Yesterday, there was a curious aspect to the coverage of the video of a woman attacking a young man for wearing a MAGA hat. Ignored by many mainstream outlets, conservative news sites described the woman as a “Karen” who got “karma.” The video below was viewed as a funny payback as the woman fell while chasing the man from the New York subway car. However, the incident is not karma but a crime. This is political violence perpetrated on the New York subway, and yet no one in New York seems to be calling for the arrest of this person.
If you watch the video, the woman starts by harassing the young man in the subway car. She is shown yelling, “If you f—-ing voted for Trump, you’re a racist!… He’s a racist!”
One can dismiss the verbal attacks as an exercise of free speech. However, she then grabs and comes into contact with the young man (around the 45 second mark) as she chases him from the car:
I get the sense of karma as the woman does a face plant on the subway platform while trying to continue her attack on the fleeing individual.
However, this should be neither funny nor acceptable. It is political violence and the woman appears to believe that she has a license in New York City to assault anyone wearing a MAGA hat.
This is where what I call “rage rhetoric” turns into political violence. As I wrote in my book, “The indispensable Right,” that is the curious aspect of rage:
“What few today want to admit is that they like it. They like the freedom that it affords, the ability to hate and harass without a sense of responsibility. It is evident all around us as people engage in language and conduct that they repudiate in others. We have become a nation of rage addicts; flailing against anyone or anything that stands in opposition to our own truths.
Like all addictions, there is not only a dependency on rage but an intolerance for opposing views. The difference between rage and reason is often one’s own views. If one agrees with underlying grievance, rage is viewed as passion or justified fury at injustice. If one disagrees with those views, it takes on a more threatening and unhinged quality. We seem to spend much of our time today raging at each other. Despite the amplification of views on both sides, there is also an increasing intolerance for opposing views. Those views are treated as simply harmful and offensive—and, therefore, intolerable. Indeed, to voice free speech principles in a time of rage is to invite the rage of the mob.”
There should be zero tolerance for political violence like this on New York subways. Answer me this: if this was a man chasing and assaulting a woman from a subway car for wearing a Harris-Walz hat, would there be the same relative silence in terms of an investigation and criminal charges?
When this person moved from verbal assaults to actual physical assaults, it became a crime, not karma.
The problem is that New York only has an assault law, not a battery law. You can pursue battery as a civil tort in New York, but few Trump supporters would have faith in receiving a fair hearing before a New York jury on such a case.
The New York assault law allows for third degrees of assault charges. However, even the lowest charge of assault in the third degree requires that the individual intentionally or recklessly causes physical injury to another person.
§ 120.00 Assault in the third degree.
A person is guilty of assault in the third degree when:
1. With intent to cause physical injury to another person, he causes such injury to such person or to a third person; or
2. He recklessly causes physical injury to another person; or
3. With criminal negligence, he causes physical injury to another person by means of a deadly weapon or a dangerous instrument.
Assault in the third degree is a class A misdemeanor.
This could be established by the fact that she appears to grab and possibly strike the victim. However, the law is vague and prosecutors could claim that the touching was insufficient to bring a viable case.
There is also criminal harassment under Penal § 240.26:
§ 240.26 Harassment in the second degree.
A person is guilty of harassment in the second degree when, with intent to harass, annoy or alarm another person:
1. He or she strikes, shoves, kicks or otherwise subjects such other person to physical contact, or attempts or threatens to do the same; or
2. He or she follows a person in or about a public place or places; or
3. He or she engages in a course of conduct or repeatedly commits acts which alarm or seriously annoy such other person and which serve no legitimate purpose.
…
Harassment in the second degree is a violation.
I have always had qualms about some of this language in terms of vagueness and free speech, particularly subsection 3. However, subsection 1 clearly applies to physical assaults for the purpose of harassment.
The point is that police have the ability to charge this type of political violence. Yet, there is nothing but crickets from Democratic New York politicians and prosecutors. A video shows a citizen being struck and chased from the subway for wearing a MAGA hat and it is either ignored or treated as another humorous event on the New York subway system.
When did political violence become just a cost of riding the subway for conservatives or libertarians? The lack of outrage shows how this age of rage has dulled our senses to such extreme conduct. This is about conduct not speech. When this person went from raving to assault, she crossed over into the criminal code. The problem is that such protections are only meaningful if New York prosecutors and police are prepared to enforce them.
I hope that the NYPD will take this seriously and announce a search for this culprit. Otherwise, the enforcement of the criminal code becomes little more than a matter of fleeting karma.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”