And so, he has taken their case. At least two of the defendants in this case have gone into hiding. Seven of the defendants have already had a default judgment levied against them by the court. They had default levied against them already. One of them, the leader of the National Socialist Movement -- where have I heard that name before? It was an accident. There it was, plop in the toilet. You would be surprised to learn that the court disagreed. So, some of these guys have already lost the case already by default judgment.
And did I mention they are only at the point of jury selection? The point of this litigation, overtly, is to bankrupt the neo-Nazis and white supremacist, the individual leaders in the organization who made Charlottesville happen, who promised that it would be used as an occasion to bring violence in the name of white supremacy and to terrorize black and Jewish people.
Holding them accountable for it by a civil lawsuit is an unusual thing in this day and age. It is already succeeded partially and taking them apart. If it sounds familiar to you as a viewer of this show, it may be that you are remembering a story we covered here in The story of a brave, brave, accomplished young woman. Her name is Taylor Dumpson. In response, somebody hung nooses and bunches of bananas for the extra racist kick, all over the campus of American University.
After there was some publicity about that, a prominent neo-Nazi website, run by one of the defendants in the Charlottesville cases, that prominent neo-Nazi website took up the case, so to speak, and they doxed her. They posted her personal information online, and they encouraged the monsters who frequent that neo-Nazi website, that they should step up the attacks on her. Keep it going, and worse.
What would you do in that circumstance? Having every avowed neo-Nazi in the internet coming for you? After those physical threats already? Well, she responded by going on offense. She brought a case led by the national lawyers committee for several lawyers under law. Her hate case was held by very, very, able lawyer named Kristen Clarke, who we had her on the show to talk about at the time.
Kristen Clarke, you remember, you may recognize, she is now the head of the Civil Rights Division at the U. Department of Justice, appointed by President Biden. She now serves there under Attorney General Merrick Garland. The young woman who brought that case, the civil case in which she sued the living daylights out of the neo-Nazis who organized these attacks on her, her case was successful.
She won a large monetary judgment against the Nazi who won that website who orchestrated those attacks. She herself has since graduated from American University. She then went on to graduate from Cardozo School of Law. She now joined the National Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, same organization that represented her and won her a case against the neo-Nazi website in Taylor Dumpson now works as a civil rights attorney.
And Taylor Dumpson joins us now live. I imagine this has been just an incredible flexion point, turning point in your life. The hate crime, to say the least, definitely changed my life, and the cyber harassment that ensued afterwards continued to do so.
Luckily, Heather has her mother, Susan Bro, and other folks around there to advocate on her behalf. You have been through this process through a very unusual circumstance given what you went through. What should we understand?
What should the country understand about this strategy, about using civil litigation, in which the victim, as the plaintiff goes after the perpetrators through civil litigation basically to try to bankrupt them, make them literally pay for what they have done? How should we understand that in terms of its overall effectiveness against these kinds of crimes or at least this kind of behavior, but also what kind of difference it makes to victims?
So civil litigation is just one of the many tools available to survivors of hate incidents and hate crimes, to be able to bring their perpetrators to accountability. And so, being able to use, you know, litigation and civil remedies as an avenue for people to be able to hold their perpetrators accountable is one of the ways. So, being able to see what the lawyers are doing and the Charlottesville litigation is really amazing. And so, I hope this is a fatal blow to their movement, and people know that survivors will continue to use their voices.
Dumpson, thank you. Good luck to you, and thanks for being with us tonight. I appreciate it. Senator Elizabeth Warren is going to be joining us in just a moment. There is, of course, much more to Maddow than her screen persona. A practising Catholic as well as the first openly gay host of a US primetime news programme, she has suffered cycles of depression all her life and enjoys fishing, shooting and reading Robert Harris historical yarns.
She is also, it turns out, a lot of fun. With bookshelves overflowing — the Mueller report , examining Russian interference in the election, lies on a crate below — and ideas scribbled on whiteboards, it is the den of a promiscuous intellect.
Maddow, dressed in a black jacket, turned-up jeans, camo trainers and her trademark black-rimmed specs, spots my voice recorder — a vintage Tascam device that resembles a Taser — and snaps a photo of it with her phone, lest it be useful to her team. It makes the political weather for several days. Trump made more than 16, false or misleading claims in his first three years as president, according to the Washington Post — and that number is likely to accelerate as the election hots up.
But he is undeniably good for ratings and clicks. You have to grow a thick skin, she says. I am not focusing on you! That freeway sounds terrifying and yet also an adrenaline rush. I wish I still had my cute, adorable cannisters. What ever do you mean? They are lovely. So thank you for fact-checking me on this. I sincerely regret what I now believe is an error. I love your mushroom cannisters and your kitchen—I love all of it. Now she removed its lid and put it on her head. Maddow was born forty-four years ago in the small city of Hayward, in the San Francisco Bay Area, and grew up in neighboring Castro Valley.
Her brother, David, now on the staff of a bioscience company, was born four years earlier. Her father, Robert, a lawyer, worked as the counsel for the local water company, and her mother, Elaine, had an administrative job in the school district and wrote for a community newspaper. I came out soon after I got to college, and that caused a rift—a temporary rift—with my family.
It was very hard for them. My mom is very Catholic, and my dad saw how much it hurt my mom. But now my parents and I are close again. They met in a small town in Massachusetts, in the western part of the state, a few years after Maddow graduated from Stanford. She was writing her thesis for an advanced degree from Oxford, where she had studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She had also received, as not many applicants do, a Marshall Scholarship.
She supported herself by doing odd jobs, and word of one of these jobs brought her to the door of Mikula, who was looking for someone to do yard work. When Mikula opened the door, a coup de foudre followed. Maddow had been an athlete in high school.
Her sports were volleyball, basketball, and swimming. In her senior year, she badly injured her shoulder playing volleyball and was faced with a difficult choice. When I hurt my shoulder, I had to decide whether to get it fixed so I could go on being an athlete, or not. To get it fixed meant surgery and rehabilitation and starting college a year late. I decided not to get the shoulder fixed—it works perfectly well in regular life—and to go to college right away. Stanford, which had the best teams in the country in my sports, would not have given me an athletic scholarship anyway.
I was coming out to myself. And, having grown up in this conservative town in the Bay Area with my relatively conservative Catholic parents, I knew this was not a place I wanted to be a gay person in.
It was an epiphany. It was the same thing when I met Susan. It was absolutely love at first sight. Bluebirds and comets and stars. It was absolutely a hundred per cent clear. I asked Maddow if coming out to herself was preceded by feelings about a particular woman. It was much more an intellectual thing. It was a thing that brought her into AIDS activism.
The epidemic was then in its darkest period. Maddow worked in hospices and with organizations helping prisoners who had the disease. This work continued throughout college and graduate school and culminated in her doctoral thesis, on H. I believe that government is a manifestation of the social contract.
I think the conservative movement is fascinating and arcane. The dynamic between the conservative movement and the Republican Party—of which there is no parallel on the left—is a really interesting ongoing saga that has incredibly sharp turns in it. And the people who are inside this movement are often very bad observers of what is happening.
Which is nice for me, because being definitely on the outside gives me a better perspective on it. I think I am a liberal. Why the equivocation? Bush Administration my dad became a motivated liberal. Dick Cheney in particular made my dad into a liberal. My mom less so. Delivery to your home or office Monday to Saturday FT Weekend paper — a stimulating blend of news and lifestyle features ePaper access — the digital replica of the printed newspaper.
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