Though, curiously, those videos rarely make it to YouTube.
Even the AJC says the violence was “not unprecedented.” Several news accounts did report similar, if smaller scale, acts of violence and harassment at a Screen on the Green showing of National Treasure the week before. Says The AJC:
Lisa Wells, who attended “National Treasure” with a friend from London, said a rowdy group of teens hijacked the event.
“[They] were smoking pot openly,” she said. “When another attendee reported this to police, the female officer radioed for a male officer who took his sweet time to show up.”
After learning they had been reported, the teens became hostile, Wells said.
“One stood up in front of the group who reported her to police and blocked their view from the screen intentionally for about 10 minutes,” she said.
When the second officer arrived, Wells said he chatted briefly with one of the teens, then left.
“The crowd around the teenagers was disgusted,” she said. “Many began to leave. Then the [firecrackers] went off and everyone in the area left quickly.”
Matt Burkhalter, of south Atlanta, compared the atmosphere during the “National Treasure” screening to a bar brawl.
“We left early,” said Burkhalter, 32. “We felt unsafe and uncomfortable.”10
As city officials prepared for the film event in 2011, many blamed the choice of action movies for the violence of the year before. So they switched it up and showed Sixteen Candles, a coming of age film starring Molly Ringwald. It did not make much difference. After the movie, directly outside the event area, lots of black people were fighting. Three people were shot.
To most of the local media, the racial aspect was not worth reporting. Except for the plucky Patch. Talking to the Midtown Patch, police spokesman Carols Campos said:
“Preliminary investigation determined that witnesses reported two groups of black males fighting with each other at the intersection of Peachtree and 10th streets after leaving the Screen on the Green event.”11
A group of local residents even formed their own Facebook page to “Take Back Screen on the Green. Boycott Until It Is Safe for Everyone.”12
Too little, too late. The 2011 showing was the last year for the event.
Even though the media was able to keep the news of violence at Screen on the Green local, the 2011 black mob attack and robbery on two male Delta flight attendants aboard Atlanta’s MARTA train system received national attention.
No arrests were made in the “Clockwork Orange” style attack.
That could be because black mob violence in the MARTA is now routine. There are dozens of videos of mob violence on Marta and many of the incidents involve black women:
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: Girl Fights on Subway in Atlanta
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: Females Fight For Being Tried
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: Atlanta Marta Bus Fight
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: MARTA Teens Locked Up
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: Downtown Atlanta Fights
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: MARTA Fight
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: Fight on MARTA Train in Atlanta
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: Girl Fight At Kenny’s Alley
Even the daughters of Mayor Franklin of Atlanta were involved in mob violence last summer. It happened to their escort after he accused a photographer of bothering them, because they thought he was taking their picture. Ten black people beat the mayor’s daughters’ friend into a coma after the confrontation turned physical. According to witnesses, “Miller left a club in downtown Atlanta with friends, including the daughters of Franklin. The women were being harassed by a group of men and Miller stepped in to help.”
Officer James C. Polite, an Atlanta police spokesman, said, “He was just outnumbered and overpowered.”
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: Miller Attacked
“The men were working for ’01 Entertainment, a party promotion business, according to police. Witnesses said there were at least 10 of them. But only one, Apollo Holmes, turned himself in.” Holmes’s lawyer claims that Miller was drunk and agitated because the entertainment company was filming the mayor’s daughters. But it turns out, the photographer had no idea who they were.13
Violence and lawlessness have also spread to the campus of Georgia Tech. In 2011 at least eight students reported they were robbed and assaulted by two men at gun point, usually in search of cell phones and computers. Four of the robberies happened at the end of June. They happened on the street, in parking garages, and in dorm rooms or apartments.14
The local television stations and AJC were able to furnish a description of the color of the cars, the color of the gun, and the color of the suspects’ clothing.15 But once again it was up the Patch to let the students know what the criminals looked like.
Both suspects were described as black men in their late teens or early 20s. The man armed with the gun was described as wearing a white t-shirt and red basketball shorts. The other suspect had short dreadlocks, a black hat, khaki tan shorts and a black backpack.16
The same two men were suspected in several of the attacks.
As serious as black mob violence is in Atlanta, there is no escaping the fact that sometimes it seems more of a sport than a life-threatening activity. Just get a video camera, add some music, and enjoy: “Imma make you famous,” as they often say.
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: Imma Make You Famous
At some point in this discussion someone always wants to change the subject. The easiest way is to ask “Why is this happening?”
Let’s ask Nkosi Thandiwe. He says he learned to hate white people and turned to violence against them because of what he learned at the University of West Georgia.
He claims that is why he killed one woman and shot two more in Atlanta in 2011. At least that is what he said in hopes it would convince the judge he was crazy.
Crazy as batshit, like Salon calls people who notice racial violence is getting crazy.
In 2012 a jury found Thandiwe guilty of murder after the judge ruled he may have learned crazy things in school, but that did not make him too crazy to escape responsibility for murder.
According to the CBS affiliate in Atlanta:
Thandiwe said during his last few years in college, his history studies changed his thoughts about how some white people treated black people.
“In terms of slavery and race, it was something that needed to be answered for. I saw it as something that the black community hasn’t recovered from so my initial way to handle that was to spread information to help combat some of the ignorance that was in the black community about our history,” said Thandiwe.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you were trying to spread the message of making white people the enemy,” asked Assistant District Attorney Linda Dunikoski.
“Yes,” replied Thandiwe.17
Thandiwe was no stranger to racial violence. One month before, he assailed a visiting courier with racial epithets and had to be physically restrained from striking and causing harm to visitors at a parking garage where he worked, said WSB-TV News in Atlanta.18
Racial resentment is the new mother’s milk of education, said a prison psychologist who did not wish to be identified. Students, black and white, learn from their earliest days that blacks are victims and powerless to fight racism, he said.
Not just in school, but also in churches and from their parents, he said.
The attitude of victimization breeds resentment and violence. “But most dangerous of all, black students are taught they are not responsible for their behavior because they are the victims of white racism,” he said. “I see that every day in the prison where I work.”19
In Wilmington, North Carolina, Joshua Proutey was recently shot in the head and killed while being robbed by four black people who had targeted him because white people “were bound to have money.” One of the
confessed killers, a seventeen year old, said he did not like being “stereotyped as a tough guy.”20
In Chicago the city recently agreed to pay $22.5 million to the victim of black mob violence, because she was white and the city police released her into a “predominantly black” area, placing her in danger. A Harvard professor testified that because of what he called Routine Activities Theory (RAT) violence is an expected result in that situation.21
In Wilmington, Delaware, the pastor of one of the largest black congregations in the state said: “This violence in our community – you don’t think it has something to do with the last 400 years?” Rev. Lawrence M. Livingston told the News Journal, “We didn’t create this stuff – all this mess.”22
The comments came just a few days after a crowd of black people beat a white clergyman near Livingston’s church.
The flip side of the rising tide of black mob violence is what the prison psychologist calls “infantile omnipotence.” This is the feeling that because something has not happened to you directly, you can ignore it. Like an infant who thinks it is not vulnerable to any danger, because all it has ever known is the safety of the womb or the crib.
This is what accounts for widespread willingness to ignore the violence among members of the media and some members of the public, he said.
“Black people have been encouraged to hate whites and to discriminate against them from the so-called civil rights leaders,” said author and syndicated talk show host Jesse Lee Peterson: “And that is evil. The evil will get worse from generation to generation if you don’t deal with it.”23
Taleeb Starkes is a social worker, filmmaker, and author of the book called “The Un-Civil War.”
These schools are reinforcing the long-existing, deep-rooted, victimization gospel that’s religiously practiced in the African-American community. … Moreover, denunciation of this victimization gospel by any African-American is sacrilegious and leads to the questioning of ‘blackness.’ Even scarier is the fact that this ideology is spawning urban terrorists whose actions are always justified by another tenet of the victimization gospel called P.T.S.D (Post Traumatic Slavery Disorder)….
Combined with the race peddlers and the mainstream media’s intentional portrayal of African-Americans as permanent victims incapable of hate-crimes, this self-defeating ideology has become a societal toxin. Consequently, any Black-on-White crime, regardless of viciousness, is essentially interpreted as Black ‘payback’ instead of Black crime. Alternatively, had this urban terrorist been a bloodthirsty White supremacist who mercilessly killed two unsuspecting Black women, Negro-geddon would have commenced.24
Now aren’t you sorry you asked? You want more excuses? You got ’em.
26
100 BEST MEDIA EXCUSES
People buy this book to read it themselves but also to give it away—mostly to their liberal relatives at family gatherings with an admonition to “Read This!” as they slam the book on the table.
For all those readers out there on the wrong end of the holiday book slam, I feel for you. So this chapter is for you. It’s a handy guide for liberals in search of reasons to explain the epidemic of black mob violence all over the country.
We will even number them, so when people who read this book throw the information in your face at your next holiday party, all you have to do is call out a number: 17! 22! Or my favorite, number 100!
Of course we start in Chicago.
The Chicago Sun-Times is a national leader in two areas: 1) Denying that racial mob violence exists, and 2) Explaining why it does. When a mob of five hundred people stormed through downtown Chicago, beating and threatening and destroying property, do you know what the excuse was?
1) Warm weather.1
The Sun-Times excuses have an ad hoc quality to them that gives even the casual reader the impression they are making it up as they go along. Just a month ago, Chicago saw a wicked and violent black mob wreaking mayhem in the ice and snow.
So excuses do not have to be true, or relevant.
If you want to get all your excuses in one place—without worrying about anyone bringing up the R word—the Huffington Post is the champion of the world.2
This contest for best excuses was decided in early 2013 when Ahmed Shihab-Eldin hosted a live video stream featuring a psychologist, a criminologist, a small business owner, an FBI agent, and a state senator, all explaining mob violence. Everything they said is basically interchangeable. So let’s get to it:
Luke Cho owns a store that was recently hit with black mob theft. He started it off:
2–3) “They are not really bad kids; I think they just got caught up in the flash mob thing.”
4–6) “They get in trouble and I try to teach them the difference between right and wrong but things happen.”
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VIDEO: Ice and Snow Riot
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VIDEO: Full of Excuses
As you can see, people often pack multiple excuses into one statement.
Next up, Jeffrey Ian Ross, a real-life criminologist from Baltimore:
7–11) “People in groups tend to let their guard down. They think they are oblivious to CTV. The reasons are ‘Boredom to wanting a new pair of jeans to wanting to express their discontent.’”
Of course then the host had to get in on it. He is, after all, not a potted plant:
12–15) “There’s power in numbers so they are more likely to act out. … The anonymity factor might be a contributing factor. … Does adrenaline play a factor?
Then they brought out the big guns, Dr. Jeff Gardere, a New York City psychologist:
16–22) “Anonymity reduces their sense of responsibility and accountability … They are not thinking about the consequences. There are a lot of teens looking for excitement. So it is the perfect breeding ground for some sort of trouble.”
23–25) “We find that normally good kids get caught up in the excitement of that group and do something that is very wrong. And when they are called upon individually, they have a lot of remorse.”
26–29) “But they have much less empathy in these groups because people don’t care. They are caught up in the moment. And one last thing: People need a family. And if they don’t have a family, that flash mob becomes the family at the moment.”
30) “My moral compass was skewed when I was in a group.” (This might be the host talking. At this point, what difference does it make?)
31–35) “I think adrenaline plays a role. We get into the fight or flight of the sympathetic system. We are geared to deal with battle to deal with excitement and we revert to that part of our functioning system.”
36–39) “Certainly the adrenaline does not allow us to think the way we should. Serotonin levels also drop and we need serotonin for more impulse control and to focus more and we see a lot of neurotransmitters are certainly affected.”
Playing the serotonin card. Sweet! That’ll get you invited back.
40–46) “It becomes something that is not just conscious thought. But it is almost a visceral thing. It is in many ways relating back to a very low level of behavior and evolution and we are letting that part of the brain – which is much more controlled by demand and impulse – take over.”
47–52) “We need to look at the reality. It is not just about income. It is not just about race. It’s about culture. We have a culture where getting involved with a mob seems to alleviate any kind of conscience that you have or taking individual responsibility.”
53) “A lot of it is about education.”
That has to be close to a world record for excuse density. I just shipped the transcript off to Guinness. I’ll let you know.
Let’s go back to the Baltimore guy:
54–55) “There are a number of issues including boredom. I think someone mentioned the excitement of the moment. And that can carry a person through.”
56) “When asked afterward, they have a considerable amount of remorse.”
57–59) “We se
e this in a lot of cases of soccer games and national championships, people let down their guard and do a lot of things they would not do otherwise.”
Cue the former FBI guy, Michael Tabman:
60–64) “Teenagers don’t make the best decisions. They like to take on authority and do what is not expected of them. They are contrarian. These kids are very empowered by the mob and into the highest levels of government.”
65–66) “These are kids. They are not thinking this out.”
67–72) “It might not be a violent criminal. It might just be immature to cope with boredom and look big and bold in front of their friends. So I agree we need ‘it takes a village,’ just like we need in gun control.”
Of course the HuffPo commenters are useful as well:
73) “Lack of opportunity is the root cause.”
74–75) “Violence and crime are directionally correlated to wealth and income disparity. When there is not opportunity, there will be crime.
76–77) “These are the consequences of a materialistic, corporate-driven culture … deal with it.”
78) “The flash mob is a physical manifestation of the anonymity people feel they have online.”
79–81) “If you were never a teen, and never pulled off pranks or even misdemeanors in your youth, then by all means let’s gun them down! But otherwise …”
82) “Walmart deserves to be flash robbed.”
83) “Stealing jeans in a store?? I’ll take that over an Aurora [Colorado] teen killing everyone in a theater …”
84–87) “The phenomenon of herd mentality is powerful and dangerous. And it happens everywhere, not just with teens and the Internet. It’s happening right now in our government.”
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