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In Charlottesville trial, jurors learn to decode the secret slang of white supremacists
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. - The jury in a federal courtroom listened as a longtime researcher...
www.chron.com
This evidence, introduced in an ongoing civil trial against organizers of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, appeared to highlight a sinister strategy expert witness Pete Simi was trying to teach the jurors: the ways in which white supremacists employ humor to shield their calls for violence, in an effort to render them legally ambiguous.
As jurors consider the plaintiffs' accusation that the rally organizers conspired to foment racial violence, they have been presented with a trove of evidence that includes messages laced with slurs, memes of using cars to run over protesters and calls for cracking skulls. Over the past four weeks, plaintiffs' attorneys have tried to make their case by carefully breaking down the jokes and catchphrases favored by far-right extremists, in an effort to teach jurors how to decode white supremacists' secret vocabulary of hate.
Whether the jury takes this evidence literally or views it as exaggeration is the crux of many arguments in this trial.