A grand jury in Georgia has charged five dozen Antifa goons with 18 crimes, including arson, racketeering, and domestic terrorism, in connection with their attack early this year on the building site for a new police training center.
The Defend the Atlanta Forest terror suspects, prosecutors allege, advertised and confessed to their mayhem and violence online, and committed charity fraud to launder money and buy materials for its “Stop Cop City” campaign.
But the indictment isn’t a mere list of crimes. It details the group’s deranged insurrectionist ideology and extremist advocacy of violence.
The Indictment
The 109-page indictment opens with one count of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute. All 61 defendants are charged under the RICO law for the following crimes:
- On July 5, 2020, members of the group attacked DPS headquarters by throwing rocks and hurling a Molotov cocktail through the window, resulting in the injury of two employees and the building catching fire;
- On May 17, 2022, defendants threw Molotov cocktails and glass bottles at police officers;
- On Dec. 13, 2022, defendants threw fireworks at firefighters and EMTs, damaged an APD vehicle, and cut the safety rope of an arborist working in one of the trees on the site;
- On multiple occasions, members of the group torched and caused other damage to buildings and construction equipment, including excavators and bulldozers, owned by contractors associated with the project and then claimed responsibility for the destruction;
- Members of the group used the Scenes Blog to call for a “Night of Rage” to occur on Jan. 21, 2023, during which defendants committed arson and property damage and attempted to break into 191 Peachtree, where the offices of the Atlanta Police Foundation and other businesses are located;
- On March 5, 2023, a member of the group punched a police officer and an organized mob attacked other law enforcement who were guarding the site and the crowd proceeded to set construction vehicles on fire;
- On July 3, 2022, at least one member of the group vandalized historic Ebenezer Baptist Church;
- On multiple occasions, members of the group harassed and intimidated law enforcement, including traveling to the home of a State Trooper; and
- On multiple occasions, members of the group harassed and intimidated contractors and construction workers for their roles in the project, including trespassing on and destroying their property in Georgia, Florida, New York, Oregon, Michigan, and Minnesota.
The indictment alleges 225 acts that furthered the conspiracy.
In addition to the RICO charges, five goons face a count of domestic terrorism. The underlying offense to that charge is first-degree arson by attempting to set fire to a bank, a skyscraper, and Atlanta police cars.
Three goons are charged with 15 counts of spending money “with the intent to promote … the specified unlawful activity of Criminal Trespass and while knowing that the moneys involved in said currency transaction represent the proceeds of a form [of] the unlawful activity of Charity Fraud.”
Of the 61, only 12 live in Georgia.
A subsidiary of Antifa, Defend the Atlanta Forest is, by the lights of the indictment, an organized crime outfit no different than the mob. Then again, the communist goons don’t seem to bathe or attire themselves with as much panache.
Antifa Ideology Described
“Defend the Atlanta Forest is made up of three primary ideologies,” the indictment explains:
The first ideology is an anti-law enforcement ideology that attempts to push the narrative that all police are violent, militant individuals that frequently use excessive force and violence against innocent citizens. The goal of this ideology is the elimination of police forces in their entirety. The second ideology is protection of the environment at all costs. This ideology promotes the belief that the environment has the same rights as humans, and therefore violence is acceptable to defend the environment. The Defend the Atlanta Forest organization has acknowledged that they embrace this extremist ideology. This is demonstrated by the group’s justification of shooting Georgia State Trooper: “Tortuguita died trying to kill cop in defense of the Weelaunee forest.” The third ideology is an anarchist ideology. As a result of all three ideologies joining forces, the group has been able to quickly recruit nationwide support of extremists, including out-of-state extremists that have traveled to Georgia. Many of these extremists embrace violence and anarchy, and they use the forest as guise for their violent agenda.
Tortuguita was one Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, whom Georgia troopers shot and killed after he tried to murder one of them.
Defend the Atlanta Forest also advocates and claims responsibility for violence at the building site at its blog. “The site advocates and calls for additional violence against government and corporations, encourages violence ahead of government meetings, posts
personal information and photographs of law enforcement, court officials, and private citizens and calls upon anarchists to visit these individuals and engage in intimidation, property damage, and violence,” the indictment alleges.
The outfit justifies its anti-cop violence by publishing lies and propaganda, the indictment alleges. A “common false narrative” is “police aggression,” which is meant to “to turn public opinion against law enforcement, thus justifying their violence and destruction of property.”
In the case of “Tortuguita’s” shooting death, Defend the Atlanta Forest falsely claimed that cops shot him first.
Again, the blog admitted that “Tortuguita” fired first, and confessed to the group’s violence:
We attack the same machines that threaten the forest in Atlanta and everything wild. FIRE TO THE EARTH DESTROYERS. Until every cop is dead and all they defend burnt to ashes.
One False Note
Unhappily, the indictment contains a serious falsehood. It says drug addict and career criminal George Floyd, who died while under restraint by Minneapolis police, was “murdered.”
“The beginnings of the anarchist Defend the Atlanta Forest movement formed in 2020 following the high-profile killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police Officers,” the indictment says. It twice referred to “Floyd’s murder.”
Despite the conviction of four cops in connection with Floyd’s death, that isn’t the case. An unhealthy man with serious cardiovascular disease, Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose.
The most high-profile of those police officers, Derek Chauvin, was convicted after Representative Maxine Waters of California threatened riots if the jury did not return a guilty verdict. One juror was biased, and another admitted that she was terrified of riots if she didn’t vote to convict.
