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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDon't Doubt What You Saw With Your Own Eyes
https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/dont-doubt-what-you-saw-with-your-own-eyes-1831931203Two days ago, video was posted online that pretty much everyone who saw immediately recognized for what it wasfootage of white teens taunting and harassing a Native American elder named Nathan Phillips on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. What was happening was clear and unmistakable, not just resonant but immediately recognizable as iconic. If you wanted to compress the history of relations between the powerful and the powerless in America, or the dynamics of the current moment, into a single image, you couldnt do much better than to present a white teen in a MAGA hat, surrounded by a screaming horde of his peers, smirking into the face of an old Native American man.
Perhapsprobablybecause what had happened was so undeniable, it was immediately denied. Right-wing trolls not only immediately proposed that the visibly aggressive teens, who were draped in the symbols of white nationalism and misogyny, were in fact the aggressed upon, but began a campaign of brutal online harassment against anyoneespecially journalists and especially female journalistswho accurately described what they had seen, or reacted to it on the terms it deserved. In all it was an enactment of the culture-war tactics pioneered by Gamergate and used by Donald Trump to ascend to the pinnacle of global power: While random MAGA chuds and Pepes doxxed and threatened people online in an attempt to silence them and intimidate others, respectable types urged caution, proposing that if you were thoughtful enough you would perhaps realize that you hadnt in fact seen what you had just seen, or that if you had, maybe it wasnt that bad at all. Straight news reporters like the Wall Street Journals Byron Tau turned the subtext into text, asking whomst among us hasnt participated in a racially-charged frenzy of barely-restrained violence that they wish hadnt been become an instantly iconic representation of what America has been historically and what it is now:
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Yesterday, Reasons Robby Soave, a professional contrarian, published a story built around a video, which is linked in the post, showing what was plainly visible in the initial footagebelligerent teens chanting and crowding around an old man until he was surroundedbut proposing that it added important context that strongly contradicts the medias narrative. The video did add context, showing that Phillips and other demonstrators present for the Indigenous Peoples March were interposing themselves between between teens draped in racist, misogynist paraphernalia and members of the Black Israelite cult, but did not, despite Soaves assertions, contradict the narratives set forth by either Phillips or the media (by which one can only assume he meant journalists straightforwardly describing what was there to be seen). Last night, the smirking teen, Nick Sandmann, was identified in a statement issued in his name by the publicity firm his parents hired for him, in which he suggested that he was in fact the victim in the situation.
The reaction to Soaves story and to the public-relations firms statement was as depressing at it was predictable: Respectable news organizations and journalists, to whom being seen as balanced, level-headed, and more attuned to context and contingency than the reactive social-media mob is more important than reporting the most accurate version of the truth as best they can tell it, backed off, following Reasons lead and doing the work of the gibbering masturbators who had risen up in defense of the MAGA teens. They were all too happy to say that the sky was not blue if it meant burnishing their credentials as serious and objective, and fell over each other to back away from what was right in front of their eyes.
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bobbieinok
(12,858 posts)EffieBlack
(14,249 posts)I know what I saw. And what I saw was a gang of teenage boys challenging a peaceful demonstrator who had every legal and moral right to be there.
In fact, it looked to me like Mr. Phillips and his companions put themselves between the schoolboys and the black Israelites (or whatever they call themselves) to prevent an escalation of violence between the two groups.
I wonder, too, why there were no police there. Obviously nearby adults weren't going to intervene, and there are no feds because of chumpy's lockout, but DC has a police force. Was this happening too fast? Were people in the crowd too busy filming to call 911?
oberliner
(58,724 posts)I don't feel like playing your little game. You are the one who urged people to watch the entire 2 hour video. Didn't it include the Black Hebrew Israelites? Did you miss that part?
AwakeAtLast
(14,112 posts)they are. Dont want to have that teaching moment where we examine ourselves and evolve into better people.
forthemiddle
(1,373 posts)That printed a correction that states although he was a Marine and a Vietnam Era Vet he never was deployed to Vietnam.
There is a huge distinction between being a Vietnam Vet and a Vietnam Era Vet.
I honestly dont know if that constitutes stolen Valor or not, or if he ever actually claimed to have been in combat.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/01/20/it-was-getting-ugly-native-american-drummer-speaks-maga-hat-wearing-teens-who-surrounded-him/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9301accc34af
See the final paragraph for the correction.