Last month Philadelphia police charged Thomas Keenan and Thomas Massey, two men connected to Antifa, with two charges of criminal conspiracy, aggravated assault, and terroristic threats. Those charges stemmed from an incident in which a larger group of Antifa members attacked a pair of Marines on the street. Yesterday those two Marines, Alejandro Godinez and Luis Torres, testified about what happened.
The Marines were visiting the city from Fort Dix in New Jersey to attend an event that was taking place later that night. They were sightseeing and weren’t aware that a right-wing rally and (much larger) counter-protest were taking place nearby that day. At some point, Thomas Keenan and a group of others approached the Marines and asked a question. From Philadelphia Magazine:
Godinez testified that Keenan asked them “Are you proud?,” to which Godinez remembers responding “We are Marines.” Torres said that he remembers Keenan asking “Are you Proud Boys?,” an allusion to one of the alt-right groups behind the rally, and one that Torres said he didn’t understand. “I didn’t know what Proud Boys meant,” he said.
Whatever Keenan said, both marines testified that Keenan, Massey, and approximately ten other people — men and women, some masked and some unmasked — then began attacking them with mace, punches, and kicks, and calling them “nazis” and “white supremacists.”
On the stand, Godinez said that he was “bewildered” by being called a white supremacist and immediately cried out, “I’m Mexican!” After that, as the attack continued, both men said that members of the group, including Keenan, repeatedly used ethnic slurs, including “spic” and “wetback,” against the marines. (There was no testimony that Massey used any such language).
Godinez further testified that the group chanted “F**k him up” as they continued the beating. He described it as being like the sound of a crowd in a soccer stadium. This is what anti-fascism looks like, apparently: A mob of white people beating up two Hispanic Marines while using racial slurs.
Why isn’t this story big news? So far as I can tell, CNN hasn’t devoted a single word to this story about actual violence by Antifa members since it happened nearly a month ago. I guess Don Lemon and Brooke Baldwin were too busy with other things. Domestic political violence was all-the-rage last month, now it’s just old hat.
To be clear, I don’t blame CNN for violence by Antifa goons, but I do think CNN’s hosts ought to be accountable for defending those goons long after it should have been clear they were violent bullies.
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