refuge in Oregon went on trial.
Im glad he and other dedicated people are going after these fucking Nazis like the asshole they just stopped from perpetrating another massacre.
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,413 posts)Good to see that not all of our DoJ has gone insane.
Control-Z
(15,682 posts)I read it and then I watched and listened. I have tears in my eyes. I am so moved.
Thank you, babylonsister. Thank you for posting this beautiful moment. We are the majority. We need to always remember this.
Ilsa
(61,698 posts)Maybe he'll run for office someday.
dlk
(11,575 posts)These are the words we should be disseminating in the media. They are the reasoned and rational counter to the overload of fascist and racist propaganda/garbage we are inundated with every day.