by WorldTribune Staff, August 15, 2017

A former top tech exec for Business Insider, who had been scheduled to speak in Charlottesville, VA on Aug. 12, has contradicted the major media narrative of the tragic events that has been frequently repeated and reinforced by Virginia authorities.

Pax Dickinson, a free speech advocate, provided a report based on his live tweets, observations and photos from the scene.

The “police had completely lost control of the city” Dickinson charged. “The State of Emergency order meant that any public gathering was de facto illegal, but antifa were still allowed to roam freely bearing weapons and attacking people.

“This chaos ultimately led directly to the vehicular incident that killed a woman and badly injured more than a dozen others,” Dickinson said. Daily Caller separately published an account of his live reports on Aug. 14.

Dickinson, CEO of Counter.Fund, said that the police “had specific orders to drive us out of the park to the south, into the teeth of violent armed antifa counter-protesters.

“Police could have easily separated the barricades and removed all rally participants to the north, away from antifa and into empty streets fully controlled by law enforcement. We were driven into a hostile situation intentionally. It’s impossible not to believe that the authorities issuing these orders knew exactly what would happen.”

Dickinson continued: “We were set up and trapped, then pushed into a kill zone full of hostile armed enemies. Every injury at this event was due to to the nonsensical withdrawal order of the police. National Guard (or possibly feds? It’s unclear) had a viewing post atop the funeral home at the corner of 1st and Market, equipped with several cameras. That video will corroborate my story if released.

“Serious questions need to be asked about who gave this order and why the rally participants were not extracted to the north, away from antifa. The opposing sides could have been kept apart very easily, but police chose not to keep the sides apart.

“Gov. Terry McAuliffe and the Virginia State Police have blood on their hands, and they must be held to account for that.”

While he condemned participants in the Unite the Right rally, McAuliffe remained silent after two attacks on working journalists by suspected Antifa activists, Breitbart reported.

A photojournalist with WTVR, the CBS affiliate in Richmond, received staples for a head wound inflicted by a group of men who told him to “stop filming” and suspected Antifa activists also punched Taylor Lorenz, a female reporter from The Hill, as she tried to film their activities.

Breitbart News said it had contacted the governor’s office repeatedly, giving McAuliffe and his staff “an opportunity to denounce Antifa violence against journalists. McAuliffe’s office gave no response.”

“Subsequent eyewitness accounts by Unite the Right rally-goers, who had a permit to protest at Emancipation Park – as of late called Lee Park – suggest Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and other violent leftist groups were the initiating force behind most of the violence there and that policing tactics in effect forced the two diametrically opposed groups into close physical contact,” the Breitbart report said.

“A report by the progressive ProPublica outfit disputed which side began the violence, but agreed that a decision appeared to have been made to allow the groups to engage each other.”

Columnist Larry Klayman, writing for WorldNet Daily, said he was “troubled about the continuing hypocrisy and dual standard of justice in the nation as a whole. In addition to Neo-Nazis and white supremacists in attendance and who engaged in violence at the pro-Confederacy rally, also present were counter-revolutionaries from Antifa, a radical leftist hate group, and of course Black Lives Matter, by and large a black vigilante group, to name just a few. These hate-filled agitators also participated in the violence that predictably erupted.

“Antifa is the equivalent of the KKK of the left, funded by none other than that radical leftist billionaire George Soros. The group’s protesters were largely responsible for the violence and physical attacks at Berkeley earlier this year. And, Black Lives Matter (BLM), along the Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, were, in my opinion, directly responsible for intentionally inciting the violence that led to the deaths of five policemen and the critical wounding of seven other cops, in Dallas Texas over a year ago.

“So when President Donald Trump called out hatred and racist violence from ‘many sides’ over the weekend, he was right to do so. The source of this violence from many quarters, stoked by the politically correct and insensitive decision of the leftist mayor or Charlottesville to remove the statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee, a hero to many Southerners, and to rename the park where it stood ‘Emancipation Park’ – which was like trampling on the graves of those who died for Dixie – is manifest. This is quite apart from what we all can agree was the abhorrent nature of slavery.”

Michael Qazvini, writing for The Daily Wire, listed the “7 things you need to know about Antifa”:

1. Antifa uses fascist tactics to achieve its goals. Antifa is to anti-fascism what Stalin was to freedom. Antifa is fascism personified. Despite calling themselves “anti-fascist,” members of Antifa routinely deploy fascist tactics to shut down, intimidate, harass, and bloody their political opponents. In fact, the group gained national visibility after viciously targeting Trump supporters at an event in Berkeley. “They’ve shown up previously at Berkeley to shut down a ‘free speech’ event hosted by provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, leaving damaged property, fires, and assault victims in their wake,” notes Conservative Review. …

2. The Department of Homeland Security labeled Antifa’s actions as “domestic terrorism.” “Shortly after Trump’s election, anarchist and far-left protesters rioted in Portland, bringing at least a million dollars’ worth of damage — and resulting, in the eyes of the Department of Homeland Security, in ‘domestic terrorism,’” explains Politico. The Antifa group in Portland, known as Rose City Antifa, is particularly violent. The group has actively targeted Republican organizations and student groups, threatening to shut down events with violence. The left-leaning Oregonian newspaper has called Rose City Antifa’s rampage the worst political violence in a generation. “Their actions — conducted anonymously but brutally — show them to be punk fascists,” said the paper’s editorial board.

3. Antifa uses “black bloc” attacks to promote violence, sow chaos, and evade law enforcement. Like their counterparts in Europe, American leftist activists often promote violence and reap chaos through time-tested tactics such as black bloc assaults, which feature thousands of black-clad and masked self-professed anarchists destroying everything in sight with hockey sticks, baseball bats, metal poles, trash cans, and virtually anything they can get their hands on. The tactic was popularized by leftist rioters during the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. Since then, it has been deployed by an eclectic blend of leftists at both college campuses and international summits in an effort to terrorize those who promulgate problematic points of view, including capitalism, patriarchy, and alleged racism.

4. Antifa’s garbled ideology is grounded in Marxism. All Antifa members seem to share an aversion to capitalism. Beyond that, Antifa’s political aim cannot be pinned down to one issue or cause. Ultimately, these violent leftist activists do not appear to have a coherent, let alone unified, message. When they riot, activists air their grievances about everything from climate change to transphobia in an effort to espouse whatever fashionable leftist talking point is popular at the time.

5. The mainstream Left is praising Antifa. Berkeley’s student newspaper isn’t the only one celebrating the thuggish group for their violent tactics in the age of Trump. From Esquire to Slateto The Nation, liberal publications are glorifying Antifa’s “resistance,” reframing their violent tactics as “defensive” posturing against the Trumpian America’s supposed plunge into fascism. Paranoid and conspiracy minded, the mainstream Left has abandoned all sense of political decorum to embrace vigilantism. And even liberals who aren’t explicitly praising Antifa are refusing to condemn their behavior. “Trump’s rise has also bred a new sympathy for Antifa among some on the mainstream left,” asserts The Atlantic.

6. The vast majority of Antifa members are pitiable losers. As The Daily Wire’s Aaron Bandler reported, 9 in 10 Antifa members are still living in their mother’s basement. Citing a report by Heat Street, Bandler noted “92% of the protesters at these anti-fascist rallies that are believed to have committed violence still live with their parents.”

7. Antifa conflates speech with violence, believing that “offensive” rhetoric, “hate” speech, and micro-aggressions should be counteracted with macro-aggressions, or physical violence. Internalizing the social justice warrior (SJW) gospel, Antifa has come to believe that speech itself is tantamount to physical assault. As a result, Antifa deploys violent tactics to shut down speech they don’t like. We saw that vividly in Berkeley.

Meanwhile, protesters on Aug. 14 pulled down a Confederate statue in Durham, North Carolina.

Durham police later said they monitored the protests to make sure they were “safe,” but did not interfere with protesters because toppling the statue happened on county property. The Confederate statue was dedicated to Durham in 1924.

North Carolina’s Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper tweeted:

“The racism and deadly violence in Charlottesville is unacceptable but there is a better way to remove these monuments #durham – RC”

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