Monthly Archives: August 2017

The clip fit perfectly into the Fox News narrative about the dangers of leftist radicalism on campuses. It also perfectly encapsulated the networks hypocrisy about defending free speech.

When it comes to protecting the speech of people who are most vulnerable to being intimidated into silence like people of color and gay people conservatives either are suspiciously quiet or drive further intimidation with wildly negative news coverage.

Its not just the right. Most schools including Princeton, where I teach support their besieged professors. But in recent months, other progressive academics have been investigated, disciplined and even fired for comments they made outside of the classroom. This is an ominous turn. The trend has become so visible that earlier this year, the American Association of University Professors implored institutions to take a stand by resisting calls for the dismissal of faculty members and by condemning their targeted harassment and intimidation.

Progressives deserve the same speech protection as conservatives. The American Civil Liberties Union and the PEN organization have gone out of their way to defend the rights of provocative speakers like Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter to speak on campuses, but have been virtually silent on cases involving leftist or progressive faculty members who face suspension for provocative comments. Lisa Durden, an adjunct professor at Essex County College in New Jersey, was fired after she appeared on the Fox News program Tucker Carlson Tonight to explain why black people might gather for an all-black celebration of Memorial Day.

Johnny Eric Williams, an associate professor at Trinity College, had to go into hiding after the conservative website Campus Reform blasted his use of racially charged language in critiquing white supremacy. He was besieged with threatening emails and suspended from his position. (Trinity eventually cleared Professor Williams of any wrongdoing.)

Tommy Curry, an associate professor at Texas A&M, faced death threats recently when an old interview he gave about the movie Django Unchained was characterized as racist bilge by the magazine The American Conservative. Texas A&M distanced itself from Dr. Curry and only later, under pressure, expressed its unwavering support for academic freedom.

What is shocking is that while the right-wing media is wringing its hands about suppressive leftists, openly racist and fascist-sympathizing organizations are recruiting young white people on campuses. That conservative pundits have precious little to say when campuses are defiled with swastikas, nooses and racist fliers but cry foul when people like Richard Spencer, Mr. Yiannopoulos and Ms. Coulter are met with protest has become a sick paradox of our time.

In the coming school years, those who are quick to defend the rights of white nationalists and neo-Nazis to speak on campuses must be just as vigilant about protecting the rights of faculty and students to speak out against them or risk revealing their hypocrisy.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is an assistant professor of African-American studies at Princeton.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 14, 2017, on Page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Free Speech Isnt Just for The Right.

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The 'Free Speech' Hypocrisy of Right-Wing Media - New York Times

Matthew J. Lee/Globe staff

A vigil in support of peaceful anti-fascist protesters in Charlottesville, Va., was held on Boston Common on Sunday.

The City of Boston is making preparations for a conservative rally scheduled for Saturday on Boston Common, following the eruption of violence in Charlottesville, Va., that has raised troubling questions about the rise of extremists views across the country.

After a woman was killed when a car rammed a crowd of counterprotesters and others were injured, Twitter and Facebook exploded with postings about a rally next weekend in Boston that they say might attract white supremacists. Organizers were spreading information about the rally on Facebook, urging supporters to gather from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday on the nations oldest park for a Boston Free Speech rally.

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The mayor and Boston police sought on Sunday to reassure residents that violence would not be tolerated in the city.

I dont want that type of hate coming into our city, Mayor Martin J. Walsh said when asked about the upcoming rally. We dont need that. Weve worked real hard to make Boston a tolerant city.

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The police departments Boston Regional Intelligence Center is on alert and State Police and local police pledged to be ready should any problems arise.

Advocates for peace and diversity responded for a second day with demonstrations denouncing hatred, intimidation, and alleged murder at racist rallies in Virginia.

We want to be clear that incidents of violence [or] inciting violence are not going to be tolerated at any events in Boston, said Officer Rachel McGuire, spokeswoman for the Boston Police Department.

McGuire said the intelligence unit was aware of a planned Boston Free Speech rally a while back.

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State Police will monitor intelligence from a number of sources, including social media, about the rally and assess any credible public safety threats, according to spokesman David Procopio.

Councilor Tito Jackson, who is running for mayor, also said he condemns any event that allows hatred, anti-Semitism, homophobia in Boston.

We will stand loud and proud and ensure the voices of who we are in Boston are heard, said Jackson.

Governor Charlie Baker said through a spokesman that he is saddened and disturbed by the tragic events in Charlottesville, and believes hatred, bigotry and violence as well as those who promote it have no place in our Commonwealth or country.

Alexander Sender, a 23-year-old Cambridge resident who is a member of the New Free Speech Movement, which is organizing Saturdays rally, said he has received a city permit to hold the event. But city officials said that although the group has filed an application for a permit, it has not received a final approval to rally Saturday.

Monica Cannon, who is helping to organize a counterprotest Saturday, said her group will be on the Common to speak up for civil rights.

We watched what happened in Charlottesville and how people were treated, Cannon said. Not in our city. You dont get to come here or think it is OK without being approached with resistance.

Cannon said protesters heading to the counter-rally, which will include Black Lives Matter groups from Boston and Cambridge, plan to meet in front of the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center and then march to the Common.

She said fliers advertising the event on social media include names of speakers whose Twitter feeds include extremist views.

Another member of the New Free Speech Movement described the group as Libertarian and traditional conservative leaning. He would only identify himself as Louis, citing threats that group members have received.

Louis said his free-speech group is in no way affiliated with the Charlottesville rally organizer Jason Kessler, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a white nationalist blogger.

We have nothing to do with him, said Louis. The rally in Charlottesville was organized specifically by white nationalists. There is no link whatsoever with the group.

Kessler did not respond to the Globes request for comment.

Gavin McInnes, one of the scheduled speakers for Saturdays rally, said his group known as Proud Boys opposes the kind of people who were in Charlottesville, and the Proud Boys made damn sure we had nothing to do with it, he told the Globe in an e-mail.

The rally on Saturday in Boston couldnt be farther from the rally we just saw, McInnes said. We are socially liberal, fiscal conservatives who think America has a lot to be proud of. ... We are pro-gay, multicultural, pro-Israel, pro-family and anti-Nazi. The alt left will try to twist this into being about bigotry but thats a lie.

Other speakers either did not respond to a Globe inquiry or declined to comment.

The rally and counter-rally have raised concerns with organizers of the New England Cosplay Community, which is planning its sixth annual picnic Saturday at the Commons Parkman Bandstand. The group, whose members dress up in costumes depicting their favorite comic book or TV characters, has a permit to hold its event at the Parkman Bandstand Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the same time and place where the Free Speech rally is scheduled to be held, according to the events page on Facebook.

Ashley Linkevich, a board member, said she is concerned that the rallies might frighten our attendees.

The Free Speech group, which held a rally on the Common in May, began planning a second rally shortly thereafter, Louis said. He said the group had initially eyed this past Saturday, but moved the date because of the rally in Charlottesville, he added.

He and Sender both white males in their 20s said the group is all about freedom of expression. Louis said the group values the right to extreme views, which, he added, are healthy for social advancement. Both disavow the use of violence to hurt or intimidate people.

Sender said the rally will probably attract people from both sides of the political spectrum, noting tensions have been building up over time.

The purpose of its just to do free speech, he said. Thats all its ever been.

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'Free-speech' rally set for Boston has some concerned - The Boston ... - The Boston Globe

Robby Soave"No Free Speech for Fascists!" It's a motto you see on pre-printed signs at protests, including at yesterday's rallies in reaction to the violence and death in Charlottesville, Virginia, this weekend. Paired with a flood of invective against the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for the group's support of Unite the Right's right to stage a rally at the city's statue of Robert E. Lee in the first place, they make for a troubling trend.

Support for the ACLU has been on the uptick from the left of late, thanks to Executive Director Anthony Romero's decisive legal maneuvering and online sass in response to President Donald Trump's misguided attempts to restrict immigration from several Muslim-dominated countries. But perhaps these new supporters didn't fully understood what they were buying into? Sure, they might have heard about the group's commitment to stick up for intersectional Muslim activists. But were they fully aware of the ACLU's long history of litigating in favor of KKK marches and other exercises in speech and assembly by unpopular minorities? (Or that time they defended NAMBLA, even!) Along came the defense of Milo Yiannopoulos (along with several others, including PETA and a women's health clinic) in a suit against Washington's transit system, and some of the Trump-era donors started getting nervous. Then, Charlottesville happened.

When people live in low-trust societiesthat is, when citizens broadly believe that corruption is rampant and the powerful cannot be relied upon to follow the rulesthey paradoxically tend to call for more regulation and other types of government action. That impulse was on full display in the anti-speech reaction to the cold-blooded murder of Heather Heyer. Many observers looked at what happened in Charlottesville and decided that not only were the neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and alt-righters who gathered in Virginia culpable for egging on those who physically lashed out, the legal and political institutions that defended their speech rights were as well. These are not just angry or grieving laymen; Waldo Jaquith, a member of the board of the ACLU of Virginia, resigned after the protest turned violent, characterizing the group's support for the right to gather as "a fig leaf for the Nazis."

But if fascists are to lose their free speech rights, someone must take them. And if you believe, as many of the counter-protesters do, that the white nationalists and their brethren were emboldened by the presence of a man in the White House who sees them as part of his coalition, then why on God's good green earth would you want to turn around and hand that very man the right to censor anyone whom he labels fascists? Because I can tell you right now, the list of folks that Trump and the restive-but-still-Republican Congress would like to silence sure won't look like the list those sign-wavers have in mind.

The people wielding "No Free Speech for Fascists" placards might as well be holding up signs saying "No Free Speech for Muslims." And in fact, many on the right have been making just that argument against the ACLU for years now, arguing that exceptions to our free speech principles should be made to curtail extreme speech by Muslim religious figures or activists in the name of security, or even (in the stupidest variant of the idea) that the ACLU is part of a radical Islamic conspiracy. But if the justification for restrictions on the speech of one man is violence committed by another, there can be no end to list of people who may be silenced in the name of order.

I have my beefs with ACLU too. I wish they'd see the importance of defending free speech even in situations where money is changing handsto my way of thinking, the group has lately been on the wrong side of a few debates over freedom of conscience and association in the commercial realm. But the ACLU's work on speech in the public sphere is unbeatable. They did the right thing to let Unite the Right gather in Charlottesville. Sticking up for free speech for fascists doesn't mean you love fascists, it means you love free speech.

For more, check out Glenn Greenwald's humongous defense of the ACLU's habit of defending unpopular speech at The Intercept.

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'No Free Speech for Fascists' Is a Truly Terrible Idea - Hit & Run ... - Reason (blog)

Political totalitarianism is coming to America, and it is being ushered in not by government thugs in jackboots but by progressive activists and their allies in Silicon Valley.

In a chilling oped published in The New York Times on July 14, Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, argued that so-called hate speech is the same thing as physical violence because it may possibly cause emotionally fragile individuals stress and should be made illegal.

Thankfully, the First Amendment prohibits the federal government from following such advice, but online companies are taking it upon themselves to stamp-out so-called hate speech, strangling free speech and the free exchange of ideas in the process.

A number of troubling actions by internet companies Google most prominent among them are making it increasingly clear that some in Silicon Valley have proclaimed themselves defenders of the progressive, politically correct faith, and that those firms will silence any and all heretics who challenge those beliefs.

"Silicon Valley lives in a politically regressive, exclusive bubble. They are not aware of their own biases in how they talk, have a limited understanding of the philosophy behind free speech, and find it difficult empathizing with other points of view," said Aaron Ginn, co-founder of the Lincoln Network, a think tank that seeks to promote libertarian ideas in the tech industry.

But Google not only has difficulty empathizing with other points of view it is also actively trying to suppress them. Google recently made the controversial decision to fire engineer James Damore for authoring an internal memo questioning the company's ideologically motivated diversity practices and highlighting sound scientific research suggesting that possible biological differences between men and women, not discrimination, could be a factor in the tech field's high percentage of men.

In the aftermath of Damore's firing, a number of anonymous current and former Google employees have come forward to reveal the full extent of the company's efforts to silence right-wing voices. One anonymous employee identified as "Hal" told Breitbart News last week that some employees in Google's ad sales department are "openly encouraging Adwords customers to pull their ads from Breitbart and Rebel Media."

Another anonymous employee under the alias "Emmet" confirmed this with Breitbart News, and also revealed the existence of "efforts to demote anything non-PC, anti-Communist, and anti-Islamic terror from search results."

"Emmett says he personally witnessed efforts from leftists within Google to bias YouTube's algorithms to push anti-PC content off the platform's 'related videos' recommendations," Breitbart reported. "The software could just 'astroturf' your Related Videos section [an effort to hurt overall ratings], and you would be none the wiser," said Emmet.

"Sure, if you know what to look for, perhaps you'd notice," he continued. "But the vast majority of the viewership would never ever know. That's the whole point of such a disinformation program, right? If you can tell it's disinformation, you would never, ever believe it."

People familiar with the process have told reporters recently that YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, is also laboring to cleanse its platform of alternative voices that challenge the mainstream liberal narrative. The social media video-sharing site has in the past few months systematically demonetized videos of right-wing commenters and journalists, such as Infowars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson and former Rebel Media reporter Lauren Southern.

But the latest commentators to fall victim to this practice are far less controversial: YouTube celebrities and vocal Trump supporters Diamond and Silk. The duo discovered last week that a number of their videos including one that is two years old were suddenly demonetized. They have vowed to fight YouTube's efforts to suppress conservative voices and have even raised the possibility of legal action.

"The same video that is being demonetized has been monetized for two years, so how was it suitable for our advertisers for two years and now all of a sudden there's an issue?" Silk told LifeZette in an exclusive interview.

The pair say the demonetization is a transparent attempt at censorship. "How can [YouTube] oust us and say [we're] not suitable for all advertisers?" said Diamond. "Have you spoken to each and every one of you hundreds of thousand of advertisers and said, 'Hey do you want to advertise around Diamond or Silk, yes or no?' or are you as YouTube making this decision for your advertisers?"

YouTube is "a social media platform, and a social media platform is a platform for ideas, for all ideas," said Diamond. It's a place "for people to be able to come together and collaborate with those ideas."

"So even though people want to call YouTube private, it's open to the public, so when it's open to the public, you cannot discriminate against conservative voices or against people that chose to support the president," she argued.

"We're being discriminated against because first of all, we're two black people, we don't fit the norm we're black, Republican conservatives, and we support our president," said Diamond. "What they want to do is control the narrative."

"They're putting our videos in a category now as being extremist or 'hate speech,'" said Silk.

"And that's not fair because now that's defamation," Diamond added.

The duo, which gained even more recognition for their consistent support of Trump during the presidential race, wants YouTube to remonetize not just their videos, but also those of other right-wingers who have had their livelihoods altered in a similar fashion.

"We want to give YouTube the opportunity to make this right, to be inclusive instead of exclusive. We want them to include people and not leave out conservative voices," Diamond said.

But "if YouTube does not make this right, then we have to take this a step further," said Diamond. On Thursday the two tweeted, "We Smell A Class Action Lawsuit," and confirmed with LifeZette that they are prepared to follow through on the threat.

"Listen, they can regulate, but you can't discriminate while you regulate," she said.

"Because what they're trying to do is dominate, and that's unfair," Diamond said. "It's unfair that we allow Google and YouTube to team up together and really monopolize a sector of the internet."

Unfortunately it's not just Google. On Thursday, Watson of InfoWars posted a YouTube video titled "I Won't Be Around Much Longer," in which he revealed that "they banned me on Facebook because of a video I posted 18 months ago," and went on to posit that if digital platforms continue at the current rate, Silicon Valley will have soon entirely purged all right-wing voices from mainstream social media.

But although social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are already known among conservatives for suppressing even mainstream right-wing voices, despite allowing controversial content from the far Left and even radical Islamists to remain online unmolested non-social-media sites have also begun to target right-wing dissidents.

A number of online right-wing commentators including Southern and former Students for Trump director and independent journalist James Allsup have even had their Paypal, GoFundMe, or Patreon accounts canceled because of their perceived "support" for "hate speech."

These attacks, not just on people's free speech, but also on their livelihoods, represent a fundamental and chilling acceleration of the progressive Left's attempts to control thought and debate within society.

"Liberals can't have this one-sided. This works both ways," said Diamond.

"We have a conservative voice, we support our president, we support our country, and we want our voices heard, and if we have fans we want our fans to hear our voices," she said.

(photo credit, homepage image: affiliate, Flickr; photo credit, article images: Austin McKinley, Flickr)

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Silicon Valley Tightens Its Grip on Free Speech - LifeZette

Scores of Hub residents who gathered on the Common last night to condemn the violence in Charlottesville, Va., say theyre prepared to return to the sitenext Saturdayto protest against a local Free Speech Rally organized by the man behind yesterdays white nationalist demonstration.

Were trying to mass mobilize said a woman named Elise, a member of the Boston Feminists for Liberation, which organized last nights vigil. We hope to get as many people as we can. Boston is my home and theyre coming here. I want to defend my home.

The Boston Free Speech Rally, set to begin on Boston Common at noon, is reportedly being organized by Jason Kessler, who led yesterdays protest in Charlottesville.

As dozens of people chanted bash the fasc and no Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA, demonstrators said theyre gearing up for a confrontation next week.

Its clear that the far right feels emboldened right now, said Khury Peterson-Smith, 35 of Dorchester. I think that starts with the president. I feel confident that the majority of people in this city and this country oppose that kind of bigotry. I hope we can show that through our presence.

Bonnie McBride of Boston said she worried that a large counterprotest would give them more of a voice but stressed she also didnt want to ignore it.

If it doesnt affect you directly, its easy to turn your face, she said. Its important for those of us who are white to stand up against this.

Nick Serpe, 29, of Cambridge said he was shocked by what happened yesterday in Virginia.

I think a lot of people werent planning on taking them seriously until what happened in Charlottesville, he said. We feel as a community we need to respond. I think everyone will be on high alert but I find comfort and strength in numbers from the people who are out against those demonstrators. Were not afraid.

Kristin Doyle, 23, of Framingham agreed.

Its really important to be proactive and get involved, she said. Things keep getting worse and we need to take a stand together. Its obviously going to probably be huge and probably terrifying. But solidarity is important I think well be ready.

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Boston protests ahead of 'free speech rally' | Boston Herald - Boston Herald

Of the harrowing images televised nationwide from Saturday's white nationalist demonstration in Charlottesville, one of the more chilling sights, amid hours of raging hatred and mayhem, was of camo-clad militiamen on the streets, girded for combat in tactical vests and toting military-style semiautomatic rifles.

Photos and video of the heavily armed cadre - a relatively small force commanded by a 45-year-old machinist and long-ago Navy veteran from western Pennsylvania - spread rapidly on social media, raising fears the clash of hundreds of neo-Nazis and counterprotesters might end in a bloodbath.

The show of strength was about "allegiance . . . to the Constitution," particularly the First Amendment, said Christian Yingling, leader of the Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia. He said he and his troops "convoyed in" to Charlottesville early Saturday to defend free speech by maintaining civic order so everyone present could voice an opinion, regardless of their views.

The fact that no shots were fired, Yingling said, was a testament "to the discipline of the 32 brave souls serving under me during this particular operation." In a telephone interview Sunday, he sought to dispel "the absurd idea in the public's mind" that his group of "patriots" was allied with or sympathetic to the white nationalists.

Many militia units in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast have "mutual defense agreements," Yingling said. Because he has overseen several militia responses at contentious gatherings in recent months - helping "keep the peace" at right-wing public events in Boston; in Gettysburg and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; and at an April 29 rally in Harrisburg for President Donald Trump - Yingling said the commander of a Virginia militia asked him to organize and take "tactical command" of the Charlottesville operation.

"He had never handled anything like this," Yingling said. "And given the volatility of the event, it was not a good place to start."

When his group arrived in Charlottesville, "we put our own beliefs off to the side," Yingling said. "Not one of my people said a word. They were given specific orders to remain quiet the entire time we were there. . . . Our mission was to help people exercise their First Amendment rights without being physically assaulted."

He added: "It was a resounding success until we were just so drastically outnumbered that we couldn't stop the craziness. It was nothing short of horrifying."

In the interview and in a Facebook Live monologue Sunday, Yingling detailed why the militia members participated, how he went about organizing their appearance, and how his group was received - which he said was not with much welcome.

"Jacka---s," was how he described both sides, meaning the white nationalists, who billed the gathering as Unite the Right, and the counterprotesters, many marching under the banner of Antifa, for "anti-fascist." Yingling also criticized police, saying that officers were poorly prepared for the violence and not assertive enough in combating it and that they should have enlisted the militiamen to help prevent the mayhem.

Instead, about five hours after Yingling and his platoon arrived at 7:30 a.m., they were ordered by police to leave the area, he said. By 1:42 p.m. - when a man reputed to be a neo-Nazi adherentallegedly drove his car intentionally through a crowded pedestrian mall and into a sedan, killing a 32-year-old woman and injuring 19 others - the militiamen were far from Charlottesville, headed back to their encampment 50 miles northeast of the city, Yingling said.

He said several of his troops were battered and bloodied, having been attacked by people on both sides of the demonstration, yet they did not retaliate.

He said he does not know the suspect in the car killing, James Alex Fields, 20, of Ohio, or any of the white nationalists involved in Saturday's demonstration.

Virginia's secretary of public safety, Brian Moran, rejected the assertion that police were ill-equipped to handle Saturday's unrest. "To say we were unprepared or inexperienced is absolutely wrong," Moran declared Sunday, adding, "We unequivocally acted at the right time and with the appropriate response."

He said: "The fighting in the street was sporadic. But soon after it started, we began to have conversations about when to go in. The concern was that the fighting was in the middle of the crowd and that if we went in there, we would lose formation, lose contact. We would be putting the public and law enforcement in jeopardy."

Saturday marked the first time in 28 years the Virginia National Guard was used to help quell a civil disturbance. "The militia showed up with long rifles, and we were concerned about that in the mix," Moran said. "They seemed like they weren't there to cause trouble, but it was a concern to have rifles of that kind in that environment."

Authorities also were worried that Yingling - who was carrying a Sig Sauer AR-556 semiautomatic weapon - and his troops would be mistaken for National Guard members by the public, Moran said.

Yingling called the weapons "one hell of a visual deterrent" to would-be attackers from either side. Although the weapons' magazines were fully loaded, he said, the day's standard procedure "was that anyone who was carrying a long gun was not to have a round in the chamber. Now, our sidearms are generally chambered and ready to go."

The Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia is one of several Light Foot Militia outfits in states nationwide. In addition to having overall command of units in Pennsylvania, Yingling said, he is the leader of his home unit, the Light Foot Militia Laurel Highlands Ghost Company, based near his home in New Derry, Pennsylvania, about 50 miles east of Pittsburgh. The Ghost Company has about a dozen members, he said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit watchdog group that monitors extremist organizations, classifies 276 militias in the country as "antigovernment groups," meaning they generally "define themselves as opposed to the 'New World Order,' engage in groundless conspiracy theorizing, or advocate or adhere to extreme antigovernment doctrines."

The Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia is on the list, as are Light Foot Militia units in South Carolina, Utah, Wisconsin, Idaho, Nevada and Oregon. But the SPLC points out that inclusion on its list "does not imply that the groups themselves advocate or engage in violence or other criminal activity, or are racist."

Yingling said he abhors racism and that his company, which usually trains in the woods once or twice a month, is open to prospective members "of all races and creeds," although its active roster is entirely white.

A Navy veteran of Operation Desert Storm, Yingling said he was an aviation machinist's mate for three years before leaving the service in 1993 as a petty officer third class, meaning he was four rungs up the enlisted ranks.

"I joined the military to avoid the addictive lifestyle of my parents," he wrote in a Facebook post. "I was raised in a VERY dysfunctional, abusive home. The military gave me the structure I needed." After his discharge, however, "I quickly fell right into the lifestyle I had known all my life with my parents. I quit going to church, I started using drugs and alcohol, heavily becoming addicted to both. It started a . . . downward spiral which led to an eventual suicide attempt."

Then, in 2008, President Barack Obama was elected. Yingling said he was drawn then to right-wing, anti-government extremism.

"I left my old addictive lifestyle behind and traded it for the lifestyle of a patriot," he wrote. "I had found my calling" as a militiaman. "I founded The Westmoreland County Militia, Regulators 1st Battalion with two fellow patriots." He later left the unit and formed the Laurel Highlands Ghost Company.

"No, I don't think the government, as a whole, is out to get us," he said in the interview, but "a lot of people in society are self-absorbed. They don't get involved with the Constitution and defending the freedoms that it gives us. We need to defend those freedoms - for everyone, on all sides of the political debate - or eventually we'll lose them."

About a month ago, when he learned the Unite the Right event was being planned, Yingling said, "I, like most militia commanders, did not want to touch it with a 10-foot pole" for fear of being wrongly perceived as an ally of white supremacists. But after talking it over with a fellow Light Foot commander, in upstate New York, he decided he had a duty to defend the right of free speech on the streets of Charlottesville.

Through Facebook and various militia chat rooms, he said, he recruited militia members from various East Coast units and organized a rendezvous Friday night at a farm in Unionville. He said he was angered and embarrassed that only 32 people showed up. Many others, he said, were afraid of being publicly branded as racists.

"We knew what we were walking into," he said on Facebook Live. "We knew what the results were going to be. And yet we walked in anyway. We weren't afraid. And we didn't give a good damn about our image or about what anybody thought about us. And I still don't."

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Militia chief says his group sought to guard free speech at Unite the ... - The Daily Progress