How is this a story, when there are so many actual important things happening in the world?
It’s horrifying to see young people wearing MAGA hats, but that’s their right and is not newsworthy. Unless there is another part of the video I’m missing, the Native drummer was getting up in the grill of the high school kid, not vice versa. Since when is refusing to back down and standing your ground a crime?
Wow, another Liberal who doesn’t even bother to read his own cite. :dubious:
In the Snopes article YOU cited, they link to a Facebook video made by Nathan Phillips where he calls himself a “Vietnam Vet.”
“I’m a Vietnam vet, and I served in Marine Corps 72 to 76. I got discharged May 5th, 1976. I got honorable discharge and one of the boxes in there it shows it was peacetime or, what my box says is that I was ‘in theater.’ I don’t talk much about my Vietnam times. I usually say I don’t recollect, I don’t recall those years”:
While I agree that the the kid in the thumbnail picture didn’t seem to do anything wrong, a lot of his classmates went straight to racism when confronted.
Just seems like one of those things people got hot and bothered over when Obama was president and news was slow. Right now we have a government shutdown and a president who is a Manchurian Candidate, not to mention a Democratic primary race getting rolling.
“Nathan Phillips, a native elder and Vietnam vet, says the kids approached him and surrounded him! You going to call a native American Vietnam Vet a liar?”
<video emerges which shows no such thing>
“Ok, Nathan Phillips now says he misremembered a major part of an event that happened just a day ago, and that he may have approached them.”
<information surfaces that shows he wasn’t a Vietnam vet>
“Oh, but he never said he was a Vietnam vet - only a ‘Vietnam ERA’ vet!”
<video surfaces of Nathan Phillips explicitly saying he’s a Vietnam Veteran>
“That doesn’t matter! What matters is that the poor old elder went up to the boys only to make peace and defuse the situation, even if the video kinda looks like he was being pretty aggressive and got in a 15 year old’s face. But the important thing is that he was just trying to make peace!”
“How do you know that?”
“Because Nathan Phillips said so!”
“Oh, okay…”
Ok now do Trump.
I’ll wait…
Did they? How? Can you link to the video evidence of this?
“Hey, guys, we really shouldn’t do this, this guy is a Vietnam war vet…”
“No, he isn’t, he’s lying about all that!”
“He is? Well, OK, then, fuck his sorry ass!”
Trump lies his face off. I do not like Trump. Trump is a bad person.
Fortunately, he has nothing to do with this situation, except that for some triggered people a kid in a MAGA hat will do fine as a Trump surrogate for spewing hatred.
No, more like, “This person has proven himself willing to lie to bolster himself and his cause again and again, so why exactly are we taking his word for anything at all?”
You are claiming that a rambling facebook video was his official statement to the press?
I’ve got some blank VHS tapes in my basement that also show no such thing.
Cite this, please.
Yep, consistent with all of his interviews with the press.
Old and long rambling facebook video, where it is actually a bit hard to her whether he said “era” in there or not, and in any case, was not an official statement to the press, or to anyone at all.
At best, you have proof that he misspoke once.
15 years old?
This was pretty poorly done on your part. Very poorly done. The fire marshal called, and is concerned about all this straw you left lying about here.
Why would any Democrat take a stand here? This is ceding ground to the bad guys, people. Just abandon it and move on to more fertile territory.
Well, except that trump has taken an interest in this conversation, and you are on his side of it. That alone should give you pause.
Vietnam Veterans are people who were active duty during the military operations in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. So said the US Vietnam War Commemoration, the VFW, and also my stepdad with two bronze stars and jungle-rot feet who did not see a reason to glorify his situation. Stepdad was admittedly drunk and AWOL between his two tours, but papers show that he served with distinction and was honorably discharged at the ripe old age of 23 or so. Please cease this horseshit.
You’re either missing the point, or evading it. The young MAGA louts didn’t know anything at all about him at the time. If the question is about their behavior, his honesty regarding his life experience is not relevant.
For me, the bigger question is about the presumed “adults” who set this minor tragedy in motion.
His honesty certainly matters if you are citing him as a factual source. For example, his claim that he approached them as an act of peace and to protect them from the Hebrew Israelites is contradicted by his behaviour and that of his supporters in the video. So why on Earth would you believe him? He’s already been shown to be a serial liar.
I see. So Phillips, who joined the Marine Corps Reserves a year after the last Marine left Vietnam, and who was a refrigeration tech stateside in the reserves for a while until numerous AWOLs and other displinary problems got him a general or disciplinary discharge, is completely in the right to call himself a ‘Vietnam vet’. That’s what you are going to stick to?
Did you not see any videos of the event at all? Tomahawk chopping and mocking his chant is pretty prevalent. It’s an inflammatory title, but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Esf5WO5fQ
I do wonder if the “adults” were actually looking towards a physical confrontation between their students and the Black Israelites. Letting them get themselves worked up, singing school fight songs and chants, and not defusing the situation. That was what they were there for.
They didn’t get on any of the students about harassing a woman they chose to target, and they did nothing o head off this probable physical violent confrontation.
the BI’s were definitely shouting some pretty inflammatory stuff, and it would be “reasonable” for some of the kids to react with violence towards it. The BI’s wanted a physical confrontation as well.
So, two groups, one looking for a fight, and the other not avoiding it. There were no adults to remove tensions. They say they asked if they could sing school songs and cheers, which are things that you sing at sports games to rile up your team and the crowd for a physical confrontation, they are not what you use to lower tension. The kids may not have understood that, but the chaperones most certainly should have.
If they had been looking to lower tensions, they should have suggested “This little light of mine”, not the school fight song.
So, yeah, it seems like the only adult who was looking to prevent violence was Philips. His act of getting in between the groups and distracting them probably headed off a physical confrontation between them.
I get that the students misunderstood this. They just saw some weird guy chanting some weird (but not foreign) language at them. It was something different, so it was something to be challenged and mocked, because they are a bunch of teenage boys, and that’s what teenage boys do when they confront something they don’t understand.
I mostly believe the student when he says that he didn’t understand what Philips was doing, and that is why he thought that Philips was trying to cause an altercation, rather than to prevent one. In his usual environment at a far right religious indoctrination center, adults escalate things, rather than mollify. That explains why the student was so confrontational “back” at him, he was reacting to Philips the way he would if it were a teacher or other adult peer in his community. He is not used to adults trying to calm things down. He was sent on a trip, by adults, half across the country for the specific purpose of riling things up, why would he think that an adult is looking to calm a situation? It’s just not something that really conforms to his life experiences.
In the end, Philips most likely prevented a brawl between the groups, while the chaperones not only allowed it, but took steps to increase its likelihood.
…is it just me or has this story gotten massively stupider since the discussion started?