Originally published at National Justice Party.
Warren Balogh
Do White people have a right to defend themselves?
The answer is no, according to the verdict in the trial of Ian Cranston.
The 27-year old resident of Bend, Oregon was out with his fiancée Allison Butler and a friend on the night of September 18th, 2021. Just after midnight, the couple was menaced by a drunken Black, Barry Washington Jr, who made unwanted sexual advances towards Allison. Allison had already been approached by Washington earlier in the evening, when she made it clear she was engaged to be married and his attentions were unwelcome. When the couple again told him leave them alone, Washington became violent and punched Ian Cranston repeatedly in the face. When Allison took out her cell phone to record the incident, Washington became even more violent. As the assault continued, Cranston was forced to fire a single shot from his concealed-carry weapon to end the threat.
For defending himself and his fiancée from an ongoing assault by a violent and sexually aggressive Black, Ian Cranston was convicted on Wednesday of first-degree manslaughter, second-degree manslaughter, first-degree assault and two charges of unlawful use of a weapon. This young White man will likely spend the next decade or more in prison for simply being the victim of a racial assault.
This case should never have gone to trial. If Barry Washington was White or if Ian Cranston was Black, the charges would’ve been dropped or, more likely, there would have been no charges filed. The trial was politicized from the very beginning by the media, by the collection of Soros-funded NGOs known as “Black Lives Matter,” and above all by far-left Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel.
As the anti-White news media breathlessly spun a narrative that Washington was a victim of a “modern-day lynching,” and headlines screamed that Barry Washington Jr. had merely “complimented” Cranston’s girlfriend, DA Hummel eagerly took the spotlight in a press conference on Sept. 30 to announce the grand jury charges against Cranston.
The first thing Hummel announced at this press conference was “it is no news to anyone here, that Barry was Black, and Mr. Cranston is White.” To Hummel, and to the media, these were the most important facts of this case, despite the fact that no hate crimes charges were filed against Ian Cranston, and no evidence of any racial motive was ever presented at the trial. In other words, what was decisive wasn’t Ian Cranston’s racial motives against Barry Washington Jr or lack thereof. What was decisive was John Hummel’s racial motives against Ian Cranston.
Hummel previously told KTVZ News that Washington merely “complimented her again in a very respectable manner.” At the press conference, he repeated the lie “that the initial interaction between Barry and Mr. Cranston began when Barry complimented Mr. Cranston’s girlfriend” and went on to say:
“Our country has a disgraceful history of denigrating, prosecuting and lynching Black men for talking to White women.”
He invoked the myth of Emmitt Till, who he claimed was killed for “allegedly whistling at a White woman.” He then went on to talk about how “racism” was not only confined to the South, but also in Oregon. He described his time as a public defender in the 90s, when he represented Mexican farm workers who were treated as if they were “lazy, drunk and stupid,” and lamented that a Deschutes County Commissioner in 2020 “insulted people of Asian descent” by referring to COVID-19 as “the China virus.”
Then he revealed what this was all about, proclaiming: “there’s a reckoning with race that needs to happen in central Oregon. And it needs to happen now.”
Reckoning is defined as “the avenging or punishing of past mistakes or misdeeds,” similar in meaning to the words “retribution,” “doom” and “punishment.” In Hummel’s mind, Ian Cranston’s life was to be sacrificed for Whites to collectively atone for the lynching of Emmitt Till, Mexicans being called stupid, and COVID-19 being called the China virus.
In other words, the prosecution of Ian Cranston was motivated by one thing: racial revenge against White people.
To achieve this objective, following the example of the Derrick Chauvin case, prosecutors deliberately overcharged Cranston with the overlapping and contradictory crimes of murder, first-degree manslaughter and second-degree manslaughter, in the hopes that if a jury failed to convict him of murder, he would still get convicted of something. For over a year, BLM and antifa-affiliated groups organized marches and protests to put pressure on public officials and potential jury members.
Meanwhile, traditional Second Amendment advocates were strangely silent. Tucker Carlson never spoke a word about this case. Neither did the National Rifle Association, which seems to be more concerned with protecting the right of gun manufacturers to sell consumer products than with the right of free American citizens to self-defense. The reason many of these high profile advocates of Kyle Rittenhouse lost their voice when it came to Ian Cranston is that, unlike Rittenhouse, Cranston defended himself against a Black male. The disgusting reality is that most Second Amendment advocates are too cowardly to stand up for the right of any White to self-defense against Blacks.
This comes at a time when Black violence is surging all across America. Black criminals feel emboldened like never before after two years of state-sanctioned BLM riots, the 24/7 Blackwashing of TV and advertising, calls to “defund the police,” the public pillorying of White women as “Karens,” far-left prosecutors failing to charge Black lawbreakers on the basis of race, the hate-filled persecution of White men attempting to defend their communities such as Travis and Greg McMichael, the imprisonment of White police officers merely for doing their duty.
More than ever, Whites feel they must arm themselves to protect their lives, their property and their loved ones from marauding Blacks who rightly feel they have been given a green light by the state to assault, rape and murder at will. But Second Amendment advocates must be asked: what use is the right to keep and bear arms, if you have no right to use arms in self-defense because of your race?
There are a few other facts that should be mentioned in the Ian Cranston case.
First, Deschutes County DA Hummel is a flaming anti-White liberal with a blatant ideological bias. He is listed as sitting on the Advisory Board of an organization called “Colors of Connection,” a racial advocacy organization apparently dedicated to providing aid to Africans. Hummel’s biography on their website says he:
[P]reviously served as the Liberia, Africa Country Representative for the Carter Center – former United States President Jimmy Carter’s peace and health organization. John led the Carter Center’s efforts to assist Liberians improve their justice and mental health systems with an overarching aim of achieving peace and prosperity for a country that is recovering from a brutal 14-year civil war.
Given Hummel’s publicly stated anti-White racial motive in the prosecution of Ian Cranston, and the lack of any evidence presented that Cranston had a racial motive in the shooting of Barry Washington Jr, one would think his position on the board of a Black racial advocacy NGO presents enough of conflict of interest to declare a mistrial.
Even more outrageously, in a June 1, 2021 guest column in The Bulletin, Hummel actually condoned the rioting and lawlessness of the 2020 George Floyd riots, writing:
No, none of these conversations would be happening if all that resulted from Floyd’s death was a video. But that is not all that resulted. The collective voices of the forgotten men and women of our country rose like a phoenix, and they had much to say. They burned buildings, looted stores, and smashed stuff – lots of stuff. They got our country off of high center. They shook things up. They said loud and clear: No More. And we heard them. For the first time in decades, we heard them.
I’m as law-and-order as they get. But sometimes, some things are more important than a blind adherence to the rules. When the people in power have their knees on the throats of the working class of our country, and when pleas for justice and equality not only go unheeded, but are mocked, drastic measures have to be taken.
Hummel goes on to delusionally compare the rioters smashing up McDonalds’ and stealing sneakers to the patriots of the Boston Tea Party protesting the British Empire:
Samuel Adams, John Hancock and their patriot brothers broke the law that night in the harbor, and I’m glad they did. They were pushed to the breaking point, so they broke. Like Adams and Hancock, the youth in Minneapolis, Louisville, Atlanta and dozens of other cities had the courage and the dignity to break.
We heard them loud and clear. Now we need to respond to them. Yes, it’s time for the violence and vandalism to stop, and I urge protest leaders to call for this. But this stop cannot become an excuse to return to the status quo. This “stop” must be viewed as a pause: a pause for our nation’s leaders to open their ears, shut their mouths, and commit to being educated about the plight of the vast majority of Americans who struggle on a daily basis while not being given a fair shake.
If the violence is paused, our leaders listen, regular Americans rally around an agenda for the changes necessary to restore our middle class and provide equal opportunities, then George Floyd’s final words: “Don’t kill me” will be respected.
Hummel is obviously a far-left, anti-White ideological fanatic, and has no business serving in the government in any capacity—let alone acting with powers of life and death as District Attorney of an entire county! He obviously does not believe in core elements of the US Constitution, including the 14th Amendment right to equal protection under the law. At a minimum, he should be removed from office and charges should be brought against him for prosecutorial misconduct and malfeasance in office.
Another point that must never be forgotten is that Barry Washington Jr was already showing violent and aggressive behavior on the night he was shot in self-defense by Ian Cranston, but this evidence was withheld from the jury.
Before the shooting occurred, Washington flipped off and yelled profanities at police officers from across a street, according to court documents.
Bagley stated that although Washington’s statements were profane, it was political speech that does not necessarily mean that he was in a confrontational or angry state of mind that night, as the defense has argued. Bagley also pointed out that a physical altercation with police did not occur and Washington did not approach police.
Bagley also suggested that including the encounter in the upcoming case could run the risk of leading jurors to make decisions in line with their political views, rather than the law.
The idea that the prosecution was concerned jurors would “make decisions in line with their political views, rather than the law” is particularly ridiculous given the fact that this trial was politicized from day one as being a question of “reckoning” for White people against supposed racial injustices of the past. Bend is a nearly all-White town in central Oregon, and Barry Washington had only recently moved there. His aggressive and anti-social behavior towards police earlier in the evening illustrates he was looking for trouble in this White community.
We must always ask: what if the races were reversed? Imagine if a large, physically imposing White man moved to a 90%+ Black city, started harassing a Black couple, aggressively hitting on a Black woman in front of her fiancé, then started assaulting her and her fiancé until he was forced to use his firearm in self-defense! It would be celebrated as “hood justice” and an example of “fuck around find out” on social media, and then promptly forgotten.
The final point that deserves to be mentioned in the case of Ian Cranston is the public hounding and persecution of Cranston’s fiancée, Allison Butler.
From the beginning, the media falsely portrayed Butler as having “egged Cranston on.” In keeping with their fictional Emmett Till narrative, demands were made to charge her also with some sort of a crime. Bowing to social media pressure, Butler’s employer Rosendin Electric Inc., an electrical contractor based out of San Jose, promptly fired her from her job:
The post, which can be found on the company’s Facebook page, says the company learned on Sept. 28 that “an employee in our Prineville, Oregon, office was involved in an incident outside of work hours that resulted in Barry Washington, Jr.’s fatal shooting on September 19 in Bend Oregon.”
It states “the employee was immediately placed on unpaid administrative leave and, as of September, 29, 2021, is no longer employed by Rosendin.
“At Rosendin, we are committed to diversity and inclusion, and we stand behind our zero-tolerance policy regarding discrimination, harassment, and racism,” the post says. “Our zero-tolerance policy expands beyond work hours and is a standard we expect of our employees at all times. Our sincerest condolences go out to the family and friends of Barry Washington, Jr., and the community of Bend, Oregon.”
One can only imagine the hell of harassment, character assassination and death threats Allison Butler has had to live through over the past 14 months. The victim of what would be called sexual harassment under any other circumstances, the same System which only recently proclaimed “#MeToo” and “Believe All Women” followed up on that terrifying and traumatic encounter by taking away her job and the man she wanted to marry. She will likely be subject to racial abuse and online harassment for the rest of her life—all for not reciprocatingthe aggressive advances of a violent and menacing Black male.
This case, along with John Hummel’s statement about the history of “Black men talking to White women,” shows once again how the System has particularly singled out White women, who reject unwanted Black male attention, for abuse or “reckoning.” This trend was grotesquely highlighted by Virginia governor Ralph Northam posthumously pardoning the Martinsville Seven, seven Black men who were executed in 1951 for the gang rape of a White woman. In justifying his pardon, Northam did not even try to argue that the men were wrongly accused or were innocent of the rape—merely the fact that they were Black, and their victim was White, was enough to pardon them of the crime!
The Ian Cranston case shows to what extent none of us are safe in the anti-White anarcho-tyranny that is America in the 2020s.The message is being sent loud and clear that any Black can move into any White area and aggressively sexually harass or assault a White woman with the blessing of the state. If a she calls the police, she is a “Karen” who will be charged for making a “racially biased 911 call.” If a White policeman does his job and subdue a violent Black, he will be put away for life. And if a brave boyfriend or husband defends the love of his life from a violent and dangerous Black, he also will have his life destroyed.
The only solution to ending this nightmarish state of injustice is White solidarity.
All White people everywhere have a duty under the anti-White tyranny to stand together and look after each other. Whites in public or on the street who observe cases of White people being targeted by Blacks have a duty to stand together, regardless of consequences. Whites who stand as witnesses in cases of those forced to defend themselves have a duty to do everything possible to make sure they are exonerated. White jurors have a duty to stand firm and stubbornly stand up for racial justice for White people in all cases. Anti-White public officials need to be called out, shamed and condemned for their hateful ideology and actions. Companies that fire White employees due to pressure from anti-White activists need to be boycotted, their websites review bombed, and their offices bombarded with calls from outraged citizens. Pro-Second Amendment groups, politicians and public figures need to hear from their followers and constituents that they are worthless cowards unless they stick up for the right to White self-defense. We all have a duty to offer comradeship, help and support to political prisoners like Ian Cranston and his family—inside and outside of prison.
And above all, we have a duty to organize, mobilize and demand racial justice for White people all over the country. Only if we stick together with an equal or greater sense of shared identity and shared fate than Blacks and other races, will we be able to avoid the fate that could strike any one of us at any time. United we stand, divided we fall.
Originally published at National Justice Party.
