POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH

Historian Niall Ferguson replies to his critics

I was brought up to think of a university as a haven for free thought and free inquiry; a place where established scholars and students communicate ideas, in both directions; a place where old thoughts and new are subjected to rigorous examination.

I was therefore appalled by the accusations made against me at a live-streamed Stanford University Faculty Senate meeting on February 11th and published online by Joshua Landy, David Palumbo-Liu and two other faculty members. I was included in a group of some half-dozen Hoover fellows who were said to have “abused” the position of the Institution and “quite possibly, contributed to significant public harm.” Landy expressed astonishment that I am “still on the roster” and that Stanford somehow failed “to publicly censure” me.

Like Palumbo-Liu, Landy is a professor of comparative literature. He is the author of two books: Philosophy as Fiction (Oxford, 2004) and How To Do Things with Fictions (Oxford, 2012). In his presentation to the Faculty Senate, Landy chose to present his statements concerning me as fact. Once again, however, he was doing things with fiction.

Landy made no effort to contact me before making his accusations. He based his claims on a 2018 article in the student newspaper, the Stanford Daily, a piece that was not made any more true by its being replicated elsewhere, and he ignored my own published refutation. An elementary understanding of context, not to mention prudence, might have led someone levelling such an accusation to acknowledge that his target had publicly rebutted the allegations against him. To repeat a false allegation is bad enough. To repeat it as if it is unchallenged fact is unacceptable, whether as a matter of fairness to a colleague, or of good academic practice.

At the time of the events in question I was advised to say as little as possible, on the basis that the storm in the campus teacup would blow over. When false accusations continue to circulate three years later, and not only at Stanford, that assumption appears naïve. The time has come to set the record straight.

Free speech matters more to me, I suspect, than to a scholar of French fiction. It might even be said that my family came to Stanford in 2016 as free-speech refugees. My wife Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s public criticisms of her former religion are regarded by Islamists as blasphemy, punishable by death. Her name appeared on an Al Qaeda list of 11 targets which included the editor of Charlie Hebdo. Following the massacre in Paris that claimed his life in 2015, we were advised to relocate from Harvard because of the ease with which we could be tracked down. After 12 years of teaching some of the history department’s most popular courses, I was reluctant to leave—all the more so when I was informed that the Stanford history department had no interest in offering me even a courtesy appointment, much less a joint one. But we had to move, and Hoover’s offer was in many other ways attractive.

I have always kept an open door to students, whether I am teaching or not. So, in May 2017 I accepted an invitation to meet a group of students associated with the Stanford Review and the College Republicans. Out of interactions over lunch, in meetings and exchanges of emails, I heard these students express their dissatisfaction with a campus dominated by liberal and progressive thought. From this came the idea, formulated by the students, of a “Stanford Speaker Series” to address the lack of political diversity and debate on campus. One student suggested inviting the political scientist Charles Murray as part of a conservative speaker series. However, I wanted to build bridges between Hoover and Stanford, and so I proposed a bipartisan program to model free speech and civil debate.

That fall quarter of 2017, I discussed the speaker series idea with Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Provost Persis Drell as well as then Hoover Director Tom Gilligan. They liked the idea. It was decided to proceed without delay in the 2017/18 academic year. They suggested that Michael McFaul, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Relations and also a Hoover senior fellow, lead the initiative alongside me. A steering committee of students was put in place that included not only the originators of the program but also, at my suggestion, representatives of other student newspapers—the Daily and the newly founded Globe—for balance. The program was given a name: “Cardinal Conversations.” The steering committee approved the speakers to be invited. However, I did nearly all of the inviting as it required personal connections to persuade people to come at such short notice.

All participants were of the highest quality; some were controversial figures. In the first conversation, Reid Hoffman discussed politics and technology with Peter Thiel—perhaps the sole Donald Trump supporter in Silicon Valley. But to hear such voices was the whole idea of a free speech series. As the president and provost wrote in “Advancing Free Speech and Inclusion,” published on the “Notes from the Quad” website on November 7th, 2017:

…breakthroughs in understanding come not from considering a familiar, limited range of ideas, but from considering a broad range of ideas, including those we might find objectionable, and engaging in rigorous testing of them through analysis and debate… Our commitment to free expression means that we do not otherwise restrict speech in our community, including speech that some may find objectionable… It is imperative that as a university, we avoid a culture in which people feel pressured to conform to particular views. One way to encourage that is to ensure that diverse perspectives are actively discussed at Stanford.

So enthused was the leadership of the university with the concept that, when the story broke in the Stanford Daily on January 10th, 2018, the press office claimed the credit for it: “The provost and president were contemplating and discussing this for some time, and they asked Niall and Mike McFaul to co-lead,” Vice President for University Communications Lisa Lapin told the Daily.

The advertised and collectively approved speakers for February 22nd, 2018, included Charles Murray, in conversation with Stanford’s own Francis Fukuyama on the subject of populism. As the university leaders’ enthusiastic endorsements showed, Murray’s appearance was an entirely appropriate affirmation of what academic free speech must ultimately mean: the right to utter and hear views that in fact or perception run counter to the deeply held beliefs of the majority. Mike McFaul appeared to share this view, telling the Stanford Daily that he “look[ed] forward to helping to assemble an equally compelling set of conversations on international and foreign policy issues in the fall.”

However, Murray was also a target of left-wing opponents of free speech. At a notorious event in May 2017 at Middlebury College, his attempt to deliver a lecture had been terminated by a riot that had left the professor who was escorting him with whiplash. On January 30th, the Stanford Daily reported that a group of students had written to President Tessier-Lavigne to express their “disapproval” of Murray’s invitation, accusing him of using “pseudo-science to further racist ideas.” The vice-provost, Susie Brubaker-Cole, convened a meeting two weeks later with students opposed to Murray’s visit—not to Murray’s views (which they were perfectly entitled to oppose) but to his visit. Their leader—I shall call him Mr. O—said, as an accusation, that I was trying to “weaponize free speech.” Yet Brubaker-Cole and Mike McFaul conceded the demand of these opponents of free speech to be represented on the student steering committee for Cardinal Conversations.

The predictable consequence of this concession was an open letter to the university president and provost the next day, entitled “Take Back the Mic: Racists Are Not Welcome Here” and signed by eight student groups—the Chicano students, the Black Student Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Stanford Sanctuary Now, Who’s Teaching Us?, the Asian American Activist Committee, Students for the Liberation of All People, and the Stanford Democrats. The letter falsely accused Charles Murray of propagating an “oppressive, racist and meritless pseudo-science” and now explicitly demanded that his invitation be rescinded. At the meeting with the vice-provost, I had asked if any of those present had read any of Murray’s books. None had.

On February 15th, the president and provost, while defending their decision not to disinvite Murray, promised “more diverse speakers in the months ahead” and “even more ideologically diverse student representation on the organizing committee.” Then, on the day of the Murray-Fukuyama debate, Mike McFaul went to print in the Stanford Daily. Having approved all the invitations and given his public endorsement a month earlier, the co-leader of Cardinal Conversations now condemned Murray for ideas that “could inspire racist agendas and white nationalist movements.” To my consternation, he encouraged students either to protest or not to show up and stated that he would probably not be going himself if he were not involved in organizing Cardinal Conversations!

On the evening of the Murray-Fukuyama event, a noisy crowd chanted slogans outside the Hoover Institution. One likened Hoover to the Ku Klux Klan. Another featured the couplet “Fuck Steve Bannon / Fuck the Western canon!” Their leader Mr. O was quoted in the Daily the following day, again grossly defaming Charles Murray as a eugenicist responsible for “perpetuating white supremacy in the national discourse and in the local discourse.”

Unlike at Middlebury, the protesters did not succeed in derailing the event—thanks to tight security around Hoover. The two speakers delivered a stimulating discussion that made a nonsense of the wild allegations of racism. But the intentions of the opponents of Cardinal Conversations were by now perfectly clear, as was the reluctance on the part of the university administration to stand up to them. I felt a strong desire to help the students on the organizing committee who had originated the idea—and who had come to me for help in the first place—to resist the obvious plan to take over the committee and establish a veto over future programming.

Now for my own fault. As I have freely acknowledged, my desire to save Cardinal Conversation from a hostile takeover, combined with satisfaction that the Murray event had gone ahead, provoked me into some juvenile banter. When one of the student originators of the speaker series emailed me the following day in triumphant mode, I replied to him and others in the chain in the same vein. “A famous victory,” I wrote. “Now we turn to the more subtle game of grinding them down on the committee. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” And I added: “Some opposition research on Mr O. might also be worthwhile.”

I should, as I admitted at the time, have maintained greater detachment in what I wrote to students even in a jocular exchange. It was wrong and in poor taste—even as a jest in a private message to students who knew me personally and were familiar with my sense of humor—to suggest “some opposition research on Mr O.” But jest it was (the topic was much in the news at that time). Had I seriously intended some research to be done, I would either have received it or repeated the request. Yet it was never mentioned again. Instead, as all subsequent emails make clear, the only thing we discussed was how procedurally to approach the impending contest for control of the steering committee. On April 7th—at a meeting in which only students were involved—the radicals’ proposal was rejected and a new system of recruiting committee members adopted.

As luck would have it, however, my exchange of emails in the aftermath of the debate became an overlooked part of a longer chain on an unrelated subject and found its way to a wider group of undergraduates—including a number who were working for me as research assistants—one of whom sent it to the provost. I immediately offered to resign from “Cardinal Conversations.” My language had been inappropriate; it was likely to become public. The series fizzled out soon after, having lasted all of four months. The university made no serious attempt to follow through on its stated plan to hold Cardinal Conversations in the next academic year. The “imperative” of January had ceased to exist by May.

In private, a week later, the president and provost of the University had an apparently amicable lunch with me and urged me “not to give up on Stanford.” As that made clear, contrary to Professor Landy’s allegations, there were not the slightest grounds for any form of disciplinary action. Later that same day, however, the Daily published their story: “Leaked emails show Hoover academic conspiring with College Republicans to conduct ‘opposition research’ on student.” In contravention of its own “Policies and Standards,” the Daily had made no attempt to contact me before publication. Within hours of the article’s appearance, I was warned by a university press officer and hastily drafted a statement, but only a part of that was published by the Daily.

And so was born the idea, inflated with each successive republication by the New York Times, Vox, the Guardian and others, that there had been “harassment” and “bullying” and “snooping”; that I had “plotted” and “conspired.” The Stanford historian of China, Tom Mullaney, took to Twitter and claimed my conduct was “repulsive… a gross abuse of power.” Mike McFaul also tweeted: “Of course, I condemn what Ferguson did. There is no way to defend that kind of behavior.” (He later deleted the tweet.) Later, the Stanford Daily accused me of “coordinating personal harassment” and “abusing [my] position of authority to encourage bullying.” The story grew with the telling. On February 8th, 2019, 15 professors published a “Statement on the Hoover Institution” in the Daily, in which they claimed that I had “urged… student allies to do ‘background checks’ on those holding differing views.”

The important point is not that I have been vitriolically criticized, with repeated omissions of my side of the story, in defiance of basic journalistic standards. The real significance of the Cardinal Conversations fiasco is broader. My efforts and motives in instigating Cardinal Conversations, in response to undergraduates’ requests, and in defending the program against the assault upon it were simply ignored. It is, of course, a basic principle of academic engagement that one must read sources critically, not rely on a single source, and put matters into context. No-one—not those who had collaborated in organizing Cardinal Conversations, and not a single one of the thousands of my academic colleagues and students over a career of three decades—came forward to put the few words of a private email into their appropriate context. With a single exception (a journalist who candidly conceded that Vox would not actually print a word of what I said), no-one spoke to me to obtain my side of the story before going into print with their allegations.

The ultimate casualty is, of course, not me but free speech. Once, universities represented the spaces of greatest intellectual freedom, openness, and diversity. Now, they are among the places in the Western world where the inhabitants—students and professors alike—are most inhibited about what they say aloud, as is clear from research by Heterodox Academy and Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. This is the result of fear—or of complicity in the imposition of a new and profoundly illiberal orthodoxy.

And so, an initiative that was supposed to model free speech, and had attracted stimulating speakers with varying viewpoints to one of America’s top educational institutions, was allowed to die. The students who opposed free speech were encouraged, deferred to, and never asked to respect the freedom of others. Charles Murray’s appearance at Stanford was a Pyrrhic victory. And, to cap it all, Stanford faculty members who are ideologically hostile to the Hoover Institution took—and continue to take—advantage of their academic privilege to repeat slanderous statements in a forum where I am not even represented.

I have worked hard for my students over the years, at Cambridge, Oxford, NYU, and Harvard, as well as at Stanford. On many occasions, I have gone beyond merely teaching them, grading their papers, and writing their reference letters. The idea that I would “conspire to conduct opposition research on an undergraduate” was absurd when it was first published in a student newspaper three years ago. It is high time this falsehood ceased to be reproduced in the Stanford Daily and repeated before the Faculty Senate.

If free speech at Stanford means only that a student newspaper and a minority of faculty members can libel Hoover fellows with impunity, it is a travesty. And if professors of comparative literature at Stanford regard this is an appropriate way to conduct themselves, small wonder public confidence in our universities is at such a low ebb.

https://quillette.com/2021/03/05/a-cardinal-sin/

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Oklahoma House Passes Bill to Grant Immunity to Drivers Who Hit Protesters

Last summer, there were several incidents of drivers caught in the middle of a protest who struck demonstrators with their vehicles while fleeing the scene. There were also a couple of incidents of a driver deliberately driving into a crowd of protesters with intent to injure them.

In Oklahoma, one of those scenarios will still be a crime under a new law that passed the House last night that would grant immunity to drivers who strike protesters while “fleeing from a riot.”

Oklahoman:

The bill came under fire from legislative Democrats who said the Republican majority was looking to lash out at protesters instead of taking steps to address systemic racism and police misconduct that have spurred widespread Black Lives Matter protests.

Rep. John Waldron, D-Tulsa, called the bill draconian and accused legislative Republicans of intentionally bringing the measure up for the vote around 12:30 a.m., after more than 14 hours of voting on legislation, in order to avoid public scrutiny.

Politically, the bill is a winner. We’ve all sympathized with a driver who had kids in the car and protesters screaming and banging on the car windows. How could the driver know whether these were just ordinary people exercising their free speech rights or rioters out for blood?

The immunity from vehicle assault for striking protesters who may or may not be trying to provoke a violent response is “draconian,” as the Democratic House member says. But why should protesters be protected by the law and not innocent drivers?

Republican Rep. Kevin McDugle introduced the bill, saying he supports the rights of Oklahomans to protest peacefully, but riots are unacceptable. “This bill simply says, ‘please stay to the peaceful protests,’” he said. “Don’t block roads. Don’t impede on the freedoms of others.”

In a heated floor debate, McDugle referenced an incident in Tulsa where a pickup pulling a horse trailer drove through a group of Black Lives Matter protesters demonstrating on a highway. Several protesters were seriously injured, including a man who was paralyzed from the waist down after falling from an overpass.

The driver acted out of fear, McDugle said.

Saying several protesters attacked the pickup in which a man was driving his children, the Tulsa County district attorney did not file charges against the driver.

How are authorities going to determine malice instead of self-defense? It’s one of the vague concepts that makes this bill problematic.

Republican legislators repeatedly emphasized they were trying to protect drivers from riots or violent protests. West praised Black Lives Matter protesters in Oklahoma City for largely demonstrating in a series of peaceful protests over the summer.

“A large part of our duty as legislators is to protect our citizens,” he said. “This is something that gives them protection.”

Forcing police and prosecutors to get into the mind of a driver who felt threatened by a crowd of protesters and determine intent is asking too much of both. The Oklahoma Senate should consider ways to amend this bill to clear up vague language and straighten out ambiguities.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/03/11/oklahoma-house-passes-bill-to-grant-immunity-to-drivers-who-hit-protesters-n1431753

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How the 'woke wing' of Fleet Street took over the Society of Editors and threw its boss under the bus for daring to defend the British press against Meghan's accusations of racism

The Society of Editors was facing the gravest crisis in its 24-year history this week after left-wing newspaper editors drove the society's executive director out of his job for standing up against Meghan Markle's claims that the British press is systematically racist.

Today, MPs cited the resignation of Ian Murray as yet another example of the growing 'cancel culture' that also claimed the job of Piers Morgan from Good Morning Britain this week because he said he did not believe a word Meghan said.

One of her most toxic allegations was that she and Prince Harry had had a hard time from some parts of Fleet Street because of racism – an assertion backed up allegedly racists headlines dug up by interviewer Oprah Winfrey's researchers.

It has since been proven that many the examples she gave were quoted either, selectively, out of context or plain distorted.

The day after the interview Mr Murray issued a robust statement defending all the Society's members against the accusations and underlining newspapers' duty to hold the rich and powerful to account.

He said the couple's claims were 'not acceptable' without supporting evidence, insisting that the UK Press was not racist.

But within hours a backlash emerged with over 236 BAME journalists signing a letter condemning the statement.

And then their bosses started weighing in including The Voice's head of news Vic Motune and i editor Oly Duff who labelled it 'ludicrous'.

Both men are SoE board members, while a third, Eleanor Mills, called for a diversity plan 'turbo boost'.

The editors of the Daily Mirror, Guardian, Financial Times, Evening Standard and HuffPost UK also publicly criticised the statement.

The Daily Mirror pulled out of two National Press Awards categories over the statement, with editor Alison Phillips saying her paper 'no longer feels able to participate' in the Driving Diversity category.

Three journalists from the newspaper have pulled out of the Reporting Diversity section.

Ms Phillips told Press Gazette: 'The Mirror is taking positive steps forward on improving diversity in our newsroom but we still have much more to do. We will be talking to the Society about what actions it will be taking to improve diversity across the industry.'

Regional journalists have threatened to pull out of the Society's forthcoming press awards, while ITV presenter Charlene White pulled out as the compere.

It is understood Mr Murray was also subject to intense personal abuse by telephone.

But Conservative MP Sir Desmond Swayne told MailOnline that Mr Murray's exit highlighted concerns about the growing 'cancel culture' in Britain and that the UK was in a situation which is 'very dangerous for free speech.

Among those on the Society of Editors board who have criticised the statement are (from left) i newspaper editor Oly Duff who labelled it 'ludicrous', The Voice head of news Vic Motune, and Eleanor Mills, called for a diversity plan 'turbo boost'

He pointed out that anyone who went against the 'orthodoxy' on the coronavirus lockdowns imposed since March last year had found themselves facing condemnation and demands they stay silent.

Headlines shown on screen during the Oprah interview to paint British media coverage as hostile and 'racist' were mocked up by the production company, often edited to remove context - and a third of them came from foreign media, new analysis has revealed today.

The two-hour programme, which aired on CBS This Morning, included cuttings of stories intended to confirm the Sussexes' claim that UK newspapers were guilty of peddling racist abuse against Meghan.

One segment showed a headline about how 'Meghan's seed will taint our Royal Family' - without noting that the story was actually exposing racist comments made by a model.

The mocked-up version, which used a similar page design, included the quote but cut the remaining headline away.

Another story that appeared during the tell-all interview referred to a BBC programme that had portrayed Meghan as a 'trailer trash American'.

The actual article included an interview with actress Gbemisola Ikunelo, who created the character, explaining she invented it to find 'humour in the ridiculous' because it is 'the opposite of how the Duchess really behaves'.

And another appeared to use a quote from the story as if it were a headline - without showing the context behind it.

Meanwhile, 11 of more than 30 headlines shown during the interview were from American and Australian publications, according research by the Telegraph

A senior tabloid executive said his newspaper would be having serious thoughts about whether to remain involved with the SoE.

He said: 'The British press has always been a very broad church with massive differences of opinion. But I thought the one thing we could all agree on was that free speech is sacred.

'But not anymore. Harry and Meghan are trying to shut down their press critics by smearing them as racist. And it seems some misguided left-wing editors agree with them. A racism accusation trumps free speech every time.

'That is truly frightening. If the Society of Editors won't even defend free speech, what is the point of it? Apart from some rather pointless awards which are just an ego-trip for editors and journalists anyway.'

Newspaper columnist Toby Young, who founded the Free Speech Union group last year, added: 'Ian Murray is the third person to be cancelled in 48 hours: first Piers Morgan, then Winston Marshall [from Mumford and Sons], now Ian Murray.'

He said those who are 'worried about losing your livelihood for wrongthink' should join his organisation

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9350815/How-woke-wing-Fleet-Street-took-Society-Editors.html

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Rule by Left-Wing Lunatics

Ann Coulter

A governing principle of the Democratic Party is to ask, “Who is in the dock?” before deciding whether to enforce the law.

As we have seen throughout the last year of antifa/BLM riots, in blue states, it’s now legal to commit arson, attempted murder, assault on a law enforcement officer and destruction of property — provided the perp is antifa or antifa-friendly. Andy Ngo’s smash bestseller “Unmasked” gives chapter and verse on antifa’s shocking violence untouched by criminal penalty.

On the other hand, if you’re a conservative, don’t commit a misdemeanor in a blue state. Proud Boys, Capitol Hill protesters, police and other presumed Trump supporters are getting more prison time than actual murderers for minor infractions. Even a couple of personal injury lawyers (liberals) are being criminally prosecuted in St. Louis for brandishing guns at violent looters coming toward their home. The rioters, you see, were BLM protesters.

In all these cases, local Democratic officials gleefully announce that they are locking up “white supremacists.”

Prepare yourself for a lot of witch-trial hysteria in the upcoming trials of Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis and the Capitol Hill trespassers in Washington, D.C. We’ve already seen it with the Proud Boys in New York City.

In a nation of laws, a crime is a crime, and it shouldn’t matter whether it’s committed by Mother Teresa or Charles Manson, but, as long as they brought it up, OF COURSE THE PROUD BOYS AREN’T “WHITE SUPREMACISTS”!

The organization is a tongue-in-cheek men’s group, promoting masculinity and Western civilization in humorous ways. Most of what they tell members is healthy: Get out of your apartment, work out, get a girlfriend and don’t masturbate. Further aside that it annoys me to have to make: There are African Americans, American Indians, immigrants and loads of Mexicans in the Proud Boys. Pretty crappy membership drive for a “hate group.”

At least in the witch trials of the Middle Ages, you could prove you weren’t a witch by drowning after being tied up and heaved into a nearby body of water. Today, the “white supremacist” hex is indelible. The accusation is the proof. And once accused, stay out of the blue states, or you might end up in prison.

In 2018, the night before Proud Boys founder, Gavin McInnes, was scheduled to give a speech at the Metropolitan Republican Club on the Upper East Side of New York, antifa smashed the windows of the historic club with a brick, glued the lock, and spray-painted the anarchist “A” on the front door of the club’s townhouse, along with a threat that this destruction was “merely a beginning.” All that’s legal, too — provided it’s done by antifa.

The day of the speech, 80 masked antifa goons showed up at the club to attack attendees — women and children, young and old. But unfortunately for antifa, the event was being protected by the Proud Boys. McInnes’ speech went off without a hitch, and no attendees were injured at the event.

When it was over, New York police officers directed the Proud Boys to Park Avenue, and sent antifa in the opposite direction to Lexington. The Proud Boys followed orders, but a gang of six masked antifa circled around from Lexington over to Park to confront them, including, in antifa’s manly way, throwing a bottle of urine at them.

Two Proud Boys proceeded to kick six antifa butt.

The same thing happened a few blocks south. Again disobeying the police, another group of antifa cut over to Park Avenue to fight with the Proud Boys. They, too, received a solid ass-kicking.

So who was arrested? Ten Proud Boys and not one antifa. Oh darn. We couldn’t catch them. (Hey, NYPD! Send the Proud Boys next time.)

The police did manage to arrest three antifa thugs who followed one speech attendee leaving the event, punched him and stole his backpack. But it turns out that’s also legal in New York. The antifa were arrested for the violent attack … then immediately released with no charges.

The governor and attorney general of New York, the New York City mayor and a slew of council members rushed to social media to denounce the Proud Boys for “hate” and vow to prosecute them — for protecting Upper East Side Republicans who went to a speech. McInnes is funny, and if there’s one thing leftists cannot abide, it’s a sense of humor.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo tweeted: “Hate cannot and will not be tolerated in New York,” along with a brain-dead article from Buzzfeed News titled, “Members of a Far-Right Men’s Group Violently Beat Up Protesters and Weren’t Arrested. New York Police Won’t Say Why.” They’re WHITE, aren’t they? No? Well, they’re REPUBLICANS. Arrest them!

The prosecution had no victims and no evidence of injury. But two Proud Boys, John Kinsman and Max Hare, now sit in a New York state prison, sentenced to four years, after being convicted of attempted assault and attempted gang assault — for defending themselves from antifa, who showed up at conservative event, then disobeyed the police and stalked the Proud Boys. It wasn’t the Proud Boys disrupting an antifa event, and it wasn’t the Proud Boys defying the police to confront antifa.

Yes, you are correct: This was the same district attorney, Cyrus Vance, who allowed Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein to rape and molest young girls in his jurisdiction for years and years. But those guys were major Democratic donors, so no harm, no foul.

A third Proud Boy was headed to trial along with Kinsman and Hare — until the prosecution noticed he was East Indian and his presence would have hurt the narrative that Proud Boys are “white supremacists.”

Just no one mention Kinsman’s black wife and children. (And thus Democrats deprived three more black children of a father during their formative years.)

Much of the testimony elicited by the prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, concerned the defendants’ non-PC beliefs, e.g.: Kinsman’s support for guns, his opposition to antifa, and his attendance at a “fake news” protest outside CNN. Steinglass actually presented evidence of McInnes’ jokes from his comedy show. Inappropriate laughter in a blue state will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law!

What on earth does any of that have to do with whether Kinsman and Hare committed a crime at Park Avenue and 82nd on Oct. 12, 2018?

Nothing. In the blue states, there is no rule of law, only rule by left-wing lunatics.

https://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2021/03/10/rule-by-leftwing-lunatics-n2586064