Attorney with left-wing group arrested on domestic terrorism charges for attacking police compound near Atlanta
By jdheyes // 2023-03-09
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Why anyone would spend years attending law school only to throw it all away over the construction of a police training facility is hard to understand, but that may be exactly what Thomas Jurgens, 28, just did. Earlier this week, he was one of hundreds of Antifa counterrevolutionaries who invaded the compound, where some in the group threw rocks at police along with commercial-grade fireworks while torching construction equipment with Molotov cocktails, according to reports. His now-deleted LinkedIn page listed him as a staff attorney with the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center, which often lists conservatives alongside hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, which southern Democrats actually began in the wake of the Civil War, Breitbart News noted. The New York Post reported further: Of the 23 people slapped with domestic terrorism charges over the violent protest, Jurgens and only one other man, Jack Beaman, hail from the state of Georgia. Police said the majority of those arrested are from other parts of the US — as well as France and Canada. The SPLC didn’t immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment in the wake of Jurgens’ arrest. In total, 35 “violent agitators” were nabbed after they attacked the future site of the $90 million police training facility, cops said. It wasn’t immediately clear if the remainder of those arrested will also be hit with domestic terrorism charges. During the violence, protesters reportedly hurled Molotov cocktails, fireworks, rocks, and bricks at police officers. Atlanta Police Chief Schierbaum subsequently characterized the incident as a "coordinated attack," and reported that multiple pieces of construction equipment were also set ablaze. “This was a very violent attack, very violent attack,” Schierbaum said. “This wasn’t about a public safety training center. This was about anarchy… and we are addressing that quickly.” The Georgia Department of Public Safety has reported that certain left-wing agitators attempted to blind police officers by shining green lasers into their eyes during the demonstration. Georgia's Republican Governor, Brian Kemp, denounced the violence as an act of "domestic terrorism." “As I’ve said before, domestic terrorism will NOT be tolerated in this state,” Kemp said. “We will not rest until those who use violence and intimidation for an extremist end are brought to full justice.” Reports indicate that in response to the death of 26-year-old activist Manuel Teran during a police sweep, far-left rioters set fire to a police car and smashed windows of several local businesses in January. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation had stated that Teran was killed in an exchange of gunfire with police that also resulted in a state trooper being wounded, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC). The protest later turned violent, with rioters setting a police car on fire and breaking into several businesses. The Atlanta Police had to respond to various cases of property damage on Peachtree Street, with the glass doors of the Atlanta Police Foundation being smashed as well. In 2013, domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins II attempted a mass shooting at the Family Research Council (FRC) after the SPLC listed it as a hate group, highlighting the dangerous consequences of the SPLC's practice of listing conservatives alongside legitimate hate groups. Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, has criticized the SPLC's labeling of organizations as "hate" groups, arguing that it undermines public discourse. “The wickedness of the SPLC’s blacklist lies in the fact that it conflates groups that really do preach hatred, such as the Ku Klux Klan and Nation of Islam, with ones that simply do not share the SPLC’s political preferences,” he wrote in the Washington Post. “The obvious goal is to marginalize the organizations in this second category by bullying reporters into avoiding them, scaring away writers and researchers from working for them, and limiting invitations for them to discuss their work.” Sources include: Breitbart.com WashingtonPost.com
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