To understand why the people Loder reports on might be anxious to stop this research from being published, it helps to know that Loder’s expert use of publicly available images to identify and track right-wing extremists has already had legal consequences for some of Kiefer’s allies. “I have a First Amendment right to continue to do my reporting and to tweet about my case.”Īfter Kiefer reported Loder to the police six times in September for continuing to tweet about him, a local prosecutor filed contempt charges that could have sent Loder to jail for defying the restraining order. “I just told my attorney, I refuse,” Loder said. Loder immediately defied the part of the court order that barred them from tweeting about Kiefer. Loder, who is nonbinary, told me in an interview last month that their tech career has given them the resources to hire lawyers to launch a multipronged legal counteroffensive, unlike Kiefer who is representing himself. Kiefer’s success immediately inspired two other far-right activists to ask the court for similar orders against Loder, who responded by filing a counterclaim that accuses Kiefer and his allies of abusing the legal system to shut down a kind of citizen journalism that is protected by the First Amendment. The family court commissioner who evaluated the application approved it, pending a hearing before a judge four weeks later, and issued an unusually broad order that barred Loder from even tweeting about Kiefer in the meantime. ![]() The next day, Kiefer asked for a temporary restraining order against Loder, claiming that Loder’s tweets about him - which document Kiefer’s behavior at public events - were a form of harassment akin to stalking. But on September 2, Loder seemed to strike a nerve by tweeting a detailed thread of visual evidence, gleaned by antifascist researchers from right-wing social media accounts, that appeared to show Kiefer among the rioters at the Capitol in January.Ī screenshot of a tweet from Chad Loder, drawing attention to visual evidence compiled by an antifascist research collective that appeared to show Adam Kiefer at the U.S. Loder has gathered evidence of Kiefer’s bellicose presence at these public events for more than a year. ![]() Loder, 45, is a tech company founder and cybersecurity expert from Los Angeles who posts meticulous, open-source investigations of local right-wing extremists on a Twitter feed with more than 100,000 followers.Īdam Kiefer, right, raised his fists to fight when he and other right-wing activists disrupted a Black Lives Matter protest in San Diego on Aug. ![]() Kiefer, 28, is a trucker from Riverside County, California, who has become a fixture at Proud Boys rallies and thrown punches at far-right protests against vaccine mandates and Black Lives Matter. The legal battle began on September 3 when Adam Kiefer, a far-right activist, obtained a temporary restraining order against Chad Loder, an antifascist researcher who tweeted evidence that Kiefer was at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., during the January 6 riot. For two months now, the animosity between right-wing activists and left-wing antifascists, which regularly leads to violence at street protests, has played out in a setting where physical combat is not allowed: the Los Angeles Superior Court in Torrance, California.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |