For someone who hates America and the capitalism that has made it wealthy and powerful, far-left activist Ismael Chamu has a gift for self-promotion and raising money.
When he was charged with vandalizing private property with racist, pro-Antifa graffiti urging revolutionary violence to overthrow the existing system, the fourth-year University of California at Berkeley student of Mexican ancestry successfully monetized his status as a revolutionary by raising more than $85,000 in mere days through crowdfunding after a Los Angeles Times puff piece highlighted his tough living conditions.
“Ismael constantly scrambles to find shelter and enough food for himself and his siblings while working a campus job, leading a student club and trying to earn a bachelor’s degree in sociology,” according to the Times sob story.
“His family has struggled in recent months to make ends meet,” according to the fundraising website. “He currently helps support his two sisters, younger brother, mom and dad. He has to leave his current housing on the 13th. Money will be used to buy food, secure housing, and school supplies.”
The left-liberal Los Angeles Times defended Chamu even though by left-wing standards the young student was accused of committing racist hate crimes.
As Fox News reported,
On June 27, 2017, he was arrested and later charged with felony vandalism and possession of tools to commit vandalism or graffiti in an incident involving painting private property with hateful and racist graffiti.
Some of the messages included “F— White People,” “F— the police,” “F— Frat Boys,” “Kill Cops” and “Kill Yuppies,” “Eat the Rich,” “Class War” and “Black Lives Matter.”
Berkeley police Sgt. Peter Hong said Chamu’s Facebook account included posts “consistent with the graffiti messages.” Those messages include “f— the police, rebellion, Black Lives Matter, God Bless Antifa, White Nationalism and supremacy, tech development and its negative impact on Black and Brown bodies,” KTVU reported.
He also reportedly expressed support of Antifa in Berkeley after protests in Berkeley last year, where peaceful free speech activists clashed with the anarchists. He said the police that protected the right-wing activists were “hand in hand with Nazis,” Berkleyside reported.
Chamu also reportedly blogged about his communist-anarchist beliefs, urging that private property be “destroyed,” “bars and hipster shops” be shut down, and that the offices of search engine giant Google be burned to the ground.
He mocked less radical left-wingers as oversensitive crybabies, ridiculing “Liberal Hillary supporters” and “White techies” for “squirm[ing] the moment a barricade smashed into the Amazon student store; they twist and cry the moment someone praises Antifa.”
Chamu beat the vandalism charges.
He claimed he was racially profiled by the police, while rejecting the legitimacy of the government actors who put him through the criminal justice system.
“I was kidnapped by armed agents. I was humiliated. I have been traumatized,” Chamu wrote on social media in 2017. “The Police racially profiled me for being Mexican. For looking like a ‘Burglar’ for appearing ‘Dangerous.’ I will never forget this.”
Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin called Chamu’s arrest “unacceptable” at the time.
Of course he did.
Arreguin is a member of the violent Antifa group By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), which helped to organize the riots that drove conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos from the UC Berkeley campus in February 2017.
This article by Matthew Vadum first appeared June 1, 2018, at the Capital Research Center website.