Radical evil, and the online lynching of a kid from Kentucky, by Roger Kimball.
Now we have the truly outrageous, horrible story of what Kant called radical evil. A white, male, Catholic teen who had been to the pro-life march and was wearing a MAGA hat smirked at an Indian Elder who was beating a drum in his face while clad in Native garb (but white Western eyeglasses). …
So far, the smirking teen has not been identified. Doubtless he will be. And he is in big trouble. If the Twitter Mob had its way, he’d already have been lynched and had had his MAGA hat stuffed down his throat. His high school is ‘investigating’ the incident and promises to take ‘appropriate action, up to and including expulsion.’ …
Selectively reported fakery:
A classmate has written to a local television station to give his side of the story, which is sharply at odds with the white-boy-bad version burning up the internet. And another video, as Daniel McCarthy points out, shows the activists taunting the kids.
… The teen is not smirking in this clip, and Phillips has an entourage with cameras. One of the Native activists argues with a Covington teen, who argues back. This and other clips have shown the Indian activists racially taunting the teens, saying things like ‘go back to Europe.’ …
Based on what can actually be seen and heard, it’s looks as if Phillips and his crew sought out Catholic teenagers and tried to make them uncomfortable. And of course, they recorded it.
A lot of people from the right jumped on the bandwagon of beating up on the teens. Didn’t wait for the facts either. Too eager to ingratiate themselves with their PC tormentors. Some big names have got some apologizing to do. As well the left of course, but the left never apologize — it’s an integrity thing.
People on the right need to be more skeptical of this kind of thing, rather than rushing to jump on the “we’re better than that” (by which they really mean “I’m better than that”) bandwagon.
Lefties rely on that to give momentum to their hit pieces. Instead, hold back and wait for facts to develop. Often — possibly more often than not — the facts will show things to be different than they first appeared. …
You can’t trust what the likes of CNN and Buzzfeed say about people on the right. You absolutely need to do your own due diligence before piling on.
