Should San Diego’s DA Be in Charge of Prosecuting the Poway Shooter?
The above image was used in an ad for San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan's election campaign in 2018.
Can a prosecutor whose election campaign utilized anti-Semitic images and memes be trusted to prosecute an anti-Semitic hate crime?
While I’m sure our local DA doesn’t personally identify with the kind of hateful ideology involved here, I don’t think she understands how the seeds for this type of terrorism are planted.
She needs to understand the bigger picture if her office is sincere about standing opposed to this sort of terrorism.
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San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan has been a frequent voice in the news over the past few days in the wake of the terrorist attack on the congregation at Poway’s Chabed Center.
Reuters and other wire services quoted her expression of sympathy for the victims:
“We offer our condolences for the loss of a precious life and the violence that fell upon members of the Jewish congregation, gathered to celebrate the end of Passover.”
Appearing on local media, she explained how a possible hate crime is investigated and prosecuted.
On NBC she told Catherine Garcia:
“We want to send a strong message that these types of assaults will not be tolerated. This is not going to become commonplace in San Diego County; we’re unified against this type of terror act.”
She explained the process behind deciding to prosecute a criminal act as a hate crime, saying
“What we’re looking for is the intent….We look at different writings and different things that indicate what the intent was… Hate crimes are so important because they hit not just the particular victim, which is horrific by itself, but an entire community; everyone that comes from that descent that’s Jewish or whatever it is feels like they’re a victim.
The accused Poway shooter has been charged with with murder, attempted murder, hate crimes and arson. (Which means they believe he was the person who torched an Escondido mosque recently.) Additional federal charges are likely to follow.
Those hate crime charges are based on a manifesto purportedly written by the perpetrator and posted on fringe-friendly websites including 8chan, Pastebin, and Mediafire shortly before the attack on the synagogue.
Mirroring the Q&A style used by the Christchurch terrorist, he praised the efforts of other mass shooters, saying Jews “deserved nothing but hell,” and that he wanted to “Send. Them. There.”
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Flash back now to the 2018 primary elections, where Stephan, as the anointed and appointed successor to long-term County DA Bonnie Dumanis, was being challenged from the left by public defender Geneviéve Jones-Wright.
In recent years, criminal justice reform advocates around the country have been challenging entrenched prosecutors, fueled by growing public sentiment that the ‘war on [fill-in the blank]’ strategies of the past had disproportionately targeted minorities, incarcerating rather than rehabilitating them.
And it’s become an almost template response by conservatives backing law and order DAs to flow liberal billionaire George Soros as the evil backer of their challengers. Up this this point, it’s all part of the game. After all, lefties point to the Koch Bros, don’t they?
This becomes a problem when imagery created for Eastern European anti-Semites gets used. The traditional far-right (neo-nazis, etc) takes it as a wink. The lone wolves of the internet take it as a challenge to act against perceived outsiders they see as ‘replacing them.’
Here’s a little background on the history of using Soros as a boogyman, via the Guardian:
The condemnation of Soros – a Hungarian-born Jew whose very open and public giving favors progressive causes – has been a constant drumbeat in countries where he works. This is particularly true of former Soviet bloc states like Russia, Hungary and Poland, where Soros initiatives have been banned and politically attacked. It surfaced in US rightwing media during the Bush administration, when Soros became more active in opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
From the racist white nationalist site the Daily Stormer to major conservative media stars, the right has been increasingly united over the last decade in seeing the hidden hand of Soros, whom they frequently describe as a “globalist”, in all manner of events.
He has been falsely accused by the right of orchestrating alleged violence from so-called “antifa” groups, manipulating the world economy, being a wartime Nazi collaborator and sponsoring the entirely fictional project of “white genocide”.
The very first posting --now removed--on Summer Stephan’s campaign website was an article about Soros from the far right Free Beacon website. Although a group affiliated with the billionaire did eventually make a donation to Jones-Wright, this article was posted before any such contribution was made.
Ads authorized by the campaign featured images of George Soros against a montage of black clad protestors. Her fanboy twitter account brought up Soros paranoia like clockwork.throughout the campaign.
Six months ago Stephan attended the Congregation Beth Israel vigil for victims of the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. She was on the stage and sat in the front row.
Asked by a Times of San Diego reporter about the anti-Semitic references her campaign used during the June primary election, she refused to even acknowledge the issue.
Four of Jones-Wright’s former campaign staffers penned an op-ed for the San Diego Free Press:
Summer Stephan stoked anti-Semitic fears during her campaign for District Attorney. In spite of concerns from the Jewish community, and questions from the media, she never acknowledged or apologized for the actions of herself and her campaign staff.
Her anti-Semitic dog whistling was not limited to a website. She spent nearly a year using the specter of George Soros with the media, donors, and political power players to gain support for her campaign. She sent fundraising emails, held press conferences, gave television interviews, and even brought it up in debates and public appearances. Summer Stephan called a Holocaust survivor a threat to our city and used Antifa imagery to support her claims that he was dangerous. She was not shy about using fear and nationalism to score political points.
Summer Stephan routinely refused to address concerns from the community that her website and rhetoric was anti-Semitic and falsely misrepresented both Ms. Jones-Wright and Mr. Soros. Stephan also allowed hateful and threatening comments to remain on anti-Soros posts she made throughout her social media accounts. It is exactly this kind of fear mongering that fuels hate and bigotry, often with tragic consequences.
San Diego’s District Attorney needs to admit her past lack of understanding about the roots of anti-Semitism. It’s not okay to use a dog whistle that inspires the USA! USA! version of ISIS.
At the Atlantic, Ian Bogost makes the argument that feigning ignorance of the potential for this sort of propagandizing is not acceptable in a era where 8chan-types look for inspiration wherever they can find it:
In the past, would-be terrorists were targeted and recruited based on their susceptibility to the support of and inclusion in a group that hoped only to use them for an end. This phenomenon is typically called “radicalization,” the adoption of an increasingly extreme ideology that can eventually lead to the perpetration of violence. But on 8chan, even radicalization is done with self-awareness; the Poway shooter claims to have been radicalized in 18 months. An ordinary person unfamiliar with the perversity of 8chan would be forgiven for wondering if it even qualifies as radicalization when the radicalized is claiming to have known the whole time that he was being duped. And yet, that very duplicity is at the heart of much of the chatter on 8chan.
This is not the duplicity of dissimulation. These terrorists and those that consort with them are not trying to avoid discovery, or mask intent, or even avoid capture. They bask in the uncertain wink-and-nod of their threats, their comments, or their tributes—“get the high score,” an anon responded to the San Diego shooter’s post—in the hopes of shrouding the very idea of a threat, or a comment, or a tribute in uncertainty.
Finally, the response of apologists on the right flank of the pundit class, trying to from disassociate their ideological brethren by saying this is a left and right phenomenon just just flat out bullshit.
Noah Kuhlin, writing at Jewish Currents, says we need to call this hatred for what it is in the following excerpts (read the whole article, it’s spot on):
WE HAVE AT LAST reached the point where overt antisemitism in the US feels routine. For years now, conservatives have dog-whistled about, for instance, Jewish billionaire George Soros’ Elder of Zion-like control over the Democratic Party. Eventually, this gave way to something even darker. Donald Trump’s candidacy heralded the reemergence of straight-up Jew-hatred, bringing social media-fueled white nationalism into the mainstream...
...Denying white supremacy as the basis for antisemitism today, and instead insisting that we must condemn both sides, is a moral failure. The suspect arrested earlier this month for burning down three black churches in Louisiana was charged with committing hate crimes, and was described by a fire marshal as being a fan of neo-Nazi Scandinavian heavy metal. Last year, members of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen were charged with five killings across three different states. One of the victims, Blaze Bernstein, was an openly gay and Jewish classmate of one of the suspects, who was killed while visiting his family in Orange County, California over winter break.
Though some argue that the rise of antisemitism is some mystical force, transcending right versus left and awakened by Trump-era political polarization, we cannot indulge such obfuscations. Only one side has a body count to answer for.
https://youtu.be/-CHaSGaUAk8
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