Scenes from a Capitol Lynch Mob wedding

The Lakeland 4's lynch mob viciously, unjustly, joyfully attacked the sovereignty of fellow citizens. Five brave Capitol Police who fought them for us are dead. This community should disapprove.

This is the marquee of Cleveland Heights Baptist Church in Lakeland, which on Tuesday, Jan. 4, sanctified religiously the civil marriage of Capitol Lynch Mob participant Joshua Doolin and his wife Morgan. (They had been legally married earlier.)

Fellow Capitol Lynch Mob participant Joseph Hutchinson III was expected to travel from Georgia to Lakeland to serve as Doolin’s best man. And I believe I saw the burly Hutchinson outside Lakeland’s Magnolia Building, which was the site of the reception. How judges came to greenlight these wedding plans is quite the story. It involves an AR-15 rifle that blushing bride Morgan Doolin nicknamed “Betsy Ross.”

Here’s what a judge allowed best man Hutchinson to come to Lakeland to do, according to a court filing:

Here’s a picture of some of the Doolin wedding party on Tuesday evening overlooking the Lake Mirror Promenade from the balcony of the Magnolia Building in the scenic heart of our city. I purposely stayed far away so as not to engage anybody.

Here’s the view they’re enjoying:

Not bad; we’re very proud of Lake Mirror in our city — as we’re proud of the city as a whole. I suspect that’s why we smashed Saga Stevin, the political voice of these “J6ers” in Lakeland, during the recent mayor’s race.

A different view

Lake Mirror provides quite a different view for Doolin and Hutchinson from what Capitol Police officers and lawmakers and Capitol staff saw on January 6. Here’s what it looked like when their lynch mob attacked the People’s House — my house, your house, our house — for no reason but their selfishness, entitlement, gratification, spite, and bloodlust.

No one in the Lakeland 4 — or their family and friend and church circles — has expressed an iota of public remorse.

Indeed, here’s what Olivia Pollock, one of the Lakeland 4, who may have been at wedding (I don’t know) says about the Capitol Lynch Mob and the Capitol police.

“We stood on the steps of the Capitol, and there’s all these videos of, like, people saying, ‘Oh, they’re attacking the police; they’re attacking the police,’ ” Olivia Pollock said in one interview. “No, the police were attacking us and we’re defending ourselves, pretty much how it was.”

Olivia Pollock’s brother — Jonathan Pollock — is the last of the Lakeland 4. He remains a fugitive; and yet, he seems to have been invited to the wedding. A lawyer at a bond hearing argued only that “Pollock is unlikely to show up at the wedding.” I saw no hint of law enforcement around the Magnolia building in case Pollock showed; but I wouldn’t really expect to, either.

Here are Doolin and Hutchinson, bonding at the Capitol Lynch Mob in D.C. before the wedding — a bachelor party of sorts, I guess.

And here’s a clearer picture of handsome groom Doolin:

It’s worth noting that I don’t think the Capitol Lynch Mob’s Lakeland 4 live in the actual city limits of Lakeland.

But I’m ashamed to share a Lakeland-area community with them and their enablers and supporters, who have so intimidated the meek mouth of our famous bobblehead Sheriff Grady Judd. More on that in a moment.

Why “Capitol Lynch Mob?”

From the start, I have refused to refer to the Jan. 6 attack, morally, as an “insurrection.”

Calling it an “insurrection” confers a level of dignity, purpose, and courage the feral mob did not remotely earn. Their cause is cowardly, indulgent garbage; their execution was cowardly, indulgent garbage. Morally (not legally), calling them insurrectionists elevates them because insurrections can be cool and romantic and courageous and just. Do not grant them that self-satisfaction.

Legally, I’d like to see them prosecuted for an “insurrection”-by-lynch-mob. But I’m not a prosecutor. My first article about Jan. 6 was published on January 8, 2021. It laid out the case for considering Jan. 6 America’s largest lynch mob. I called it A doomed, feral coup wrapped in a hesitant, cowardly lynching. Key excerpt:

Let’s be clear: the Trump/Hawley/Cruz etc. Capitol mob no more believed or cared if the presidential election was stolen than lynch mobs believed or cared if the person they were lynching was guilty. It’s the same instinct. Both mobs did what they did because they enjoyed it. They liked it. It was fun. It made them feel good and powerful. This was a feral boat parade that murdered a police officer.

The joy of the mob’s feral power is fundamental to American history and its distribution of formal political and economic power. It has always been part of the American governing instinct. It just never happened inside Congress before.

So here’s what happened on Wednesday: a massive armed white lynch mob — including military and law enforcement people out of uniform — carrying the Confederate battle flag stormed the Capitol. There’s nothing new about that. Nothing. That’s exactly how it’s always happened. Those same people have stormed countless buildings and lives throughout American history. I wrote a book about it.

Viking Hat Dude is the diminished, minority heir to the joyfully violent and murderous majoritarian racial and cultural power of American history. He’s the heir to Rosewood.

I expanded on that point on July 21, 2021 in an article called: Grady Judd's choice, part 1: good cops and good citizens -- or his lynch mob base. Key excerpt:

Fortunately for all involved, this indulgent Capitol Lynch Mob of petty criminals and wife beaters and bored inheritance babies and anti-vaxxers and gun fetishists and mass shooter sympathizers and Nazi cosplayers lacked any conviction whatsoever for their violence. Their only conviction was self-indulgence.

Real “insurrectionists” would have come through and risked whatever that lone anonymous officer could do to them for their FREEDOM!!!!! He could not have stopped determined PATRIOTS!!!! all by himself. Sure, he would have killed a few more before they killed him, but FREEDOM!!! isn’t free,” right?

Lynch mobs and pogrom mobs are likely the most cowardly social organisms on earth. They differ from any other type of mob, historically, because they always believe deeply that they act with the blessing of official power. A lynch mob is defined — before violence or racism or lawlessness — by the iron belief that it will face no actual consequences for its behavior. Ever.

Historically, lynch mob participants have been correct in that belief. This pure indulgent impunity is the lynch mob’s fuel. The nature of American racism, historically, makes it the excuse for murderous mob self-indulgence that American power has been most likely to encourage and support through impunity.

And if you listen to the words of the Capitol Lynch Mob after the fact, many members say they thought the waning presidential power of Donald Trump gave them impunity to act however they chose.

When many brave officers fought — and especially when this brave and competent officer killed Ashli Babbitt — it took impunity away and imposed real consequences in the moment. And this Capitol Lynch Mob collapsed rather than “fight for its FREEDOM!!!” like 1776. We’ll see what the next one does.

It does seem increasingly clear that a paper coup attempt at the highest levels of government — including the outgoing president — overtly planned to use the lynch mobbers to pressure and/or punish Mike Pence. But it’s not clear how many lynch mobbers thought of themselves as coup tools and how many thought they were just there for a violent, cop-brutalizing party.

I don’t know how the Lakeland 4 thought of themselves.

How Sheriff Judd fuels the Lakeland 4’s social impunity with his failure to express community disapproval

Polk Sheriff Grady Judd thinks the public cares enough about his carefully cultivated, endlessly marketed persona to sell it “Grady-on-the-Shelf” dolls for charity. And he’s right.

If he were ever to express disapproval of the Lakeland 4 on moral and civic grounds it might make them — or others — a little less willing to jump into the next lynch mob. And it’s not like Grady, himself, didn’t have to deal with the Jan. 6 fallout.

The sheriff had to arrest one of his own deputies immediately after the Capitol Lynch Mob because he was itching to take part and threatening the public and elected officials. I am still grateful to the still anonymous deputy who turned in his dangerous colleague. See For everyone's sake, Sheriff Judd, please end "The Grady Show", published on Jan. 22, 2021.

But even in arresting his own guy, Grady hesitated to express clear disapproval — moral disapproval — for the Capitol Lynch Mob.

We all know that camera-chasing Grady Judd has zero hesitation expressing extreme moral disapproval of just about anything else he feels like targeting with that moral disapproval. Indeed, during the George Floyd protests, he invented things that did not exist to target morally with his public persona.

The first was a “riot” in Lakeland. Nope. Never happened. One brief, post-protest interaction of a car and some unruly kids quickly dispersed at one intersection far distant from the protest site — with no injuries or property damage — is not a “riot.” I documented thoroughly the Sheriff’s official, legal misrepresentation of Lakeland’s George Floyd protest experience in an article published on Sept. 25, 2020. I was there, observing.

The next day, Grady invented something else and worse: a threat of “Antifa” hordes from somewhere invading Lakeland homes. During a massively watched press conference, Grady said this:

“I would tell them, if you value your life, you probably shouldn’t do that in Polk County…Because the people of Polk County like guns, they have guns, I encourage them to own guns, and they’re going to be inside their homes tonight with their guns loaded. And if you try to break into their homes tonight and try to steal, to set fires, I’m highly recommending they blow you back out of the house with their guns.”

These bogus, never-explained or documented threats were almost certainly a hoax perpetuated by a white supremacist group called Identity Europa. Story here. Despite my repeated calls to account for his bogus threat report, Grady Judd has never again addressed what he said at that press conference or his behavior around the “riot” that did not exist.

Now I want you to imagine that something real called “Antifa” exists at scale — or at all in Lakeland. (It doesn’t.)

Imagine two “Antifas” who had taken part in a mob assault on the US Capitol and police designed to overturn an obvious Republican presidential victory are getting married at Cleveland Heights Baptist Church and celebrating at the Magnolia Building. Imagine they had a fugitive “Antifa” buddy who might show up. And imagine the fugitive’s sister—and fellow “Antifa” Capitol mobster said this:

“We stood on the steps of the Capitol, and there’s all these videos of, like, people saying, ‘Oh, they’re attacking the police; they’re attacking the police,’ ” Olivia Pollock said in one interview. “No, the police were attacking us and we’re defending ourselves, pretty much how it was.”

Imagine all that. Do you think Grady would withhold his appropriate community disapproval? What should we infer about his actual silence on the Lakeland 4, who exist, with community supporters, right here among us?

What do you think they infer about whose side Grady Judd is on? How many people at the Capitol Lynch Mob wedding own a “sheriff on the shelf?”

I bet it’s more than zero.

The church’s “murmurs of approval”

I sent an email to the staff of Cleveland Heights Baptist Church on Wednesday. It read like this.

I’m writing an article about the wedding you all officiated of the Capitol Lynch Mob participant. I wanted to know if the congregation or guests said a prayer for Officer Brian Sicknick, who died after the fight against the mob Doolin and others were taking part in? Did anyone say a prayer for the -- at least -- four Capitol officers who fought Doolin's mob that have since killed themselves?

Do you have any general comment about your decision to give your church's blessing to unrepentant Capitol Lynch Mob participants?

I noticed your marquee sign. And I just wanted to point out that Officer Sicknick and the other officers don't get a "fresh start" with Jesus this year, unless you mean that literally in an afterlife. 

I have not received a response.

The leaders of Cleveland Heights Baptist Church can choose to marry any lynch mob participant they want. I can’t prevent them and won’t try. They’re breaking no laws; and I do not want Grady Judd’s deputies to stop them. That’s the nature of church/state separation.

At the same time, I think it’s fair to let them know that I, who share a community with Cleveland Heights Baptist Church, disapprove of the Lakeland 4. And I hope, as the church celebrated the Doolin nuptials before God, it used its moral and religious authority over the congregation to exact some atonement for the dead police and indulgent orgy of violence joyfully unleashed on the American system of government that guarantees religious freedom.

And it’s also worth thinking for a moment about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, perhaps the most famous and consequential lynching story in human history. A lynch mob is nothing if not a mob given impunity by the washed hands of power to brutalize and kill as civic demonstration.

I wonder what Jesus would think or say about the simple fact that American Christian churches have happily married and sanctified thousands and thousands and thousands of lynch mob participants in our national history. The powerful Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s—very much the MAGA movement of its time—was anchored in the white Protestant church and religion. That’s why the Klan burned — and burns — crosses.

I wrote in my book Age of Barbarity about a friendly 1920s Klan visit to St. James United Methodist Church in Palatka, the same church I attended as a boy. The visit included a letter and donation from the Klan. This was a common Klan practice and done openly. Here’s a part of the newspaper account. Note the part in bold.

During the reading of the letter the congregation gave the most intense attention, and when it had been concluded there was a murmur of approval. Rev. Sibert then asked the six white robed figures to join him in prayer, and he offered fervent thanks. The letter accompanying the fifty dollars in currency will be placed in the tin box to go in the cornerstone of the church when it is completed and finally dedicated.

An expression of civic disapproval

In the process of finding the correct address on the Cleveland Heights Baptist website, I discovered that I know and like one of their pastors very much. I came to know this person early in my career as a reporter. I would describe him as a good, nice person in every way.

And that’s the rub, isn’t it — the lines that good people do or don’t draw.

I opened this article with a passage about lynchers instantly resuming a normal civic American life. It has stuck with me since I read it years ago in Tameka Bradley Hobbs’ great 2015 book Democracy Abroad, Lynching at Home, which looked closely at five Florida lynchings in the 1940s. Hobbs quotes historian Bruce E. Baker:

Lynching was a self-effacing event. First it silenced an alleged offender; then the anonymity of the mob and the silence of local public discourse muted any attempt to name the lynching as a crime and to exact justice.

The fact of American history is that 99.9 percent of lynch mob participants suffered no legal, religious, or social consequences for their participation in mass violence and murder. Law enforcement and official power issued no punishments. And perhaps just as importantly, communities expressed no public disapproval. One day’s monsters became another day’s community pillars, seamlessly. Lynch mobbers, historically, could always count on a “fresh start” in their communities between moments of mobbing.

Why? I think it’s a combination of open approval and fear of the consequences of open disapproval. Those are not the same things; but they create the same outcome.

Certainly, there has been “progress” on the lynching front in America. The Capitol Lynch Mob — probably the largest in American history — is the first classic American lynch mob in decades. In part, that’s why it’s so jarring. We haven’t witnessed this in most of our lifetimes. I’d never seen one before. But I quickly recognized it.

The Capitol Lynch Mob attacked all of us — every single person in every single American community. It attacked our property. It even attacked itself. Obliterating representative government eliminates individual sovereignty for everyone, including the mob. The Lakeland 4 wanted to make themselves subject to something other than self-government, whether they realized it or not.

The Capitol Lynch Mob is already the most punished lynch mob in American history, by far. But that says much more about the lack of historic punishment and disapproval than it does about “progress.”

Indeed, one sees that in Lakeland, where no important figure — in politics, law enforcement, or religion has been willing to publicly express simple, clear moral disapproval of the Lakeland 4 and their supporters. Quite the contrary, Cleveland Heights Baptist Church just blessed the “fresh start” of the Doolin marriage on behalf of God. And the happy family and supporters seemed to enjoy renting the public wedding building I co-own with the rest of my city.

Unlike Grady Judd or Cleveland Heights Baptist Church, I lack the power to impose any meaningful moral punishment on the Capitol Lynch mobbers in our midst. I lack the ability to pressure them about the whereabouts of Jonathan Pollock.

But I do have the power to publicly express disapproval from my modest civic and community platform. Expressing my personal disapproval on my platform is about all I can do. I think it’s important to do that.

Its possible — but highly unlikely — that the Lakeland 4 or their buddies will respond to this — or any — individual expression of disapproval by jumping people or shooting them with “Betsy Ross,” the AR-15. They’ve shown a clear willingness to engage in mass, lawless, public violence.

In theory, that’s an excuse for community members to keep quiet and allow their attack on all of us to remain “self-effacing” in the intimate spaces of our communities. In the past, that danger was very real and it disciplined communities into suppressing whatever murmurs of disapproval they might have been inclined to issue. But it’s a bad excuse, today. It certainly is for me.

I mean, look at how eager Doolin and Hutchinson are to live a normal life with Brazilian steak house bachelor parties and quiet weddings. Their reception seemed a tame affair, apparently done by 7 p.m.

And I think the more open civic disapproval lynch mobbers encounter, the less likely they — or others — are to create or join future lynch mobs and future attacks on brave police officers defending self-government and the sovereignty of their neighbors. Constructive disapproval is important for maintaining vibrant public spaces and life in a shared communities.

So that’s the point of this, my 1-year anniversary of the Capitol Lynch Mob article: an expression of constructive civic disapproval of the Lakeland 4; of the willingness of “normal” people to support and enable them; and of the failure of powerful people to draw moral, public lines.

But I don’t get to speak for everybody — or really anybody. Just me. You have to decide for yourselves how to reckon with Lakeland 4 — and all the lynch mobbers among us.