Native American activist Nathan Phillips and one of the children. Youtube screenshot via Reason.
The national news media stripped the context and lied about the viral video they claim shows white teens harassing a Native American activist. Reason. According to the media, the video shows the boys, who were Catholic school students there for the March For Life, taunting and harassing Nathan Phillips, an activist. More video brings much needed context to the situation. The group of boys were being harassed by the Black Hebrew Israelites, a black nationalist cult, who called them "faggots", "crackers" and "pedophiles". They also called one of the few black students there the n-word and said that white people would kill him and harvest his organs. Nathan Philips then entered the area and walked into the crowd of boys and started beating his drum and chanting. The boys were confused and some joined in with the chants while others expressed that confusion. One boy stood there and stared at Philips and smiled at him. The boys never surrounded Philips, they simply did not get out of his way and even thought he might be on their side.
The black nationalist video of this event can be found below. The incident in question begins at around the 1:10 minutes mark.
My Comment:
I admit to being biased in this case. Truth be told that this situation made me so angry that I had difficulty sleeping today. I knew right away that this story didn't pass the smell test. Why? Because I have seen what actual harassment looks like and it's not a bunch of boys sitting around and smiling at an activist. It's usually people like Antifa or Black Lives matter punching people.
Nobody got punched in this incident and the only people getting harassed were the Catholic boys. The only things the boys did was continue their school chants, sing along with Phillips and not get out of his way. One boy did have a smile on his face but given the ridiculousness of the situation, can you blame him? This is a total non incident and that was obvious even from the original video that stripped away all of the context.
It was also clear from the start that Phillips was an activist who wanted this kind of reaction. I am sure he had media buddies and has done things like this before. From what I understand he has a history of getting into the faces of people in protest and then runs to the media if people get upset with that. It's a classic protester tactic and one that people should be clued into by now. Far from an innocent victim, Phillips was an instigator who wanted media coverage and didn't care if people got hurt.
However, the lie spread across the world before the truth came out and people did not react well to the lie to say the least. These boys are under serious threat now and already their school has threatened to expel them. Blue checkmarks on twitter are out for blood and are trying to identify these boys in order to harass them. This kind of doxxing is obviously illegal, but somehow I doubt people will end up getting arrested for this.
This is, quite frankly, disgusting. These boys did nothing wrong and did nothing to provoke the incident that occurred. They were just participating in political activity that is protected under the 1st amendment, and they weren't even doing that at the time the harassment occurred. They were just waiting for their bus. Indeed, these boys look like they would be pretty fun to hang out with and if they had a flaw it was naively trusting Nathan Phillips to be one of the good guys.
For the sin of chanting along, having a good time, being harassed by activists and racists and, above all, being awkward white teenagers wearing MAGA hats, the media and social media activists have decided that their lives should be destroyed. Everyone understands that if these boys names and faces are out there then they will face the kind of targeted harassment that everyone claims to hate until it is used against their political enemies. These boys will face death threats, angry phone calls, possibly swating, maybe even violence, not to mention possible expulsion and damaged career prospects just so people on social media can satisfy their blood lust. Again, these boys did NOTHING wrong, other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time and having the wrong race, gender and political opinion.
Plus, I have to mention, does nobody care that these are children? It would be one thing if these were adults, assuming they did something wrong, which they didn't. I don't think adults should be treated like this either, but there is an obvious moral difference between harassing fully grown adults who have a good idea what the consequences of their actions could be and harassing children who aren't developed yet and may not understand that you shouldn't engage with protesters at all. These boys had no idea that their lives were about to be ruined and just thought they were having a good time on a school trip. The idea that we should harass and ruin the lives of children for basically no reason other then their race, gender and ideology is just beyond disgusting.
It was maddening to me to see this spread over the past 24 hours. I was working a 12 hour overtime shift so there was very little I could do. But during my downtime I checked my phone and saw someone else post it on Facebook or the video trending on Twitter. Even then I knew that there was going to be more to the video than it was showing and that even in the video there wasn't any bad behavior at all.
But I also knew that trying to counter the misinformation was going to be pointless. People had already made up their minds and even after this new evidence comes out, I doubt anyone will update their beliefs. People are just so consumed with hatred right now that they will not listen to reason (or Reason in this case). I still am posting this anyways, more for my own benefit since I needed to get this off my chest or to explain to people on my side what actually happened, but all in all it was a very depressing thing to watch this happen and know there was nothing I could do to stop it.
Finally, I have to say that I am utterly disgusted by the mainstream media. Just when I thought that they couldn't get any lower than the BuzzFeed Trump story that was quickly debunked or the New York Times Paul Manafort story that was also quickly debunked, they decided to organize the harassment of a bunch of kids based on their race, gender and politics. I have always agreed that the Press was the enemy of the people, and though that even before Trump said it, but this is almost literal enemy action. Something absolutely has to change in this country if this is the way that the press is going to act...
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