Category Archives: Right-wing Extremism

Hateful Words Matter

Domestic Terrorism, Hate, Right-wing Extremism

 

William Cooper, another frequent right-wing radio speaker or host,  later that year after the bombing in Oklahoma  said Timothy McVey had attended his offices seeking help, which he said he would not give. He did not care what they did, but he would not support them. He talked about how two people who looked like McVey and his partner Terry Nichols had vaguely tipped him off and gave his people a copy of The Turner Diaries which, among other things, talked about committing acts of violence to start a race war! This became a familiar trope among the far-right.

 

The FBI found a copy of that book inside McVey’s Ryder van. Added to that, as Justin Ling said on his CBC podcast about right-wing radio,

 

It is clear that Cooper did influence McVey and despite his insistence that he does not support violence and terrorism, he literally spent years calling his listeners cowards for not doing anything about Waco. And then one of his listeners did exactly what he was telling them to do!

 

One thing is clear from all of this: words matter. Particularly, hateful words have consequences, especially when they are frequently repeated to resentful people with grievances.

 

Many years later, Donald Trump learned valuable lessons from such right-wing commentators. He too was able to fire up his supporters. Bigly!

 

Unite the Right with Hate

2024 Trip to South West United States, 2024 Trip to Southwest USA, Domestic Terrorism, Extremism, Hate, Political Violence, racism, Right-wing Extremism, Trump

 

A transformational event for the far-right occurred on August 11 and August 12 2017 in the US.  This was during the presidency of Donald J. Trump and  It happened in a  college town called Charlottesville Virginia. As Professor Jacob Ware described this event to his listeners at Arizona State University, this was “where a group of outspoken, explicit, proud, white supremacists, and Neo-Nazis, and anti-government extremists gathered in what they called a ‘Unite the Right Rally.’

Before the event, one of the main organizers, Jason Kessler, had been publicizing the event for months by his protests against the proposed removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee. This helped to fire up white supremacists and other right-wing extremists around the country. Even right-wing Canadians wanted to attend this event.

The trigger for the event was a threat to dismantle a Confederate statute in that community. A young woman, Heather Heyer, was killed during a domestic terrorist attack led by white supremacists. The attack was led by James Alex Fields Jr. who deliberately drove his car into a crowd of people who were peacefully protesting the right-wing rally that was being held in Charlottesville. Only one person, Heather Heyer, was killed but 35 others were injured. As Wikipedia reported,

“Fields 20, had previously espoused neo-Nazi and white supremacist beliefs, and drove from Ohio to attend the rally. Fields’ attack was called an act of domestic terrorism by the mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia’s public safety secretary, the U.S. attorney general, and the director of the FBI.”

 

Some witnesses reported that Fields’ vehicle sent protesters “flying through the air.” After the initial impact, Fields changed the car into reverse to target more people. He backed up at high speeds for several blocks with protesters chasing him.

Fields was subsequently convicted in a state court of the first-degree murder of Heyer, as well as 8 counts of malicious wounding and hit and run. He also pled guilty to 29  hate crime charges  presumably in order to avoid the death penalty. In typical America hyperbolic legal “justice,” Fields was sentenced to life in prison as well as 419 years for the state charges, with an additional life sentence for the federal charges.

As egregious an event as it was, it soon became an international sensation when President Trump entered the aftermath with his infamous tweets and statements. At first president Trump wavered about whether or not he should condemn the terrorists. Trump just could not bring himself to condemn outright the terrorism since the right-wing attackers did not look like terrorists to him. They looked like supporters, which many of them, of course were. How could be publicly criticize his base? That is not like him.

The marchers had been chanting repeatedly, “You will not replace us. Jews will not replace us.” as they carried their patio torches. This of course is a direct allusion to the common white supremacist trope that members of the American left are trying to replace whites with more compliant people from other races.  It was also clearly antisemitic. The closest he could come to criticism of his adoring fans was to say “I think there’s blame on both sides. You also had people, on both sides, who were very fine people.”  What was so fine about whites who mowed down protesters while chanting those racist memes? Recall, he did exactly the same thing on January 6, 2021when his staff insisted he tell the rioters to leave he did ask them to leave but first told them he loved them.

Trump has demonstrated a pattern of praising violent people who support his causes. He is always willing to do his best to unite the right with hate.

The reason this was such a pivotal event in the history of the rise of right-wing violent extremism is that those extremists realized they had a powerful friend and ally in very high places. In fact, they had an ally in the highest place in the land and this filled them with exuberance and confidence.

 

Racism provided the infrastructure for growth of the far right.

2024 Trip to South West United States, Domestic Terrorism, Extremism, Immigration and Refugees, racism, Right-wing Extremism

 

In their book and their talk to us at Arizona State University, Ware and Hoffman point out how much members of these domestic terrorist movements learned from each other. The Internet of course has made such self-education much easier than it had ever been before. And as they said, racism provided the infrastructure for the amplification of their ideas.

During the Obama presidency another major battlefield arose that would have profound effects on the United States, Canada, and in fact, the world. This was the establishment of social media that provided the fuel, the bombast, and the energy for profound political and social change. We still don’t know how this will end. We have no idea.

As Professor Ware said in his talk, “the Obama administration faced the rapid almost blitzkrieg emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.”  This was very important for the development and normalization of the far right. It was supercharged by social media. ISIS showed how powerful social media can be. A small extremist group in a very short time grew into an organization that scared the entire western world. That could never have happened without social media. Social media was the powerful engine of modern far right terrorism.

The rise of ISIS led to an enormous increase of immigration into Europe which then was used by far-right extremists in Europe and around the world to amplify their movement. They latched onto the great replacement theory to enlist support virtually everywhere. They blamed the far left for trying to replace the white citizens with immigrants from countries around the world, but often with brown or black skinned people from places the whites had often not even heard of. No place in the world it seemed was immune to the invitations to hate the immigrants.

Immigration to many right-wing extremists, around the world was the key issue to justify their cause. Immigration was the issue that bonded Donald Trump and Steve Bannon into a dramatic force and is being used again in the start of the 2024 presidential election campaign. Immigration allows the right to pick scapegoats for every aspect as of the far-right agenda. It is impossible to imagine the far-right without immigration as a grievance.

Immigration at borders invariably is used to fire up domestic support for populist causes. It is usually the easiest cause to latch onto by populist leaders. Dissatisfaction with immigration is often the glue that holds together diverse unhappy actors into a powerful force for violent change.

Nowhere does it do that more than Arizona where we are currently living. Mention immigration and you are bound to obtain heated discussion.

 

Domestic Terrorism in America

2024 Trip to South West United States, Domestic Terrorism, Extremism, Political Violence, Right-wing Extremism

 

When we visit Arizona each winter, we always connect with Arizona State University (‘ASU’) because they have so many programs to which they invite the public—like us. Not just scholars, but ordinary people like us. We have found many of them fascinating. This year the first one we watched we watched online as it was not offered live. It was called God, Guns, and Sedition. The title caught my eye.

Shocking acts of terrorism across the country have erupted from violent American far-right extremists in recent years, including, among many incidents, the 2015 mass murder at a historic Black church in Charleston and the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Sadly, however these incidents, however, are neither new nor unprecedented, but are common. Frankly, they happen all the time.

One of these events, a mass shooting, happened about an hour by car from where we are staying here in Arizona. On January 8, 2011, Gabrielle Dee Giffords  who at the time was serving as a member of the United States House of Representatives. She was a member of the Democratic Party representing the 8th congressional district. She was shot in the head outside a Safeway Grocery store in suburban area outside of Tucson, by a man who ran up to a crowd of people participating in a political event and fired his 99mm pistol with a 33-round magazine.  His bullets hit 19 people killing 6 of them.

The speakers at the ASU event were Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware who are leading experts on domestic terrorism in the US.  In their book God, Guns, and Sedition In that book they provide a brief synoptic history highlighting developments including the use of cutting-edge communications technology; the embrace of leaderless resistance or lone actor strategies; the emergence of characteristic tactics and targets; infiltration and recruitment in the military and law enforcement; and the far right’s intricate relationship with mainstream politics. The history of domestic terrorism is what interested me the most.

This is what these two extremely knowledgeable intellectuals talked about in the ASU program.  Bruce Hoffman professor emeritus of terrorism  at St Andrews University and has written  a number of books on terrorism. Jacob Ware is a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. The moderator was Peter Bergen another expert in the field and a professor at ASU. In addition to being a professor at ASU he is also the Co-Director of the Future Security Initiative, at ASU. The first question they answered was, ‘Why is a book on far-right terrorism at this time?”

Professor Bruce Hoffman, made it clear there also  many other terrorist threats facing America today. He insists it was not a partisan choice that they focused on the far-right out of all those choices.  Although there are left-wing terrorists in the US as well, they are greatly outnumbered by those on the far-right. He also acknowledged that one of the most significant terrorist events from recent years occurred in June of 2017 by someone on the far left who claimed to be a supporter of Bernie Sanders a well-known left wing politician and Senator in the United States. This was the event where he attacked several members of Congress who were practicing for an annual Congressional baseball tournament. He seriously wounded 5 members of Congress.

According to Hoffman it is just “that the numbers on the far right completely eclipse the threats from the far left as well as other actors. Cynthia Miller-Idriss Professor, School of Public Affairs and School of Education Department of Justice, Law and Criminology and a recognized expert on violent extremism in the United States “put the number of armed far-right extremists at an estimated 75,000 persons. Needless to say, that is a lot of violent extremists.

A few years ago, the New York Times put the number of armed members of militia movements at 20,000.  Many of the violent extremists come from that pool. Added to that if you read the FBI reports it is easy to see where the overwhelming majority of threats come from—i.e. the far-right not the far left or any other group including Jihadis, Antifa, eco-terrorists, indigenous groups, or any others. The far-right is the main reservoir for terrorism in America. Unfortunately, many on the less extreme right-wing in America are blind to this uncomfortable fact.

Hoffman reported,

“In 2019 for example the FBI had 850 active domestic terror investigations. That number doubled in 2020. It tripled in 2022…that includes 3 big buckets: racially motivated violent extremists, home grown violent extremists of both the left and the right, and others such as INCEL, eco-terrorists, animal rights people, militant anti-abortion. But even within those figures the overwhelming majority of the current over 2,000 investigations, are the violent far-right extremists.”

 

There is no domestic terrorism statute in the US just like there is none in Canada. As a result, scholars like Hoffman and Ware have to rely on non-governmental organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League (‘ADL’) and Southern Poverty Law Center for figures. Although the numbers are not yet available for 2023 , according to the ADF, all 25 of the extremist related murders in about a dozen incidents in 2023 were linked to violent far right extremists and according to  Hoffman of that number , “of that number 95% were committed by white supremacists or white nationalists.” Hoffman also said, “this is part of a decades long trend that the ADL has followed. Since 2012 75% of the people who have been killed were killed by far-right extremists and of that number 73% were killed by white supremacists.

I am frequently bothered by right-winger complaining about extremists on the left without mentioning that there are vastly more extremists on the right. It is difficult to call out people who look like us as extremists. After all, we are the good guys.

 

Cooper’s Collar

2024 Trip to South West United States, Domestic Terrorism, Right-wing Extremism

 

After the motives of Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma bombing became clear, William Cooper who had inspired McVeigh became uncomfortable. He knew some people were pointing fingers at his organization.  But Cooper admitted nothing. Instead, he doubled down. He said, “They are in the process of attempting to propagandize the American people to believe that patriots bombed the building in Oklahoma City. No patriots would ever attack this nation. That’s what the word “patriot” means.”

Just like Donald Trump and his Trumpsters said after the attacks on the American capitol on January 6th 2021.  Those could not have been patriots they said.  Even though the rioters talked like Trump’s patriots, walked like Trump patriots and looked like Trump patriots presumably they were different.

He did not just say his movement was innocent, he claimed that the government was guilty. The government did it to discredit patriots, he said. He also called it a “sting operation to suck patriots into conducting an illegal act.” It was all part of a conspiracy to bring about a one world socialist government. Does this not all sound very familiar?

Again, the same attempt to deflect people from the truth was made by Trumpsters after January 6th when they said the government was responsible. They called it a false flag operation, suggesting that the government or Antifa was actually behind the riot. Later they even denied there was a riot.  Just a bunch of rambunctious tourists they said.

All of this is crazy, but what continues to amaze, is how Trump supporters believe this junk. In FantasyLand that is possible quite easily. When you live in FantasyLand, no belief is too crazy to be believed.

The Oklahoma City Massacre: Where Right-wing Hatred Ran Deep

2024 Trip to South West United States, 2024 Trip to Southwest USA, American Fascism, Domestic Terrorism, Political Violence, Right-wing Extremism

 

On April 19, 1995, just after 9  in the morning, another very important incident occurred in Oklahoma City.  It was the second anniversary of the Waco massacre. A rush of people was moving into the Alfred P. Murrah federal building at that time. Many of them were children. There was a day care in the building.

Timothy McVeigh wanted people to remember what had happened at Waco 2 years earlier. He wanted people to remember what happened there for a thousand years. Sort of like the proposed 1,000-year reign of the Nazis in Germany.  I suspect both episodes might  be remembered for a thousand years. Heinous crimes have a habit of staying in memory. Good deeds rarely get such sustained attention.

McVeigh had 5,000 pounds of explosive ammonium nitrate and nitro methane in the back of his rental truck. He lit a 2 minute fuse under the day care centre in the federal building. Think about that: he parked the truck, locked it, immediately under a day care center filled with kids. McVey walked away to a get-away vehicle.  The explosion killed 168 people including 19 children. It was called, “the worst act of terrorism in American history.” And it was home grown.

I remember when I heard about it that day. My immediate reaction was that it must have been initiated by some radical Islamic terrorists. A lot of Americans had the same presumption. We were wrong. It was set by radical domestic right-wing terrorists! This was home grown terrorism.

As Justin Ling said, “Oklahoma City followed years of apocalyptic declarations and incitement from the fringes of right-wing radio.”  This is what president Bill Clinton said at the time in response: “They leave the impression by their very words that violence is acceptable. You ought to see some of the things that are regularly said over the airwaves in American today.  Clinton ought to know. He and his wife Hillary were subjected to hate on the airwaves of America for years. they still are.  Perhaps no one in America has been more hated by the American right-wing than the two of them. They were frequently accused of hideous crimes such as accusations that they killed and ate—yes ate—hundreds of children. These were the wildest untrue and hateful accusations that could a have been hurled in America. This too went on for years.

Hatred runs deep in the American right-wing.

And of course, these wild accusations were made, as always, without any evidence to back them up.  The American right-wing does not need evidence to set them off. All they need is unsubstantiated claims and hate which are enough to light the fuse to the hate.

Yet Rush Limbaugh challenged Clinton the very next day on his radio show:

“Talk is not a crime and talk is not the culprit here. Talk didn’t buy the fertilizer, and the fuel oil. Talk didn’t drive the van and talk didn’t rent the van. A person did. A lunatic did.”

Yes, but talk ignited the flame that lit the fuse! Hateful talk can do that. Years of hateful talk can have an effect. The German Nazis proved that in Germany, as did the fascist Hutus in Rwanda, as did Donald Trump in America.

Talk is cheap, but hateful talk is costly.

Timothy McVeigh: Disciple of William Cooper

2024 Trip to South West United States, Extremism, guns, Right-wing Extremism

 

Timothy McVeigh, it turns out, was listening to William Cooper on his radio talk show  talking about Waco Texas and was struck by what he heard. He caught the sickness. He was inflamed like so many in the right-wing movement. He was lapped by the flames. He believed what he heard. It radicalized him.

Like to many other conservative Americans, Timothy McVeigh  always loved guns,. After High School though he became obsessed with guns. He read Soldier of Fortune magazine as if it was holy writ. He became a vocal proponent of gun rights. McVeigh was no dummy. He joined the army and graduated at the top of his class.

 

He was disciplined for buying a White Power shirt at a KKK rally. He was bathed in White Supremacist ideology. McVeigh was transformed by his role in Operation Desert Storm in Iraq. Even though he won medals for his job as sniper, he was traumatized by the war.  His attitude underwent a sea change while he was there. He began to wonder what right he had to go to Iraq and tell Iraqis what to do in their own country but he was actually told to hurt them for not doing it his way!

 

He was considered for Special Forces work but failed because of his physical condition.  This humiliated McVeigh. He began to blame the US military rather than the people of Iraq. He saw the army as part of the socialist takeover of America. And in 1993 he was at the Waco siege hawking bumper stickers. He was the young man radically affected by what he saw at Waco. After that he roamed the country attending gun shows wherever he could. He was also awash with theories by William Cooper. He bought a video on Waco made by Cooper.  As Justin Ling said on his CBC podcast series, “Flamethrowers”, he was listening to “the Big Lie.” That is an interesting expression in the history of extremism. It became even more interesting years later.

 Cooper in his tapes asked his listeners if they would stand up like a real man and a real woman? McVeigh heard Cooper say the time was near when everyone, including himself was going to have to make a decision. It was time to be counted and McVeigh was ready. Cooper asked, on the tape, “how  many more people are you going to allow to be jailed, persecuted, burned to death, murdered, because you are a coward.”

Later evidence  makes it clear that McVeigh took this message to heart. He was brave enough for the task at hand that brought him to Oklahoma City.

Wacky Waco

2024 Trip to South West United States, Domestic Terrorism, Extremism, guns, Right-wing Extremism

 

One of the most important incidents in the history of the whacky right-wing movement in the US, occurred, appropriately near a city called Waco Texas. That incident ignited the right-wing  talk-radio hosts around the country.

On April 19, 1993 there was a tense standoff near the Mount Carmel in Waco Texas between a small Christian sect known as the Branch Davidians and nearly 900 federal agents including the FBI, Customs, the National Guard and the Texas Rangers. To many it appeared like an epic struggle between Christians and government. Of course, the   government agents brought massive amounts of fire power with them.  Nothing but overwhelming force would do against this small Christian sect. This included a dozen tanks. Inside the fortified building there are about 100 Branch Davidians that included 20 children. About half the adults were women. It didn’t look like a fair fight. But should it be a fair fight? If Antifa is rioting in the streets of Seattle or Portland should they be met with equal force?  What if the rioters are a motor cycle gang. Do the authorities have to fight them fairly? Or should we allow them to bring overwhelming force?

The Christian sect had a leader David Koresh, after whom the group was named. They were not lambs led to the slaughter.  As Justin Ling explained on his CBC podcast, “They’ve got a 50-caliber cannon, machine guns, and more than a million rounds of ammunition. They are prepared for a holy war.”        This was a very well-armed sect of Christians.

Modern Christians like to be well-armed. No lily-livered pacifism for them. They don’t turn the other cheek; they turn the other AR-15.

 One of the officers on the site said the agents had walked into “a hail-storm in reverse.” I don’t know what that means but it doesn’t sound good to me.

The initial fire fight led to the deaths of 4 officers and 5 Branch Davidians. Since then, there was a very tense stand-off. The line from the Clinton administration was about saving the children inside the compound.  But why did they need saving? There was a very different version of the events on short-wave radio.

One broadcaster from Arizona said “this was the beginning of the end for Christian America.”  The Christians believed that no one in the church was compelled to go there. Everyone was there as a result of exercising their own free will or their parents exercising their own free will. As a result, according to this view, the attack on the site was an extreme example of government over reach and tyranny—i.e. government interfering with the freedom of the people. One of those people upset with the government and who espoused this view was radio talk-show host William Cooper. Cooper said,

“The U.S government is training this massive military force on Americans who are just exercising their religious freedom. For Cooper this siege vindicated the dire predictions he had been making for years—that the socialist, liberal government is about to take away your freedom. And you might be next!”

The fears were being stoked. And once again, paranoia was bringing bad decision making in its wake.

As one right-wing pundit said,

“The siege continues in Waco Texas. A small group of men and women trapped under siege by government forces. They are fighting the second battle of the Second American Revolution. Make no mistake about it folks—we are at war.”

 

Many Americans believed exactly that.  America was at war with its own government. As a result of Waco, the American survivalist and militia movement was born. This was the group that later included domestic terrorists such as Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and many others. The events of January 6th 2021 were a direct descendant of Waco.

 There was a young boy who came to see the action in Waco Texas. He was selling bumper sticker such as this: “Fear the government that fears your gun.” “Banning guns make the streets safe for a government takeover.” That young kid later made a lot of noise in the right-wing movement when he got a little older. His name was Timothy McVeigh.

Yearning for a Strongman Government

2024 Trip to South West United States, Death of Democracy, Populism, Right-wing Extremism, Trumpism, Tyranny and Fascism

 

Recently, I watched the Rachel Maddow show on television. She is an unrelenting liberal so I don’t watch the show very often, figuring I get enough of that already. After watching the show though, I might change my mind. I just watched a small part of the show and it was very interesting.

First, she showed brief interviews with Trumpsters who had each been asked one simple question:  “If you had a choice of 4 more years of Joe Biden or 4 more years of Donald Trump as a dictator what would you choose?”

The answers were shocking. Each one chose Trump!  One said, “This country needs a dictator. I hate to say it, but it’s true.” He looked sheepish but he said it.  Another said, “Sometimes in life we need a good paddling from the principal to set our life on the right path. And this country needs a little of that.”  A young woman said, “I’d pick Trump all the way.” She also had a sheepish grin, but again, said it.  A number of them said “Trump” with enthusiasm.  They seemed to want a dictator.

Is it really true that Americans want a dictator? Dictatorship seems to have a lot of appeal in the US. Why is that?  Rachel Maddow said, many Americans want a strong man government and think that is what Trump will give them.

Tyranny is in the Eyes of the Beholder

2024 Trip to Southwest USA, Right-wing Extremism

 

It has been cool in Arizona since we arrived. This is not uncommon in Arizona in January.  We are just grateful that it is only cool and not cold or worse, not bone-chilling cold. Recently, for the first time we went to the pool that all members of our little community are entitled to use. We enjoy it there. We get to swim, lounge in the hot tub and meet friends. If it were not for the pool, we would not have met very many people here. That is why we prefer semi-public pools to private pools. We deliberately chose our house this year because it did not have a pool. The house we rented last year lost about 80% of its back yard to the pool. A pool we didn’t use! We prefer the extra space and larger communal pool.

As soon as we arrived, we met 2 friends. They are former New Yorkers with a strong New York accident and strong New York opinions. We have enjoyed many chats with them, although we often disagree.  They are not liberals as most people around here would expect. In fact, the husband is a Trump supporter.

He was eager to talk to me about what he called was a “very disturbing incident” he had noticed on the Internet. I was leery, but interested so gladly accepted his gift of the URL when he flagged down our car on the way home from the pool. He wanted my opinion as a lawyer even though I am a lowly recovering lawyer.  So at his request I watched the YouTube report.

Rebel News played a video that apparently is making quite a splash on the Internet.  It outraged my Arizona friend. It showed a reporter approaching Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland aggressively approached by Dave Menzies a reporter for Rebel News as she was briskly walking down a sidewalk or parking lot in a city. He immediately stuck a microphone into her face as she continued walking, showing no interest in being interviewed. He wanted to know why a particular Iranian group was not listed as a terrorist and why her government was supporting “Islamo-Nationalism?”

Ms Freeland immediately veered off to the other side of the sidewalk and kept walking without talking to hm. Although the reporter walked right up to her, sticking the microphone in her face I did not see that he touched her. The Deputy Prime Minister was accompanied by her personal RCMP detail, which is hardly surprising since she has been accosted by extremists on a number of occasions. She is entitled to her security and has no obligation to talk to everyone who approaches her on the street whether a reporter or not. She had the right to ignore the reporter. The police have a duty to protect her.

In my opinion the police officers over reacted by arresting the man. They said they were arresting him and later I believe briefly charged him with assault, but quickly released him without charges. The police would have been much smarter to talk to him to make sure he was not a danger to the Cabinet Minister, and then once assured that she was not in danger, let him go. Arresting him or charging him was not necessary or even helpful in my view. Reporters do what he did, from time to time. It is rather rude and annoying but would not amount to an assault in my view. A police man claimed the reporter had pushed into him, but I could not see what he did. I suspect it was minor incident.

Menzies was upset at his treatment. While handcuffed he talked to his own cameraman and his own microphone and told viewers,

 “This is your Canada now folks. This is the Gestapo taking Black Faces’ orders [referring to Prime Minister Trudeau]. Outrageous! Meanwhile the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp is not a terrorist organization…It is against the law in Black Faces’s Canada to ask insensitive questions.”

 

But Rebel News was outraged. And so apparently is the entire right wing led by, of course, Fox News, the largest cable news network in the US.

What is my take? The police over reacted. There was no need as far as I could see to arrest him. The police  had the right to keep the reporter away since Ms. Freeland did not want to talk to him, but he did nothing as far as I could see to reason to arrest him.  However, there is also no need for the right-wing apoplexy over what happened. This was not a major gestapo incident.  Tyranny is in the eyes of the beholder. Fox News finds tyranny where it wants to. Other news outlets do the same. We viewers should watch them all with our critical lenses securely in place. We, on either side of such issues, should not make mountains out of molehills

I am afraid my America friend will be disappointed in my Casper Milquetoast answers. Maybe, he should get a better lawyer.