Over the past few days, there have been genuinely baffling moments of idiocy on display by the Nazis on trial in Charlottesville in the case of Sines vs. Kessler. Chris “Crying Nazi” Cantwell screamed passages from a Slate article at Rev. Seth Wispelwey on Wednesday because he was mad that Wispelwey had praised the people who protected him from Cantwell and his ilk. Broke-as-a-joke Nazi Nathan Damigo revealed that Nazis are easier to hack than Donald Trump’s long-banned Twitter account. Damigo, who tried filing for bankruptcy to outrun his mistakes (it didn’t work), sent a DM with the login information to the Twitter account @AntiWhiteReport. Turns out the password was a predictable mix of racism-meets-slogans-against-racism. Private messages factored heavily into the trial as it continued on Thursday. Expert witness Pete Simi, an associate sociology professor at Chapman University, took the stand and seemingly effortlessly took the defendants to task. Simi and University of Pittsburgh psychology professor Kathleen Blee reviewed hundreds of thousands of Discord posts, thousands of messages on the Charlotteville2.0 server, and depositions and trial testimony. Their report on the defendants is alarming and crystal-clear in its assessment: “The coordinated race-based violence facilitated and committed by Defendants at [Unite the Right] is emblematic of [white supremacist movement] tactics.” Read more