I know it might be tempting to write off some of this as hyperbole. Certainly, Johnny Depp wouldn’t scare anyone who has dealt with some of the rough customers I’ve sent to the slammer. But the haters are not all pretty-boy actors and pampered limousine liberals. There is a violent element among the far Left that hasn’t been afraid to put the violent rhetoric into action.
I’m sure you remember the street violence perpetrated against Trump supporters during the 2016 campaign. As just one example of many, “protestors” at a Trump campaign rally in San Jose, California, jumped on cars, threw eggs and water balloons at Trump supporters, stole their signs and “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) hats, and even physically assaulted some of them. Many of these so-called protestors were carrying the flags of other countries.26 When the violence is perpetrated against Trump supporters, the perpetrators are called “protestors.”
Well, three years later, nothing has changed. A man simply standing in his yard watching fireworks on the Fourth of July was assaulted by a man driving down the street who took issue with the Trump flag the man had on his lawn. The driver ordered the man to take down the flag. When the man refused, the driver punched him. The victim hit back in self-defense and the driver sped off with the victim’s arm inside the car, dragging him over thirty feet.27
A few months later, a Washington State Trump supporter’s truck was vandalized with spray paint and then firebombed while parked outside a bar, apparently because it was adorned with Trump 2020 bumper stickers. The man had had a few drinks and did the responsible thing by taking an Uber home. He’d left his truck under a streetlamp, thinking it would be safe there overnight. When he returned the next morning, his truck was nothing more than a burned-out shell with “Trump” spray-painted in white letters across the driver’s side. A neighbor who lives near the bar heard and felt the explosion.28
Even Left-wing women are feeling empowered to imitate the behavior of violent activists. Earlier this year, Rosiane Santos was caught on video swatting the MAGA hat off a male patron in a Massachusetts diner, right in front of four police officers. The allegedly intoxicated woman was not only arrested, but it turned out Santos, originally from Brazil, was living in the US “without documentation.” Now, she’s facing deportation. Rosi, what makes you think you can menace a patron in a diner in front of four cops when you’re illegal and not expect to be deported?29
As bad as these violent attacks by individuals may be, the organized violence that pervades the twenty-first century Left is even more disturbing. As far back as Obama’s second term, we’ve increasingly seen what the liberal media call “protests” erupt into full-scale riots, sometimes leaving whole sections of towns in ashes.
The Democrats are determined to erase this country’s borders, eager to welcome millions of illegal immigrants they hope will someday show up in the voting booths, voting Democrat as most immigrants do. To that end, they’ve been campaigning on abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency charged with enforcing our immigration laws regarding people already in the United States (the US Border Patrol is a separate entity, charged with patrolling the borders by Customs and Border Protection). They’ve gone so far as to compare ICE to the Ku Klux Klan, an outrageous charge that US Senator Kamala Harris of California nevertheless repeated during a confirmation hearing held by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.30
Harris dignifying that slander in the hallowed halls of the US Senate was bad enough, but the far-Left terrorist group Antifa took it up several more levels. First, a prominent member of the group “doxed” 1,600 ICE employees, which means he published personal, identifying information about the employees, in this case their home addresses.31 In case you’re wondering what kind of person would do something like this, which has the potential for untold acts of violence against people he never met, let me fill you in. Antifa got the database, compiled from the employees’ LinkedIn accounts, from a New York University professor named Sam Lavigne, a far-Left artist and game designer.32
As I said before, this is not some mentally ill loner taking psychotropic drugs. This is a person who teaches students at a prestigious university. This is what is deemed an acceptable political tactic by the Left, all the while implying it is Trump supporters who are violent, in the absence of any evidence whatsoever.
Professors like him have certainly done a good job indoctrinating students with their poisonous ideas. Not only did a Texas student group called Autonomous Student Network—Austin (ASN) tweet out ICE employees’ personal information, they walked the line between protected political speech and incitement to violence with statements like, “Beware of these scum & encourage them to get out of the city & quiet [sic] their jobs if you see them.”33 I’m sure they’re hoping for their followers to “encourage” their targets with lively debate. And if you believe that…
These lovely youngsters also regularly encourage their followers to “spread anarchy” and “live communism!” I don’t know if they’ve studied the history of communism and are consciously emulating their heroes or if they are just demonstrating the violence that naturally springs from this horrible ideology. Either way, it seems the Left’s legacy of violence is secured for at least one more generation.
Usually, Antifa’s violent nature is not so subtle. It was on display again last December when a gang of approximately twelve men and women assaulted two marines whom they mistakenly thought had participated in a “We the People” rally in Old City, Philadelphia.34 Two of the thugs asked the marines if they were “Proud Boys,” one of the groups that organized the rally. The Proud Boys are a right-wing organization founded by Gavin McInnes whom the Left considers neo-fascist, a hate group, etc., although the group disputes those characterizations. When one of the marines replied that he didn’t know what the name meant, the whole gang jumped them, kicking them, punching them, and spraying them with mace.
Oh, they also hurled racial slurs at the two marines, who are both Hispanic. I suppose when you wear a marine uniform, racism against you is okay.
There is no end of rationalizing, apologizing, and outright misreporting Left-wing mob violence as “peaceful protests.” Marching through the streets of Portland last summer to protest ICE, chanting, “Whose streets? Our streets!” Antifa protestors broke the law with impunity, pounding on passing cars, blocking traffic, and harassing bystanders. They were protected by the local police, despite chanting, “A-C-A-B! All cops are bastards!”35
All this happened in a midterm election year. It was just a warm-up for what we’re going to see going into the 2020 presidential election. The grassroots Left will continue to show its true, violent colors while its leaders and the media rationalize the violence away.
CHAPTER TEN
Resisting Reality Media Madness
The Left-wing media is by no means immune to the rest of their movement’s incivility. We’ve grown accustomed to the news being fake in the Age of Trump, but as 2019 began, they added a new wrinkle: downright maliciousness. An example of this was the way a group of teenagers from Covington Catholic High School were treated.
Because there are no consequences to journalistic untruths, the media simply goes from one fake news story to the next. Before getting to the Covington media farce, it should be noted that it happened only one day after another media farce so outrageous that even Bob Mueller issued a statement to correct it. Mueller made a rare statement to the media refuting the fake news story by that paragon of journalism, BuzzFeed.1
Following up on their disgraceful publication of the infamous, fake Trump “dossier,” BuzzFeed ran a story on January 17 claiming federal officials had told them the president’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, had informed the special counsel that the president had directed him to lie to Congress.2 Here was yet another “smoking gun” that would finally validate the Left’s insane Russian collusion delusion and end the presidency that has unhinged so many millions of Leftists.
The Left-wing media
joyously jumped on the so-called breaking news. MSNBC’s Ali Velshi immediately brought one of the reporters who wrote it on the air, calling the story “strong reporting.”3 Chuck Todd told NBC’s Today, “You can’t overstate how significant this development is, with the caveat ‘if true.’” CNN’s John Berman said the news was so big he almost spilled his coffee.4
You could almost hear the impeachment parties being planned in newsrooms, Hollywood dressing rooms, and university professors’ lounges all over America.
There was only one problem; it wasn’t true. For Robert Mueller to feel compelled to make a statement correcting the report tells you how far from the truth the report was, which was confirmed later when Cohen himself testified to Congress that Trump never instructed him to lie to them.
Now, one would think having a story they just ran with reckless abandon blow up in their faces would inject a little humility into even the arrogant finger-waggers who inhabit national newsrooms. One might assume that if another negative story about Trump or his supporters started circulating the very next day, which fit the media’s own anti-Trump narrative just a little too perfectly not to invite suspicion, that they may have taken a breath before running with another fake report.
Nope. Not even twenty-fours hours after Mueller killed the BuzzFeed story, the media were at it again, breathlessly reporting a completely false story about some Catholic high school boys who attended a pro-life rally in Washington, DC.
Media Child Abuse
Let me start with what was initially reported. Carefully edited videos showed an elderly Native American man beating on a drum in front of a smiling teenage boy, surrounded by other boys who appeared to be about his age. One of the boys begins clapping along with the drumbeat. Several others eventually begin singing along. Most of the initial videos were thirty seconds to a minute long and none showed how the Native American man came to be among the crowd of teenage boys.
It appeared that a lone, elderly Native American was being surrounded by mostly white teenagers having a good old time while wearing red “Make America Great Again” hats, which completely short-circuited the truth and whatever journalistic integrity the liberal media had left. Without stopping to check any facts and apparently not at all curious about how the elderly Native American man came to be beating a drum a few inches from a teenage boy’s face, they unleashed a venomous fake news tsunami against the boys. According to the media, the boys—since they were wearing MAGA hats—epitomized the racism, insensitivity, and hatred of all things right and good harbored by anyone who supports President Trump.
Why check the story when you can just make one up?
The fake news media set out to do precisely that after that video went viral. Early reports portrayed the event as if the elderly Native American, Nathan Phillips, was marching in an indigenous people’s march toward the Lincoln Memorial when the boys, who had participated in a March for Life event earlier that day, “swarmed” around him and began taunting him. Immediately, the image of Phillips heroically playing his drum while a “smirking,” MAGA hat-wearing Nicholas Sandmann stares him down became ubiquitous.
The reaction from the Left on social media was swift, hateful, and often violent. Trevor Noah said, “Everyone that sees that smug look wants to punch that kid.”5 CNN’s Bakari Sellers also mused that, “Some ppl can also be punched in the face,” in a since-deleted tweet.6 Reza Aslan, whose Trump Derangement Syndrome was too severe even for CNN,7 tweeted rhetorically, “Honest question. Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?”8 As of this writing, that tweet still hasn’t been deleted nor has Aslan’s account been suspended.
It didn’t take long for the fake news to reach the boys’ high school and Catholic diocese. Even they issued a joint statement condemning the boys’ actions, apologizing to Phillips, and promising an investigation and appropriate action “up to and including expulsion.”9 The Chicago Tribune gleefully reported that sad real news along with plenty of fake news, including that the boys “surrounded” Nathan Phillips and his associates, “laughing and jeering.” It uncritically repeated Phillips’s claim the boys were chanting, “Build that wall, build that wall,” which video evidence showed they never chanted once.10
In addition to referring to the boys as “jeering and disrespectful” and repeating the false claims the boys chanted, “Build that wall,” the Washington Post repeated Phillips’s further false claim that the boys had blocked his path to the Lincoln Memorial. Phillips, who in later videos was seen walking a clear path up the center of the stairs to the memorial and into the group of boys waiting for their bus, went on to say, “He just blocked my way and wouldn’t allow me to retreat.”11
The Post printed this claim, apparently without even bothering to check it. They’ve since updated that story online to include an editor’s note amounting to a complete retraction, linking to several subsequent articles that grudgingly report at least some of the truth of what happened. I say “grudgingly” because even after extensive video of what really happened that day was available to everyone, the Post still headlined their supposed mea culpa, “Viral Standoff Between a Tribal Elder and a High Schooler Is More Complicated Than It First Seemed.”12
It’s not complicated. It’s quite simple. The original story wasn’t just inaccurate; it was the opposite of what really happened. It was the boys who were subjected to racially motivated taunts. It was political activist Nathan Phillips, who I’ll get to in a minute, who initiated the incident. It was the Covington Catholic School boys who tried to defuse the situation. At least 99 percent of everything reported, tweeted, and otherwise disseminated on January 19 was false. It was politically motivated fake news, the result of devious dishonesty by some, and rats-in-the-attic derangement by others. And it brutally victimized innocent teenage boys who emerged as the real heroes of this story.
So, what really happened? It wasn’t the boys or Nathan Phillips, but a hateful group of political/religious activists called the Black Hebrew Israelites. They didn’t just taunt the students; they launched invective at the Native Americans as well. Apparently, one of the beliefs this group holds is that both they and the Native Americans are descendants of the ancient Israelites, the latter having turned away from worshipping Yahweh. They jeered the Native Americans for “worshipping totem poles” and shouted that God had taken away their land here in America as punishment.
They then turned their attention toward the Covington boys and became even more abusive. They called the boys crackers, pedophiles, and “incest kids.” At one point, one of them derisively shouted, “you give faggots rights,” prompting a loud chorus of boos from the boys.13 These Black Hebrew Israelites were adult men not only shouting obscenities and other ugly epithets at teenage boys, but clearly trying to instigate a physical confrontation with them.
The boys, according to Nicholas Sandmann’s statement, then obtained permission from their adult chaperone to engage in “school spirit chants to counter the hateful things that were being shouted at our group.”14 They didn’t chant “Build the wall” as Nathan Phillips would later claim. In fact, they chanted no political statements whatsoever. Their chants were the garden variety school spirit cheers you’d hear at any high school basketball game.
Gee, I wonder why the Catholic diocese didn’t at least talk to the chaperone and get their facts straight before they issued their “politically correct” apology.
Do you remember any condemnation by the media of this racist, homophobic, potentially violent hate group the Black Hebrew Israelites? Neither do I. To this day, the media are still trying to assign some culpability to the victims of this vile harassment, rather than the perpetrators. The video clearly shows the boys booing the Black Hebrew Israelites’ homophobic epithets, yet it is the boys who are still considered bigots by the devious and the deranged.
Let’s turn our attention now to Nathan Phillips, the central figure in this liberal media propaganda effort. On the day of the incident, Phillips was port
rayed as a hero by virtually every so-called journalist who reported on this story. He was incorrectly called a Vietnam veteran, based on his statement, “You know, I’m from Vietnam times. I’m what they call a recon ranger.” But Phillips was never actually deployed to Vietnam.15 I’m not sure if Phillips was being intentionally misleading on this point, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
Phillips originally claimed he was trying to get to the Lincoln Memorial when he was “swarmed” by the Covington boys. He said Sandmann blocked his path and he was unable to either continue to the memorial or retreat. “He just blocked my way and wouldn’t allow me to retreat,” said Phillips.16 Those were both outright lies. The boys didn’t swarm Phillips; he marched into them and up to Sandmann, who never made a single move toward him. Neither did anyone prevent Phillips from leaving.
When video evidence clearly exposed his lie, he changed his story. Story number two was that he was intervening between the Covington boys and the Black Hebrew Israelites—to protect the Black Hebrew Israelites! He actually had the gall to claim the teenage boys, who were waiting for their bus, were attacking the grown men who were hurling vile, racist, homophobic, and threatening insults at them. “These young men were beastly and these old black individuals was their prey, and I stood in between them and so they needed their pounds of flesh and they were looking at me for that,” Phillips said.17
Now, as a prosecutor hypothetically interviewing Phillips for possible action in this case, red flags would have been waving everywhere the minute Phillips changed his story in such a substantive way. First, he says he was trying to get to the Lincoln Memorial and was stopped by boys who swarmed him and prevented him from either continuing or leaving. Then, when video evidence showed that wasn’t remotely true, he claims he approached the boys to protect another group from them. I would immediately start challenging Phillips at that point.
Radicals, Resistance, and Revenge: The Left’s Plot to Remake America Page 15