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Like I said, this guy is a professional activist. He apparently was at yesterday's event accompanied by a camera crew.
Nathan Phillips is not only an activist, he is a professional actor too. Watch him in this 2012 video. Yesterday's event in retrospect seems to have been a staged (non)confrontation. Did mainstream media get taken, or were they in cahoots?
There's nothing wrong with being an activist or being an actor. But if one is both, others must keep in mind that the agitator is adept at delivering his/her lines and playing a scripted part for money. Good to find out who is pulling the strings and bankrolling the production.
1. National Disgrace Network (@CNN)
This is just about the best and the most objective commentary you are likely to read on Saturday's non-event event near Lincoln Memorial steps, which @CNN and others have done their best to ruin many innocent lives over.
reason.com/blog/2019/01/2…
This is just about the best and the most objective commentary you are likely to read on Saturday's non-event event near Lincoln Memorial steps, which @CNN and others have done their best to ruin many innocent lives over.
reason.com/blog/2019/01/2…
2. Far from engaging in harassment, the group of mostly white, MAGA-hat-wearing male teenagers remained relatively calm and restrained despite being subjected to incessant racist, homophobic, and bigoted verbal abuse by members of the bizarre sect Black Hebrew Israelites.
3. BHI has existed since the late 19th century, and is best described as a black nationalist cult movement; its members believe they are descendants of the ancient Israelites, and often express condemnation of whites, Christians, and gays. They are known to spout vile bigotry.
4. Phillips put himself between the teens and the black nationalists, chanting and drumming as he marched straight into the middle of the group of young people. What followed was several minutes of confusion.
5. The teens couldn't quite decide whether Phillips was on their side or not, but tentatively joined in his chanting. It's not at all clear this was intended as an act of mockery rather than solidarity.
6. One student did not get out of Phillips way as he marched, and gave the man a hard stare and a smile. This moment received the most media coverage: The teen has been likened to a school shooter, segregation-era racist, and member of the Ku Klux Klan.
7. Portraying this as an example of obvious, racially-motivated hate is a stretch. Maybe he simply had no idea why this man was drumming in his face, and couldn't quite figure out the best response? It bears repeating that Phillips approached him, not the other way around.
8. And that's all there is to it. Phillips walked away after several minutes, the Black Hebrew Israelites continued to insult the crowd, and nothing else happened.
9. You can judge for yourself. Here is video footage of the full incident, from the perspective of the black nationalists.
10. Phillips enters the picture around the 1:12 mark, but if you skip to that part, you miss an hour of the Black Hebrew Israelites hurling obscenities at the students. They call them crackers, faggots, and pedophiles.
11. At the 1:20 mark (which comes after the Phillips incident) they call one of the few black students the n-word and tell him that his friends are going to murder him and steal his organs.
12. At the 1:25 mark, they complain that "you give faggots rights," which prompted booing from the students. Throughout the video they threaten the kids with violence, and attempt to goad them into attacking first. The students resisted these taunts admirably.
13. It would be impossible to definitively state that none of the young men did anything wrong, offensive, or problematic, at some point, and maybe the smiling student was attempting to intimidate Phillips.
14. But there's shockingly little evidence of wrongdoing, unless donning a Trump hat and standing in a group of other people doing the same is now an act of harassment or violence. Phillips' account, meanwhile, is at best flawed, and arguably deliberately misleading.
The End
The End
