In the U.S. Police Come Knocking When You Criticize a Politician
Freedom of Speech is under increasing attack in 'The Land of the Free'
Late last week journalist, anti-war activist, and podcaster Ryan Wentz shared something terrifying on his Twitter account. He wrote that two plainclothes California state highway police officers confronted him at his home claiming that they were there at the behest of the U.S. Capitol Police because Wentz had supposedly threatened Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a tweet.
One of Wentz’s colleagues backed up the story, writing that she was there with him at the time, and police have subsequently all but confirmed publicly that they paid Wentz a visit. Wentz wasn’t arrested, and he did not, in fact, threaten Rep. Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter.
What he had done, on April 7, is mildly criticize the Congresswoman’s interview with Jewish Community Relations Council of New York head Michael Miller as “underwhelming.” Wentz was restrained in his criticism as the Representative delivered flat-out apartheid apologia on the question of Palestine’s illegal occupation.
Though Wentz’ criticism of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez was fair, measured, and certainly was not in any way threatening to her, it committed the crime of going viral and drawing attention to the former Palestinian rights ally’s embarrassing and sloppy word salad and, more importantly, to Israel’s illegal subjugation of the Palestinian people.
Then, Wentz had the cops called on him. “I felt scared, intimidated, and violated,” Wentz wrote on Twitter.
“It was done on behalf of a congresswoman who advocates against police state tactics…I frankly feel very unsafe in my home right now.”
Some journalists, like Ryan Grim, have done good reporting on this police intimidation of Wentz, only to say that now the important question is to find out if it was Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s office who contacted Capitol Police about Wentz’ completely fair and legal first amendment expression on Twitter.
In fact, it doesn’t matter much at all if it was her or someone else. Like we mentioned last week, this isn’t about individuals, it’s about systems.
In this case, this is about our police state terrorizing dissidents because they had the temerity to lob mild criticism at powerful officials. Wentz called a member of congress’ words “underwhelming” on a Wednesday and armed police officers showed up at his door Thursday with wild and false accusations.
Wentz says they asked him if he owned guns. Not illegal.
Wentz says they asked him if he had mental health issues. Also, not illegal.
There’s no legitimate criminal case against Wentz, here.
Don’t take my word for it – go look at his tweets about Rep. Ocasio-Cortez on April 7 that went viral and see if you can find any threats from him towards her or anyone else. If at that point you don’t believe your own lying eyes, let’s look actions the actual police have taken.
Threatening the life of anyone, much more a member of the U.S. Congress, is a crime in several ways. Wentz says that police told him that they believed he threatened Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’ life.
So, federal and state police believe that Wentz committed a crime publicly, for all the world to see. Yet, he wasn’t arrested.
No reported charges have been filed for Wentz or warrants issued for his arrest, either.
Did Wentz do something that police and prosecutors think is illegal? If so, why wasn’t he arrested?
The answer is because the point of police officers visiting Wentz wasn’t to deliver justice or lock up a threat to society, but rather to harass, intimidate and indeed terrorize a dissident into thinking twice about criticizing power. Sadly, dissent is being increasingly criminalized in this nation, so we are not far off from it becoming more routine for even light criticism of police or political officials to result in arrest.
That isn’t what happened here, though. Police just showed up with guns to make Wentz feel afraid and send a message to the rest of us that we should think twice about criticizing the system from the Left.
Wentz has said that the experience has understandably left him a bit traumatized. He has good reason to be afraid.
We all do.
The United States has been downgraded to “Problematic” recently on the Press Freedom Index. Even liberal Presidents like Barack Obama persecuted, prosecuted, jailed, and attempted to ruin the sources of journalists reporting on the military industrial complex.
Julian Assange is currently being tortured for his acts of journalism exposing the war crimes of the U.S. empire. Chelsea Manning has been repeatedly jailed and tortured for her patriotic work of exposing U.S. crimes and for refusing to throw others under the bus.
Desiree Fairooz was convicted for laughing at then Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Multiple localities are attempting to make various peaceful protests illegal, and conversely making it legal for people who don’t like protesters being in their way to actually run them over with their cars.
Localities are actually working to make it a crime to tease a police officer. We also now have a man sitting in the Oval Office who proudly authored what would become the Constitution-shredding U.S. Patriot Act.
Political dissidence and independent journalism, which is a subset of the former, are under attack by the most powerful nation in history, by conservatives and liberals alike. When journalism is under attack, everyone’s freedom is.
Absolutely infuriating.