Capitol rioter flees the FBI to seek asylum in Belarus
The FBI charged Evan Neumann charged with six crimes, including assaulting officers and violent entry, after he was identified on camera as being an active participant in the January 6th anti-democracy insurrection at the Capitol. Now he has fled to Belarus — where the elections truly are rigged and freedom is something they read about in other countries.
I do not know how much time he was facing in the US, but he has essentially given himself a life sentence in the former Soviet Republic. Although he can presumably travel to all the other countries that do not have extradition treaties with the US, such as Afghanistan, North Korea, Sudan, Yemen, and the like. None of which are high on the individual freedoms list.
Adding to his accomplishments, Neumann is now a propaganda pawn for the Russians and their former vassal states. They have characterized him as a victim of a tyrannical American government, forced to take the justified actions he did because he was at the wrong end of the race wars in the US. Or as the Belarus 1 TV channel reported “Judging by his story, [Neumann] is the same type of simple American whose shops were burned by Black Lives Matter activists.” (Note: The link provided in The Moscow Times story is to a New York Times article about burned out shops in Kenosha, Wisconsin. While Neumann lived in the San Francisco Bay area.)
The Belarus TV presenter reported, Neumann “sought justice and asked uncomfortable questions” following the 2020 U.S. elections disputed by ex-President Donald Trump, adding, “but lost almost everything and is being persecuted by the U.S. government.”
The FBI reported Neumann’s words and deeds differently. They say he was shoving the Capitol barricades while wearing a gas mask. He ripped the gas mask off and told a Capitol Hill policeman that the cop was "defending the people who are going to kill your fucking children . . . they are gonna kill your fucking children, they are gonna rape them, they are gonna imprison them, and you're defending the people that are going to do this to your children.” He then picked up the barricade with others and used it as a battering ram against the police, whom he also punched.
His rant was lifted from the playbook of QAnon, who have a perverted obsession with pedophilia, sex slaves, sex trafficking, and whatever else they have downloaded onto their computers.
Neumann will feel comfortable in Belarus. Anyone who loves the fascistic tendencies of the last guy — and his orange ass-kissing fellow travelers in Congress — will savor the approach to politics and liberty in Belarus. After the country gained independence after the dissolution of the USSR, it held free democratic elections in 1994. Alexander Lukashenko was elected President. Under the terms of the 1994 Constitution, he was limited to two five-year terms. But in the 2004 referendum, the people supposedly backed a change that would remove the term limit. A fantastical 88.9% of the voters were reported to have ‘supported’ the measure.
Lukashenko is still the President, having won the 2020 election with 80% of the vote — his typical vote tally.
Belarus has been described as “Europe’s last dictatorship”. Political opponents are repeatedly beaten and jailed. The law makes vote registration hard. Every election brings reports of widespread fraud. And the country is economically and politically tightly bound to Russia. It is the Republican’s dream arrangement. I am sure they are taking notes on the vote suppression and other anti-democratic measures.
Belarus represents everything Neumann is supposedly against. But it is everything he is actually for — and wishes he could have had with a Trump coup. He has found his spiritual home.
Extra: Lukashenko is known for being more candid than the usual autocrat.
On hearing that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) would send send send election monitors to observe the 2001 election, he said in a speech broadcast on state television, "We do not need an imported system for falsifying elections! We will create our own, one run by the state!"
And asked by Reuters in a 2012 interview to respond to allegations that he is "Europe's last dictator," he responded, "I don't really understand what a dictator is, but on the other hand I sometimes, in a nice way, envy myself. I am the last and only dictator in Europe and indeed there are none anywhere else in the world."