Glenn Beck's ridiculous Ferguson chalkboard
Last Tuesday, March 17, I received a text message from my friend DeRay McKesson with a YouTube link. Deray asked me to check out the video. I had no idea that I was about to be featured in it.
The video is of Glenn Beck and former NYPD officer John Cardillo uncovering what they purport to be a complex, well-funded conspiracy in Ferguson, Missouri, backed with $33 million from billionaire George Soros with ties to ISIS, communists, and other anti-Americans. By the time they introduced the video in this ridiculous and fanciful way, it already resembled a very bad SNL skit.
Then, my jaw dropped. Beyond the weird reality that a hateful show had the word "love" painted on the wall, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. ...
Glenn: Okay. So, tell me, take me through the chalkboard and show me what you found.
John: Okay, let’s walk through it.
Glenn: You started with the two main guys.
John: Started with two main guys, so the two main guys we started with was a guy named DeRay McKesson and a guy named Shaun King.
Watch the video for yourself and see my thoughts below the fold.
The entire video is about as dumb and factually inaccurate as a presentation about Ferguson could ever be. In part, that's what's so scary about it. Let me break down some of the lies.
Lie #1:
Glenn: Can I start here? #BlackLivesMatter and #HandsUpDontShoot, those are the two things that everybody knows.
John: Everyone knows them, two most predominant hashtags, used quite often by both of these guys.
Rebuttal: I've almost never used either of those hashtags. I'm not really a hashtag guy. While I support both of them, starting a segment out by stating that I use them both, and often at that, clued me in right away that these guys were in no man's land.
Lie #2:
John: This guy, Shaun King, has become an absolute pro at using GoFundMe.
Rebuttal: I hate GoFundMe. They are the primary profiteers from Darren Wilson's fundraising and have allowed racists to profiteer off of the misery of black folk time after time. I actually helped lead a boycott against them. I've never started a campaign for anyone using GoFundMe.
Lie #3:
John: Unfortunately, there have been a lot of questions about where the money goes after he raises this money.
Glenn: Okay.
John: One lawyer consistently comes out and defends him.
Rebuttal: Not one family member or person associated with a family member who has been victimized by police has ever had a single question, privately or publicly, about any fundraising I've helped with. Only conservatives and racists who never really wanted these families to receive support in the first place have questioned it. Not only that, but I've never received a penny from the fundraising and never, for one second, held any funds for families in my possession—directly or indirectly. The funds raised for families have always gone straight to the families. Furthermore, the "one lawyer" that he is speaking about is Benjamin Crump, who is the the lawyer of the families I've helped raise funds for.
Lie #4:
John: It's funded by a guy we all know, George Soros.
Glenn: What a surprise.
John: To the tune of $33 million that we can find.
Rebuttal: So, Deray and I are the two main guys, right? Neither of us have received a dime from George Soros or his foundation. In fact, I can't find one single person who has received any of this $33 million that they speak of because it's a lie. To say that this man has funneled $33 million through us or any grassroots leaders on the ground in Ferguson is outrageous and dangerous. It suggests something nefarious that just isn't happening. Please tell me exactly what the $33 million has done. Who received it? When? This is messy, snopes-level conspiracy talk. Stop it.
Lie #5:
John: You’ve got Nation of Islam which appears to be acting as the muscle, because they’re also bringing in elements of the new Black Panther party.
Rebuttal: To call either the Nation of Islam or the new Black Panther party "the muscle" in Ferguson is another preposterous lie. These groups, at the very best, are an extremely rare presence and most protestors say that these groups are almost never present at protests or actions.
Lie #6:
Jesse Jackson is sort of hanging out the middle with the Rainbow Push Coalition. He’s … let’s call him a COO type for all of this right now.
Glenn: The elder statesman of radicals.
John: Exactly, the elder statesman.
Rebuttal: If Jesse Jackson is the COO of Ferguson activism then Spiderman is the COO of Disney or Marvel. This is comic-book level ridiculousness. Jesse Jackson isn't even the elder statesman of Ferguson protestors or activists. This is just pure fiction. Without being disrespectful to the man, he's almost a complete non-factor in Ferguson. Al Sharpton is not a primary or even secondary planner or voice in Ferguson. His organization is not active there. Nobody on the ground will tell you otherwise. To list him as a political puppeteer of some sort shows just how far off this entire debacle of a conversation really was.
Lie #7:
John: And you’ve got the SEIU handling all the organization.
Glenn: Holy cow.
Rebuttal: More foolishness. In the 7+ months since Mike Brown was killed in Ferguson, the SEIU assisted with planning one event. Because of the attention on Ferguson, dozens of organizations have helped plan events in and around Ferguson during this time. The SEIU is not an active player in Ferguson in protests and they never have been.
Lie #8:
John: Okay, so now here again for the sinister angle of it all, so we know all these players, all pretty bad guys in their own right. Enter the pro-Palestinian group. Now, you’ve got a journalist, Rania Khalek.
Glenn: From where?
John: She’s just a pro-Palestinian journalist about the world.
Glenn: Okay, freelancer.
Rebuttal: This is just ugly and racist. First off, to refer to the whole board as "pretty bad guys" is just lazy and wrong. Secondly, to introduce the word "sinister" into the conversation and then pivot to Rania Khalek suggests that she, a journalist, is somehow planning an attack on America or using the protests in Ferguson to plan something illegal. Plenty of very good people around the world are genuine advocates for the human rights of Palestinian people and it suggests nothing "sinister" about their intent. To even use that word with her is wrong.
Lie #9:
John: Yeah, and so she believes that the shots were actually aimed at the protesters, that this is all nonsense.
Glenn: Last week’s shots.
John: Last week’s shots, that those cops were hit by accident.
Rebuttal: The facts have shown that Rania was actually right. After a man was arrested in this shooting of two Ferguson police officers,
the prosecutor admitted that the shots were fired from at least 125 yards away and that the man who fired them could've very well been aiming at protestors or people other than the police. Furthermore, all evidence has now settled that
the police chief was dead wrong when he said the shooter was "embedded" with protestors. He wasn't.
Lie #10:
John: In reality, what appears to be happening, my law enforcement sources, intelligence sources, feel it’s information and intelligence sharing. They’re learning from what’s going on in Gaza and other places how to create more unrest here, and these guys are learning from them how to take tactics used in the Middle East and bring them to Ferguson.
Rebuttal: Wow. Just wow. The BS meter on this statement is off the charts high. Who on that board brought unrest tactics from Gaza to Ferguson? Which tactics? Describe them for me. Who taught them in Gaza? When did they teach them in Ferguson? To whom? When were those tactics used in Ferguson. Again, statements like this are being made just to raise fear in people and they are completely false.
Glenn and John even went so far as to put Wu-Tang rapper, Method Man, up on the board. It's just laughable. Is he the one teaching protestors strategies from Gaza?
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Ultimately, I welcome intelligent conversations and even debates about what is right or wrong for the future of this country. This, unfortunately, was not one of those moments. It was so miserably bad that it was actually difficult to find even a nugget of truth in the entire conversation.