Matthew Heimbach wields an Orthodox cross as a weapon in 2014.

Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s readers who have followed us from the beginning will recall our response to the deadly right wing violence in Charlottesville VA in August 2017: Open Letter to Our Beloved Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America, Response to Racist Violence in Charlottesville, VA, and Editorial: Our Response to the Assembly of Bishops. Orthodox Christian Matthew Heimbach participated in the terrible events of that day.

One of our readers has brought the following to our attention:

A Bad Day for Right-Wing Wackos

Folks like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Aryan Nation, etc. seem to be such unhappy and angry people that we are not sure they actually have good days. But they definitely have bad days, and a whole bunch of alt-righters definitely had one of those yesterday.

To start with, the white nationalists who organized the 2017 Unite the Right rally—you know, of “very fine people, on both sides” fame—have been on trial this month, sued by residents of Charlottesville and by counter-protesters who were injured at the event. The poor jury in the case had to take a crash course in racist, right-wing wacko slang. Like, for example, “Did you see Kyle?” isn’t a reference to Mr. Rittenhouse; it’s a “clever” code for “Did you sieg heil?” It makes “Let’s go Brandon” seem charming by comparison.

Anyhow, it would seem that the jury learned their lessons well enough to decide that Jason Kessler, Matthew Heimbach, Richard Spencer, Christopher Cantwell, and Alex Fields, among other alt-right figures, are liable for what took place in Charlottesville. And so, the jury slapped the instigators of the rally with a mega-sized $26 million judgment. Most of that will presumably never be paid off, since it’s hard to earn that sort of coin while living in mom’s basement (or in prison, in Fields’ case). However, at least the jury made a statement.

SOURCE. See also the extensive White Supremacy and Racism section in our Archives 2017-19 and Archives 2020-21.

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