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July 18, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

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2434 Media Bias, Racial Profiling and Zimmerman - Stefan Molyneux on The Peter Schiff Show

Stefan Molyneux and Peter Schiff discuss the role of the media in the growth of racial tensions over the George Zimmerman trial and Trayvon Martin situation.

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	- The Peter Schiff Show.
	Joining our program now is Stefan Molyneux, Stefan is the host of Free Domain Radio.
	He's also the author of several books, including Practical Anarchy, Everyday Anarchy, and How Not to Achieve Freedom.
	He's also the guest host, rather, of my radio show.
	Occasionally, Stefan, welcome to the show as a guest.
	Well, thank you, Peter.
	I appreciate it.
	Congratulations on your son.
	I just wanted to mention that.
	Very exciting time.
	Yeah, yeah, it is exciting.
	He's only, what, about nine or ten days old right now.
	He's doing great.
	His mom's doing great.
	So thanks.
	And we've got a lot of people, too, that have wished me congratulations, so I appreciate that.
	But let me start, Stefan.
	You know, you came out.
	I mean, I've been, you know, I don't know if you've heard any of the stuff I've been saying.
	You know, we've put some of it on YouTube videos about the, you know, George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin saga.
	And you expressed many of the same sentiments that I did in your most recent video blog, which I think the last time I checked, you had at least, what, 300,000 views, which is pretty good.
	Actually, it's 640,000 now.
	It may have had a measurable impact on public opinion.
	It's shocking.
	Well, it's certainly, it might have had it on the 600,000 people, although I know that, you know, the YouTube videos that we've put up, I mean, they only have like 30 or 40,000 views, so I'm not really sure what you did to get all those views.
	But, you know, I get a lot, there are a lot of people though that are, I think, that are watching my videos that have negative comments and that are, you know, that more than I would have expected, taking, you know, basically taking the position that Zimmerman is a murderer and Trayvon is an innocent child.
	So, I don't know.
	What is it like on your videos?
	How are the comments?
	Thumbs up, thumbs down?
	What are you seeing?
	Well, it's about 88-89% positive in terms of the response, but there are, of course, a core group of haters who just are obsessed with the idea that this guy who everybody thinks is white sort of stalked and pursued and murdered this young, innocent black kid for no reason whatsoever.
	And you can't dislodge prejudice with facts.
	That's the whole point of prejudice.
	It's impervious to facts.
	So I just try to lay out the facts as clearly as possible, the law.
	as clearly as possible and let people draw their own conclusions and it seems to me that the jury came to exactly the right decision which took some real courage.
	Yeah, which it also shows that the police, the local police, initially came to the right conclusion not to prosecute him because they didn't think there was any evidence of a crime.
	And what's the point of, you know, putting a man through a trial, the expense?
	I'm sure it cost Florida a lot of money to prosecute this case.
	This was not an inexpensive case to prosecute.
	All that money was wasted.
	Well, I mean, I think that they were just appeasing the race baiters, so I think that's fairly clear.
	I mean, the Department of Justice apparently has been funding, or was funding last year, the anti-Zimmerman protests to the tunes of, you know, thousands, hundreds of thousands, some people even say millions of dollars.
	So there is a lot of division.
	Governments love to cause division among people, and portraying, and the media loves it too, because of the raiding, and everybody gets up in arms, it's all manufactured stuff.
	But this was as classic a case of self-defense as you can get.
	Yeah, the most interesting aspect, and I've got a written commentary that I'm putting out on it tomorrow, but the most interesting aspect and where I see a lot of similarities with the economy is that, you know, you get the media, they jump to this conclusion that, oh, this white racist gunned down this innocent child, and they dig in their heels and they say, this is what happened, and they run with this story.
	And then as all this evidence comes out, well, he wasn't actually white, he was Hispanic, and it wasn't a little child.
	It was a 17-year-old kid who was pretty violent, got into a lot of fights, you know, pretty muscular, strong, athletic kid.
	You know, maybe he used drugs and, you know, he wasn't exactly, you know, a choir boy, Boy Scout.
	And Zimmerman, you know, not only wasn't he a racist, but he took a black girl to the senior prom.
	He's mentoring young black kids.
	He's championing the cause of a black homeless man who was beaten by the son of a white policeman.
	He's a politically active person.
	I mean, he's nothing like they originally believed.
	Trayvon is nothing like they believed.
	Yet, they remain oblivious to all this evidence that contradicts their story.
	And even after they get a trial and an acquittal, they're just as convinced of their original narrative.
	They're completely blind to all of the facts that come in that contradict what they assume.
	Well, you know, Peter, of course, being in the mainstream media means never having to say that you're sorry, that you made a mistake, that you jumped the gun.
	You just move on to the next victim and then destroy more lives for the sake of creating all of these artificial divisions and keeping the important stories out of the news.
	Yeah, I mean, you think, what would have been so hard for the media to say early on, oh, I guess we made a mistake.
	You know, the facts are not what we originally thought.
	But where I think this is very relevant is when you look at the economy, because I see the same thing.
	You know, the Fed comes in and says, we need QE, we need all this stimulus, we need all this money printing, and they do it.
	And the economy doesn't get better.
	And so they say, we need to print more.
	We need more stimulus.
	And they keep doing it.
	And then they ignore all the evidence that it's not working and continue to do more and more of it.
	And it's like they're oblivious.
	All the evidence that contradicts their theories, all that evidence shows that their theory is wrong, but they ignore it and continue to pursue the same narrative anyway.
	It's very similar to the psychology of the mob when it comes to Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman.
	Well, you know, when you're on the other side of government funding, you never have to correct your opinion.
	You know, you and I, we provide services in the free market, and if we make mistakes and we don't confess to those mistakes and correct our behavior, people lose trust in us, they lose faith in us, and therefore they're going to go somewhere else to get their perspectives.
	But if you're in the government, it's like asking for improvements in the customer service at the DMV or the post office.
	It's not going to happen because they're on the other side of coercion.
	They're on the other side of taxation.
	They don't have to provide good customer service.
	And the media is so embedded with the government now.
	They've given up on investigative reporting.
	They simply take government reports and present them as news.
	And they need all their government contacts so they don't want to get the government annoyed with them.
	They're so embedded with the government that they're just another arm.
	And so they never have to correct themselves because they're on the other side of power.
	Yep, yep.
	Hey, also I was told that you had a new theory on why Trayvon is dead.
	I mean, other than the fact that he was shot, what's your theory?
	Well, could you tell me a little bit more?
	Because I've spun quite a few theories out recently.
	I want to make sure I narrow it down.
	I don't know, but I was just, I have it on my topics that you've got a new theory.
	So what's your newest theory?
	I don't know.
	Maybe there's something new that I haven't heard.
	One of the things I think that's important is there's, I mean, obviously there's the murder question, which has been decided by the court that it was self-defense.
	The second is the stalking issue.
	Do people say he stalked Trayvon Martin.
	Well, stalking cannot really occur, just like malice beforehand can't occur in a first meeting.
	Stalking is like repetitively cornering and frightening and impacting on someone's lives, and it's dealt with with restraining order, which doesn't matter in this case.
	But most importantly is this question of racial profiling.
	Did Zimmerman have this racial profiling occurring?
	And I just don't think that's accurate or true.
	I mean, if Trayvon Martin was a 90-year-old black guy in a wheelchair, Clearly, Zimmerman would have gotten out the car to help the guy.
	Oh, you're lost.
	Let me help you, Grandpa.
	Even though he would be a black guy.
	So he must be profiling on something other than race alone.
	And he's profiling, I would guess, based on the fact that he wasn't even sure that Martin was black because he had a hoodie.
	But, you know, you've got this guy weaving back and forth, maybe on drugs, may not be on drugs.
	He's walking in the rain without a rain jacket or without an umbrella.
	He's cutting in between houses.
	But, you know, here's another point, though, Stefan.
	Even if he had, even if his being black was one of the factors that made him suspicious, of course it's the combination of young, male, and black, But even if he did that, I don't even see how there's anything wrong with that, because if all of the people who had been committing burglaries that had been caught had all been young black males,
	then why wouldn't he be extra suspicious of young black males if he's worried that the person that's people might be robbing the community?
	And all of the robbers who have thus far been apprehended have been young, male, and black, then why wouldn't somebody that fit that profile be more suspicious than somebody who is maybe old, female, and white, right?
	What's wrong with profiling if he even did it?
	Well, and of course the accurate fact is that according to what had happened in Trayvon Martin's school beforehand where he'd been caught attacking a locker with WTF and then the security guard had searched his backpack and found stolen items and what was described as basically a lockpick, George Zimmerman, although he didn't know that at the time, was actually accurate in that it seems that Trayvon Martin had been involved in break-ins and thefts beforehand, so this kind of profiling.
	But if he was a young black man, you know, reading a computer magazine, trying to clean his glasses in the rain, dressed nicely, I don't think that we would have been the same.
	It's not just the young male in black, it's the whole...
	I mean, I don't know why people want to say that, oh, you know, you should be able to dress any way you want without garnering suspicion.
	Look, what if he was wearing a ski mask on his face?
	I mean, to say that the way you are attired isn't going to raise some level of suspicion.
	Look, there are consequences to what you do.
	And if you want to dress a certain way, if you want to dress in a way where you're trying to look like a gangbanger, then you can't take offense if people jump to a conclusion that maybe you're up to no good.
	But, you know, even if he jumped to an erroneous conclusion about Trayvon Martin and as a result was following him or looking at him or even if he was stalking, which, again, it can't be because he just started it.
	But that doesn't give you the right to beat the crap out of somebody and threaten to kill him.
	You know, you can tell them to get lost, go away.
	You can say, I'm going to call the cops.
	I'm going to call 911, but you can't assault them unless they attack you first and then you can only defend yourself.
	You can't, you know, even if someone attacks you, Once you've clearly won the fight, once the guy is lying helpless on the ground pleading for help, you can't continue to beat him.
	You have to stop.
	Well, of course, the reality is that if George Zimmerman did not have a gun and if Trayvon Martin had stopped the assault after he'd broken his or fractured his nose and pounded his head into the concrete and so on, it seems likely that he would certainly have been charged with aggravated assault, a felony, Or possibly with attempted murder, if he had uttered the threat, which Zimmerman claims he uttered.
	I mean, he might have been another one that got away.
	But assuming the police, if the police had gotten there a little bit earlier, before the gunshot had been fired, if they had got there while Trayvon was on top of Zimmerman beating him, if the police would have grabbed him, yes, he would have been charged with assault and battery, and he might have done jail time.
	We got a break.
	We'll be back.
	We'll maybe change the subject a little bit.
	And by the way, if you are a premium member of the Peter Schiff Show, you're not only listening to Stefan, but you can actually see him.
	We have a split screen going.
	He's on Skype, so you can see and hear Stefan as well as me if you're a premium member to Schiff Radio.
	We got a quick break.
	We'll be right back.
	This is Peter Schiff.
	We're talking with Stefan Molyneux.
	Hey, you know, Stefan, I wanted to mention, too, because this is a local story, so you might not have even seen it.
	But it was, you know, very reminiscent of the Zimmerman Trayvon Martin.
	This is a situation where a 39 year old man here in Stanford, Connecticut, this was in June, was brutally beaten by a group of four or five gang members.
	He was robbed.
	He happened to be Hispanic, I think.
	I mean, look, the guy's in the hospital.
	He's a complete mess.
	I mean, if you look at pictures of him, I mean, way worse than George Zimmerman.
	I mean, he got the crap kicked out of him.
	Months in the hospital.
	He's got all kinds of broken ribs, broken jaw.
	I mean, he's a mess.
	His eyes are, you know, he might not even see out of one eye.
	Really beat up.
	And they just caught One of the suspects.
	He's been arrested.
	He's a 12-year-old.
	So everybody was talking about, you know, hey, you know, Zimmerman shot a child.
	Well, he shot somebody who was 17.
	But, you know, this 12-year-old, now I don't know, he did have help.
	There were four or five other people.
	I don't know if they were all 12, if it was a gang of 12-year-olds or some of them are older.
	But here's what I was thinking.
	What if this guy had had a gun?
	Because if he'd had a gun, he wouldn't have had the crap kicked out of him this badly.
	What if he pulled out his gun and shot into the crowd and happened to kill this 12 year old?
	And because he killed the 12 year old and everybody else ran away, he would not have been brutally beaten the way he was because he would have shot some of these kids before they had a chance to beat him to literally within an inch of his life.
	Can you imagine what the media would have said?
	It would have been this racist man, guns down.
	Although I don't know.
	I'm assuming.
	I don't know if the kid was black.
	I mean, it was a gang in Stanford.
	So probably.
	But the story, again, the story doesn't even mention the race.
	Although it did mention the race of the victim being Hispanic or Hispanic man.
	But it didn't mention the race of the 12-year-old.
	But maybe he wasn't.
	Maybe he was white.
	I don't know.
	But let's say he was black.
	It would have been a complete racial story, guns down a child.
	Look, this guy might have been killed by that child, and that gun might have prevented him from getting beaten like this.
	Well, first of all, when they don't mention race, it's usually black.
	That's just a rule of media reporting.
	They just try to avoid it because they say that they're concerned with creating stereotypes.
	I don't really see how reality can be a stereotype.
	But the second thing, of course, according to the law of media reporting of black victims of potential self-defense, they would have to then show pictures of him in the womb, an ultrasound, maybe a four-year-old picture of him, and so on.
	They'd have to shave off a huge number of years just to create the requisite amount of bias against shooting children.
	The idea that Trayvon Martin was a child, it's offensive and insulting in so many different ways.
	First of all, he could have been tried as an adult.
	That's a basic reality.
	70-year-olds are often tried as an adult.
	You know, I've not seen a lot of media reports that say, do you know that America allows children to drive cars?
	Because you can drive cars.
	And you can also join the military at the age of 17.
	And I've never seen one article complaining that the U.S. Army accepts child soldiers.
	I mean, it's just a way of manufacturing that knee-jerk response that parents have when children are in harm.
	I had a young man, 18 years old, who's the CEO of a company that he started.
	He's already got $5 million, I think, in venture funding.
	He started the company when he was 17.
	Child labor.
	Child labor should have stopped him.
	Terrible.
	Yes.
	He's Dickensian.
	What are we sending them down the mines next?
	It's terrible.
	How dare they let a child run that company?
	Yeah.
	But let's try to talk about something else.
	You know, another issue that I'm sure you're concerned about is the issue of privacy now in America.
	And, you know, we've got, you know, maybe Trayvon Martin or Zimmerman has knocked Snowden off the front pages.
	But, you know, this guy is now a fugitive from justice.
	Because he basically told the American public what the U.S. government is doing to the American public in the name of national security.
	Yeah, it's awful.
	You know, according to the Whistleblower Act, any government employee who reports illegal activity should be shielded from any consequences, and there are significantly strong legal arguments that what the prison program was doing was illegal.
	And of course, this just shows you once more, as we see with the Trayvon Martin thing, as we see with a wide variety of other situations, that we kind of live outside the rule of law these days.
	I mean, I was talking to John Allison, who's the CEO of the Cato Institute, who was pointing out that certainly the banking industry, they're operating in a state of what's called regime uncertainty.
	They have no idea which laws are going to be applied, which laws are not going to be applied.
	Snowden should at least have the chance or at least have the opportunity To plead his innocence under the Whistleblower Act, specifically designed to protect government employees from repercussions or retaliations for revealing illegal government activity.
	Seems to be pretty illegal, according to the legal opinions that I've looked at, but that's not even a possibility.
	They're just immediately charging him with whatever they can throw at him, decades in prison, which is crazy.
	You know, in England, a guy who sold secrets to the enemy only got two years.
	So it's outside the rules of law, it's just retaliation.
	It's not like he gave, you know, nuclear secrets to the Russians.
	I mean, he didn't divulge this information to our enemies unless the U.S. government views American citizens as the enemy, because that's what he did.
	He just made a public disclosure to all of us.
	It wasn't like this is a secret meeting in the Kremlin, in the Cold War, and he gave the enemy information about, you know, where our spies are located or, you know, The nuclear launch codes or something like that.
	I mean, he gave the information to the public.
	How is that even espionage?
	And how on earth are we supposed to vote on policies that we're never allowed to find out about?
	I mean, this is how you're supposed to have a...
	Then, of course, Obama says, well, we welcome the public debate, which is why we've been hiding it for six, seven, or eight years from everyone.
	No, I mean, you know, the best is, in fact, in the sunlight, and we need to have a public debate about this stuff.
	And I certainly don't blame Snowden for not wanting to come back to face justice in America, considering, you know, just looking at this Trayvon Martin Zimmerman case, you would think there is no justice, that he's going to be in a kangaroo court, the fix is going to be in, and he's not going to get a fair trial.
	That's probably why he doesn't want to come back here.
	Oh, yeah.
	I mean, I think there's no doubt about that.
	The DOJ is now trying to override double jeopardy by finding him guilty of something else, even though the FBI investigated him for months and found no evidence of racial bias.
	It really is.
	It's become mob mentality, mob justice.
	It's late Roman democracy, which is, you know, find some unfriendly lions, find some unpopular people and put the two together in an amphitheater.
	This is what it's become.
	And I think one of the things that jurors did in the recent trial is they actually did follow the law.
	And I was actually quite a little bit surprised.
	And I guess it was because they were sequestered from all the media, I was actually kind of surprised.
	And it was kind of a nice little moment there where, wow, we actually did follow the law, although the mob is howling for blood.
	It's the same thing with Snowden.
	Can we not actually figure out what he did that was wrong?
	Hey, Stefan, we're running out of time.
	Again, it's Free Domain Radio if you want to hear more of Stefan Molyneux.
	If you want to hear more of the Peter Schiff Show, we've got another hour coming up after this break.
	Stick around.

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