“Antifa is known to use force, fear, and violence.”
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
While Jan 6 dominates the media from cable news to the press headlines, far from Washington D.C. the violence of Jan 9 recently led to the first conspiracy indictment of Antifa rioters.
The violent clashes at a Pro-Trump rally in San Diego on Jan 9, 2021 were more of what Americans had been forced to accept as the new normal over the last six years.
Just more of those “mostly peaceful protests”.
The fighting near Crystal Pier at Pacific Beach saw police officers being hit with rocks and glass bottles. Store windows were broken and five police officers suffered injuries in the violence.
The previous year had seen worse, but this time something was about to change.
The confrontation between Black Lives Matter and Antifa, and Trump supporters and police proved to be a catalyst for deploying a new legal strategy against the social justice riots.
In December, Antifa members were indicted on a variety of assault charges and even animal cruelty, but also, and much more importantly, on conspiracy to riot. The conspiracy charges for the first time treated Antifa as a criminal conspiracy, rather than acting as if the individual rioters had all randomly assembled to riot as previous cases against the violent leftist group had done.
Antifa and other leftist ‘brands’ have often functioned as phantom organizations with no obvious form of association beyond online coordination. That makes it difficult to accuse leftist rioters of a conspiracy. However the indictment focused on their ‘likes’ for a post calling for “direct action”.
Direct action is a euphemism for political violence.
Antifa “is known to use force, fear, and violence to further their own interests and to suppress the interests of others. This tactic is referred to as ‘Direct Action’ and is known to mean acts of violence such as assault, battery, assault with deadly weapons, arson, and vandalism,” the indictment stated.
The criminal complaint against 11 alleged Antifa members describes the leftists attacking their victims “using impact weapons” and “mace or closed fists or feet, or blunt force objects”.
One Antifa thug is accused of a “a confrontation with an unnamed victim as he tried to walk his dog down the boardwalk” while another sprayed an “unnamed victim and his dog with mace.”
That’s one of the 68 acts listed in the complaint.
Among the 24 counts, it claims that Luis Francisco Mora used “tear gas and a tear gas weapon against a peace officer.”
The wheels of justice grind slowly but in June a grand jury finally indicted the Antifa 11 on 29 felony counts after 13 days of testimony.
San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan issued a press release announcing that the acts of violence included “throwing a wooden lawn chair at a victim and striking her”.
The indictment is a triumph for Stephan who had spent well over a year pursuing her case.
DA Stephan had come under attack from the Left during her previous election for attacking her pro-crime opponent Genevieve Jones-Wright for receiving over $400,000 from a pro-crime PAC backed by George Soros. Jones-Wright has defended police defunding and wanted to let the homeless urinate in public. The Soros pro-crime candidate had called for eliminating bail, declared her support for “prison abolition” and urged that we “should be closing a prison a year”.
Had the Soros-funded candidate, who has used the hateful slogan Black Lives Matter, won, it’s unlikely that she would be prosecuting Antifa and BLM violence. And indeed, responding to the Antifa prosecution, Jones-Wright condemned it as “harming our communities with zero pushback/accountability. Shameful!” She did not clarify if she considered Antifa to be part of her “community” that was being harmed by the conspiracy charges against the leftist thugs.
But there are serious questions being raised about the complicity of the San Diego Public Defender’s office with Antifa and the wider circle of leftist radicals and backers of the movement.
One of the men indicted is Jesse Cannon, who, according to Andy Ngo, a journalist who has extensively covered Antifa, is also a rapper who goes by 420 NOiZE and has been a fixture at previous leftist confrontations. Cannon’s involvement has potentially more explosive implications because, allegedly, his girlfriend, Leah Madbak is, like Jones-Wright, a San Diego public defender.
San Diego County deputy district attorney Will Hopkins alleged that Madbak had “administrative privileges for several Antifa based social media accounts” and that the pair had “posted police reports and intentionally disseminated potentially harmful information in an attempt to dox their targets.”
The investigation found “gigabytes of data that the Antifa cells” had allegedly ”collected on their targets” including witnesses, victims, and cops.
Under these circumstances it is all the more remarkable that the case has gotten this far.
While it’s still early, the progress of the case has already exposed how the city’s public defender’s office appears to operate as an outpost of leftist insurrectionists. And it points to larger connections between the rioters and the pro-crime legal movement that is enabling them.
The systematic leftist violence of 2020, wrongly described as “mostly peaceful protests”, has gone largely unpunished. But in San Diego, there’s hope that the Antifa 11 may face justice.
And that pioneering approach to holding Antifa accountable may prove pivotal for America well beyond the precincts of Pacific Beach.
Namer says
If law enforcement is not allowed to do their jobs then sooner or later the general law abiding citizens will begin to strike back at these rioting thugs and the results will be something none of us want to happen.
George Finland says
So called free speech defender jihad watch routinely censor dissenting comments just look all the comments it’s just a echo chamber i have been reading this website for years and anyone who disagrees with Robert or graven image gets thier comment removed
gravenimage says
Well, this is just ridiculous. George Finland here was ranting on another thread that all his posts had been deleted, but this is not true. All new commenters go through moderation initially as a matter of course.
His comments have posted on the “Yes, Democrats Really Do Hate America: Arizona Dems Promote ‘F**k the 4th’ Event” thread–and the above has posted here, including a post where he calls a respected poster here, Infidel, “a (sic) extreme racist” for saying that Juneteenth-themed items did not sell well in his shop:
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2022/07/yes-democrats-really-do-hate-america-arizona-dems-promote-fk-the-4th-event#comment-2429523
Then, the idea that no one who disagrees with Robert Spencer or myself is allowed to post is simply untrue.
Here are recent posts of mine in critical reply to someone else’s comments:
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2022/06/collins-manchin-say-gorsuch-kavanaugh-misled-them-on-abortion-aoc-wants-them-impeached#comment-2428505
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2022/06/canada-trudeau-issues-threat-unvaccinated-must-accept-consequences-of-their-decisions#comment-2429030
In both cases, these posters reply critically to my comments. But according to George Finland this should not be possible, because all of these comments would have been removed.
I could dig deeper and find more examples–and there are many more–but why bother? I doubt it will change his bizarre and meretricious assertions about Jihad Watch.
somehistory says
g, I would say, “don’t bother’.’ He’s just wanting to complain. Wonder from where that attribute comes? could it be, islam?
If we ignore him, perhaps he will go away.
gravenimage says
I’m sure you are right about George Finland, Somehistory–I just hate to see false calumny against Jihad Watch go unchallenged.
john smith says
Could well be Somehistory, you can be sure of one thing, those that have a jibe at Robert are certainly not on our side.
If he’s come here looking for a fight, he’s come to the right place.
somehistory says
John, I firmly believe they get paid….possibly by soros…to come to this site, and others operated by those who seek truth and justice, in an attempt to cast doubt, cause dissension and make trouble.
I read the comments sometimes on articles posted to the FrontPageMag site, and there are regulars who lie and try to cause trouble for Mr. Horowitz and others who write articles exposing the lies.
I may respond some, and I understand why g does so often, but I don’t believe they will ever cease; they may quit coming to comment if they don’t get traction, but I don’t believe they will change their thinking or tone of comment.
James Lincoln says
Yes, gravenimage.
Posters here at Jihad Watch better have their facts straight – with citations – or they will very quickly be taken to task.
Leftists and muslims are not used to being held accountable this way.
When held accountable, they generally do not stay long at this website.
Bikinis not Burkas says
Bullshit
Tom says
The left have many trojan horses hidden in plain sight and there must be a purge if our society is to once again become first world and civilized and not continue to degenerate into a third world hellhole where political corruption, elitism, mob rule and a total disregard for the laws of the land prevails.
Without a purge and prison for those found to be colluding to destroy our societal values and structure there is no chance of a resurgence of a great and just society and the freedom that comes with it.
“Tolerance and Apathy are the last virtues of a dying society.” Aristotle. We must not tolerate any further those who would destroy our country and we must not remain apathetic in guarding our values and our freedom.
We must elect politicians who reflect our long established societal values and freedoms and demand that they remove and prosecute any and all who are found to be subversive to those values and freedoms.
PMK says
To say “the city’s public defender’s office appears to operate as an outpost of leftist insurrectionists” seems extreme and even a little unfair. These people are charged with defending those who cannot otherwise afford legal representation. Even the most odious criminal is entitled to his day in court. I’m not sure justice will be served, however. This has nothing to do with the public defenders, but because of the very real; possibility of jury nullification. California is full on woke.
somehistory says
I believe Mr. Greenfield wrote that because of the posting to social media information that should hot have been posted by the girlfriend who works for the PDO and because of the woman who wants the criminals to be free…no bail, no jail.. “a prison a year” closing, etc. who also works for the PDO and claims the prosecution of the conspirators is “harming the communities.”
Walter Sieruk says
Those vicious violent hooligans of Antfia with their malicious brutal criminal on non-violent peaceful people have far way surpassed any type of alleged “vandalism” that even what the most misbehaving pro-Trump protesters supposedly did in Washington DC on January 6th 2021.
Nevertheless the politically correct influenced and infected court system only ,so far , only come down hard on Conservative American patriots with little to no valid proof the the charges against them are true.
Still the domestic Marxist terrorists of Antifa have gotten away with horrendously evil actions. So if finally some of the Antifa thugs are sentenced to prison ,as they should be . For it’s far past time that they get what they deserve.
So this leads to wondering if those lawless Antifa bruts do have to spent some time in prison , are they all so very irrational and stupid that that they wouldn’t understand why the judge had given them a prison sentence after intentionally and maliciously harming people acting out in deliberate action of vandalism and even arson ?
What else then sending to prison to they expect the judge to do ?Do those violent dangerous and destructive Antifia heinous ruffians thing that the judge to give them a medal of honor for their despicable criminal behavior ?
George Finland says
Well i m not muslim
and neither a leftist actually i m against islam and communism both but lately most of the posts here are about black people doing crime and whining democrats saying stupid things when did jihad watch become a right wing news website?? I thought it was a apolitical website reporting serious jihad.
Keith O says
From everything I have observed with these ANTIFA thugs, they, much like their grubby mates in BLM are now being thrown under the bus by the demoncraps because they are no longer of any use.
These useful idiots were very useful when it came to undermining law and order when a Republican president, specifically Trump was in the white house, but now their usefulness is at an end.
Expect more of this sort of thing as the left rounds up those who are no longer of use. This way they can get rid of anyone who may turn on their puppet masters.
They have become inconvenient.
gravenimage says
Will the Antifa 11 Face Justice in San Diego?
…………………….
Sadly pretty questionable, given the current political climate.