Listeners may remember the name James Fields, the young man sentenced to a life sentence plus 419 years for driving into a mob of anarchists at Charlottesville, Virginia following the Unite the Right rally in 2017. One of the anarchists died as a result.
There was a similar assault in Vancouver back in September. This is the American Vancouver, the one in Washington State, not the Canadian Vancouver. An Antifa activist named Charles Holliday-Smith had been harassing some Proud Boys who were standing smoking in a parking lot. Then he got into his own vehicle and drove off.
As he did so he hit one of the Proud Boys, Shane Moon. Moon wasn’t killed, but he suffered brain damage. Holliday-Smith was arrested and then released on $100,000 bail.
Now we’ve heard that Holliday-Smith has been exonerated with no charges filed, pending further investigation. His bail has also been exonerated, whatever that means.
Granted, the two cases — James Fields and Charles Holliday-Smith — are different. The person James Fields hit died; Shane Moon didn’t, though he was badly injured.
On the other side, however, Fields was plainly in fear for his life; there’s no evidence that Holliday-Smith was.
So sure, there are differences. The differences, however are nothing like as great — nothing like as great — as the difference between 419 years plus life and no-charges-filed.
We all understand, of course, that the real difference here is that Charles Holliday-Smith holds political opinions the ruling class approves of, while James Fields holds political opinions they don’t approve of.
Radio Derb