The fact that he didn’t do as you describe may be why he didn’t do what you accuse.
What makes you think that he was trying to provoke him? What motivation do you think he had to try to provoke him? You are claiming to read his mind enough to understand what he was trying to do, can you read his mind and tell his intentions for doing so as well?
Philips went between the crowds, while chanting and trying to distract the two groups from their hostilities towards eachother. The student ( I know his name is public, but I am uncomfortable discussing minors as private citizens by name), unlike any reasonable person seeing a person coming through while performing a song and dance, stood in his way. Why he chose to not move out of the way for PHilips is something that he only knows. He is a teenager, and teens sometimes make poor choices. That he thought, in that moment, that Philips was trying to provoke something is a reasonable excuse for him to make, one that I can accept as given. So, that confrontation was a misunderstanding between a person who was trying to de-escalate a situation, and a person who was so used to escalation that he had no way of understanding that de-escalation was even possible, much less something that people actually did.
Now, I can accept the student’s reasoning for why he blocked Philip’s path. Are you capable of accepting Philip’s reasoning for why he chose to put himself in between the two groups? Or will you continue your attack on him, claiming that he was trying to start a fight?
I can’t help wondering what would have been the reaction of the student’s parents had he done this when a white man approached.
I have a feeling that they would have punished him for being rude and unmannerly. When an adult (meaning a white male) approaches, you politely get out of his way! But a non-white? That’s different.
The idea that the student believed that Philips was trying to ‘provoke something’ is one that became public only after the lawyers and PR firm got involved, right?
So clearly these very-expensive advocates thought that this concept was the best chance the student had for winning sympathy and/or getting clear of this situation with no negative personal consequences.
But I wonder. If you believe someone is trying to ‘provoke something,’ how would standing right in his face be a helpful move? Is the idea that the kid (supposedly) believed that Philips would be impressed by his massive physique, and thus back down to avoid being thrashed by said massive physique? If so, that doesn’t really make sense. The student isn’t a particularly impressive sight.
It’s an odd idea for the advocates to have come up with.
I don’t need psychic powers to say that if person A is standing still and person B steps up to them, chants loudly in their face, and puts their drum up to person A’s chest such that the drum hits him every time he beats it, that’s provocation.
What would people say if it was a teenaged girl protesting and someone did this to her?
This whole thing is such a stupid own-goal by the left that I keep wondering if the social media outrage was stirred up by Russian trolls. But maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part, hoping that our side isn’t actually being this strategically stupid on their own.
How about to play to the video camera that was being held right behind his head by one of his associates, hoping to get an overreaction that might give them a viral moment to exploit?
I remain astonished that this apparently aggressive drumming near a person whose friends were spewing racism has made such an impression on the right wingers here and everywhere. Sure, liberal protestors get killed by right wingers in Charlottesville, get their arms broken by police in Baltimore, and get kettled in St. Louis. But that aggressive drumming near a person. That’s the one to really get your undies in a bunch. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.
I’m not a right winger. I voted for Gore, Kerry, Obama, and Hillary. I have not converted to Trump, and unless a slug from Titan hacks into my brain stem, I will be voting for the Democratic nominee in 2020.
Fuck that noise. There are plenty of leftists who voted for Trump. Who you voted for is not even sound and fury. It’s simply noise, signifying less than nothing. You have a disgusting, shitty history of racist or racially tinged posts and this thread is no fucking different.
I didn’t put as much emphasis on an older, rambling self-made Facebook video that someone can seemingly hear. I was also just relaying the Snopes conclusion, not researching it.
You’re WRONG! How can anyone believe anything you say when you’re so wrong?!
People should believe the other side of the story in light of your wrongness!
The teenager was 16** years old. You’re just trying to push a narrative that makes the kid less responsible due to his young age. /s*
Thanks for posting, Sam Stone. Your posts, along with Shodan’s, give me something to think about.
I’ve been thinking about why I see the same videos and come up with different conclusions than you do. As I read this, I began to see a possible reason. In my experience, racism isn’t rare. In your world, racism is so rare that one needs to set someone up to videotape them in a rare moment to exploit them.
I do feel a little sad for that kid. If that shit-eating smirk really is his smile, he has many more confrontations ahead. I can see why he’d be upset about that. I do hope, however, that people who have endured malicious shit-eating smirks that look similar to that one, in the past, will get justice in the future.
Maybe not, but you are an admitted white supremacist. You would go about talking about how white people were oppressed, and make videos pushing the idea that black people are genetically inferior in intelligence. You’ve pushed a lot of racist shit on this board.
So since we’re dealing with a racial incident, where these kids were saying racist shit, we’re not going to go to you to figure things out.
And, yes, if you’re racist (along with some other issues), you will likely be mistaken for a Trump supporter. The solution is to avoid being racist. Stop adopting alt-right talking points into your supposedly liberal belief system.
Nope, not an admitted white supremacist. But it’s not surprising that someone here would claim that, given the lack of nuance endemic in these parts.
IDW/radical centrist views are not “alt-right”. To conflate them is intellectually lazy or an outright purposefully dishonest misrepresentation for the sake of strawmanning.
(It’s funny how people accuse me of trying to make everything about me, when the reality is that other posters bend over backward to make it about me, and then I speak up for myself to set the record straight.)
Great, let me rephrase: "I remain astonished that this apparently aggressive drumming near a person whose friends were spewing racism has made such an impression on the right wingers [and people who couldn’t believe it was an important story, yet somehow repeatedly post about it in an effort to harp on the ills of the left] here and everywhere. Sure, liberal protestors get killed by right wingers in Charlottesville, get their arms broken by police in Baltimore, and get kettled in St. Louis. But that aggressive drumming near a person. That’s the one to really get your undies in a bunch. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.