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Nov. 25, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

28:24

2848 The Ferguson Verdict: Propaganda Decoded - Darren Wilson, Michael Brown and Racism

Stefan Molyneux examines the Ferguson Grand Jury verdict in the Michael Brown shooting case and the reaction to the news that Officer Darren Wilson will not face criminal charges. Sources: http://youtu.be/K681JqUVNvg

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	Hi everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	One day after the grand jury recognizes that there is no legal evidence or basis to indict Officer Wilson on any charges from negligent, non-negligent manslaughter all the way through to murder in the first degree, we have the usual media bias operating at full squid ink-to-the-face frontal lobotomy mode.
	Here we have...
	Twelve exceedingly brave and dedicated people, three blacks and nine whites, who listened to three months of testimony from experts who reviewed the results of three autopsies.
	And listened to or reviewed over a thousand pages of evidence.
	Who listened to more than 60 witnesses, having their various lies and obfuscations torn apart, I'm sure, by Officer Wilson's lawyers.
	And after this massive amount of review, which can't be matched by anyone else, not you, not I, not anyone in the media, sat through all of that.
	They decided, based upon all of the evidence that had been put forward, That there was not even a basis, not even a remotely solid enough basis to even have a trial.
	Now, grand juries have been famously called, willing to indict a ham sandwich.
	And they regularly indict just about everything that moves.
	And that is the way things work.
	In 2010, U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases.
	Now, this is federal, not state, but there's no data available for the state.
	So U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 cases.
	Grand juries declined to return an indictment in 11 of them.
	Yes, that would be 11 out of 162,000.
	So let's just say, most times, if you're in front of a grand jury, you're going to be indicted.
	Now, imagine the pressure that these people were under.
	They knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there would be riotings and lootings and burnings of buildings and setting fire to cars and objects thrown at cops and vandalization and so on.
	So they had a strong incentive to pass the buck forward to a trial.
	And they didn't.
	Which, again, I called this correctly a couple of days after the event, but I defer, of course, as any rational person would, to the massive amount of evidence that the people in the grand jury saw, and it is their evidence and their arguments that I respect.
	So, it was not a decision.
	Other people have said, Officer Wilson escaped being indicted.
	No, no.
	No.
	No, no, no.
	It was not a collapsing building that he just happened to jump out of a window of.
	Months and months of evidence, over a thousand pages of evidence, endless expert testimony, witnesses, autopsies were all examined.
	And they were instructed to get past any bias or any preferences and return what the law demanded.
	And they found there was not even enough evidence to go to a trial.
	That is quite an astounding finding and it shows that the evidence was overwhelming.
	Overwhelming.
	That Officer Wilson was assaulted by Michael Brown, that Michael Brown attempted to get Officer Wilson's gun, which, by the way, means he was not unarmed.
	The moment you reach for someone's gun and are trying to grab at the person's gun, you're no longer unarmed.
	Six foot four, 300 pounds, yeah, that's quite a large young man.
	So the evidence that Officer Wilson was assaulted by Michael Brown That Michael Brown attempted to wrestle away with his gun.
	That the gun was fired inside the car.
	That there was no hands up going on.
	The evidence was overwhelming.
	That Officer Wilson followed the law, acted in self-defense, and acted in a way that any other citizen would have the right to act, if assaulted, while armed.
	These are the facts.
	And if you are upset by facts, if you are upset by evidence, then you have no place in public discourse.
	If you are upset and offended by evidence, then you need to not talk about this to anyone except your imaginary friends and hand puppets, because you don't know how to have a discourse about reality.
	To be offended by facts is to be crazy.
	Obama jumps on TV after this, and you could almost smell the disappointment coming off this impartial commander-in-chief.
	He said protesters have legitimate issues of how communities and law enforcement interact.
	What are those issues?
	Nobody says.
	He called the anger over the refusal to indict an understandable reaction.
	No, no.
	Not a refusal to indict.
	To refuse something automatically brings up, well, it's legitimate, you should do it.
	I refuse!
	No, no, no.
	They accepted that the witnesses plus the physical evidence plus the law meshed.
	That Officer Wilson's testimony was strong enough and supported enough by the evidence that there was no cause even to go to trial.
	He could not be charged with anything even to go to trial.
	In other words, a trial, of course, has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Officer Wilson did something wrong.
	There was not even enough evidence to get to the question of reasonable doubt.
	In a trial, you're not found innocent.
	You're found not guilty.
	In my view, and again, I'm no lawyer.
	I'm no legal expert.
	These are all just my opinions.
	But in my view, if you're not even indicted, you're proved innocent.
	So, it's not a refusal to indict.
	It's an acceptance of reality.
	Obama explained that Ferguson is an example of the broader challenges that we still face as a nation.
	He said that he has instructed Attorney General Holder to work with cities across the country to train law enforcement so it conducts itself in a way that is fair to everybody.
	This is not just an issue for Ferguson, he said.
	This is an issue for America.
	The country can look forward to tackling much-needed criminal justice reform.
	America isn't everything that it could be, he said sorrowfully, but we can make progress, not just in Ferguson, but in a lot of communities and cities around the country.
	And he also called for no violence.
	Conspicuously absent from Obama's Race-baiting was any word of criticism for Michael Brown.
	Did he say, for instance, Michael Brown was not acting wisely when he violently allegedly robbed a convenience store.
	He was not acting wisely when he refused to comply with a police order to get off the middle of the street.
	He was not acting wisely when When he attacked the police officer and went for his gun, he was not acting wisely when he turned and charged at the police officer who was fearing for his life, who he said felt like a rag doll in the hands of the Jolly Green Giant, so to speak, when he was being assaulted by Michael Brown.
	Did he have any word of criticism?
	For the young man who made a series of disastrous choices and got himself killed.
	People say the most ridiculous stuff.
	Did he deserve to be shot over shoplifting?
	He was not shot over shoplifting.
	Of course not.
	This question of deserve is, well, actions have consequences.
	If I jump off a bridge, do I deserve to die?
	Well, gravity takes care of that.
	And if you assault a police officer, and if you attempt to grab his gun, and you charge him, and you're huge, you are very likely going to be shot.
	Because that's what the officer is trained to do.
	He is trained and authorized, if in fear for his life, which he apparently had every legitimate reason to be afraid of, he is authorized to use force until the threat is eliminated.
	Not to wound, not to shoot the knees, and this, well, you can just shoot the knees and all that.
	I mean, this is just people who've watched too many silly movies rather than doubt with the reality of shooting a moving target while disoriented, and the bruises are very evident on Officer Wilson's cheek.
	This idea, this is not what people are trained to do.
	So, no word of criticism for the alleged shoplifting, cop-assaulting, gun-grabbing, charging lunatic high on drugs.
	Not one word of criticism from the president.
	This is horrible, vicious, and vile racism.
	And I'm telling you, if it were reversed, well, of course, if it were reversed and it was a white lunatic assaulting a black police officer and getting shot, we never would have heard about it because that doesn't serve the endless race-baiting narrative that comes largely out of the left.
	I would be saying exactly the same things.
	Facts are facts, regardless of skin color.
	So what has happened?
	Since the verdict was released at 8th Central last night.
	Well, looters have set fire to a whole block of buildings and businesses.
	Looted and burned dozens of other businesses.
	They burned the vehicles at an auto dealer.
	They set fire to police cars.
	And police have counted more than 150 gunshots overnight.
	Firemen are afraid to go in and fight the fires in Ferguson being set by the looters.
	These are not protesters.
	They're looters.
	Or, I guess as Obama would call them, undocumented shoppers.
	So they have a big problem with people being shot.
	And the best way to solve that in the eyes of these people is to shoot like crazy during the night.
	So that's how we deal with this.
	Michael Brown's stepfather.
	And by the way, when I say these people, I'm talking about the rioters and the looters who are not all black.
	Michael Brown's stepfather.
	has urged protesters to burn this bitch down after the grand jury announcement.
	That's not good.
	There was no mention Of Michael Brown's stepfather in the Obama call for nonviolence.
	These are despicable statements that could well get people killed.
	I mean, he was wrong to say burn this bitch down.
	No criticism of him, of course.
	Now, as I reported in a show recently, Michael Brown's mother and stepfather are reportedly, according to police reports and several news articles...
	The stepfather and the mother attacked a member of the family for selling unauthorized t-shirts with regards to Michael Brown.
	The method of attack was smashing the victim in the face with a pipe.
	And this apparently, again according to reports, and we'll put the sources to this below, this is the mother and the stepfather assaulting those who are other family members for selling unauthorized t-shirts, whatever that means.
	And according to the police reports, Michael Brown's stepfather previously convicted on federal firearms charges related to the manufacture, distribution, and sale of narcotics.
	So...
	This is the kind of men that Michael Brown's mother is interested in, wants to commit to, where he'll go and beat up people with a pipe, smash them in the face for selling unauthorized t-shirts off her son.
	This is the kind of environment that Michael Brown grew up in.
	Therein is the real tragedy, and I'm not going to be race-baited into anything else.
	One of the most tragic images to come out of the Focus and Riots is, and here you can have a look at the original store owner, this is the man who allegedly in the video of the strong-arm robbery from Michael Brown was pushed against the display rack,
	and this is his Why you would riot and loot and destroy someone's store because of a grand jury decision makes no sense at all.
	Humility in the face of expertise is an essential component of intellectual and emotional maturity.
	I tend not to argue with my dentist about recommended treatments.
	And I get lots of messages from people who are like, Hey man, didn't you see the video of white construction workers raising their hands?
	And that probably indicates that they were miming what Michael Brown...
	No, no, no, no!
	That's not how...
	Reality and intelligence and empiricism works.
	It's not how it works.
	You don't get to watch some YouTube video and make up some narrative and then be considered serious by anybody with half a brain.
	It's not how things work when it comes to making essential decisions about these kinds of tragedies.
	They saw three months of evidence, over a thousand pages of evidence.
	You, with your YouTube and someone doing this and making up whatever narrative you want, this is not reality.
	I also believe that this endless hatred that comes out of rap lyrics and both white and black rap lyrics and so on, this endless hatred of the cops is...
	It has its effects.
	I mean, if you continually tell a group of people that they are oppressed by outsiders, by white people, by cops, and that the only reason their lives are such disastrous is because of other people oppressing them, and they are only victims, and they can't do anything to solve or fix their situation, and it's all these people outside, and there's nothing to do...
	With anything inside the culture.
	It's nothing to do with any decisions that they make.
	That they're being kept from the promised land.
	That all the gold in the world is being hoarded behind the spears of the whitey cops.
	And those whitey cops are just there to oppress them.
	And slavery never ended.
	And Jim Crow is real.
	And you're never going to get ahead.
	And it's white people, white people, white people.
	They're the bad people.
	They're the poisonous people.
	They're the cancer on the planet.
	And you can't get anywhere without them.
	And they'll just grind you down and grind you down.
	Holy crap.
	I mean, this stuff has an effect.
	It has an effect on people.
	And there is a narrative that comes mostly out of the left and was specifically adopted by the Communist Party in the 1920s, which was to inflame the resentments of the black population in order to destabilize What remaining freedoms there were and are in America and in other places around the world.
	This is cultural Marxism.
	This is a very specific plan put forward by leftists to destabilize the remnants of the free market, to destabilize the remnants of the republic.
	And so this constant pouring of hatred towards whites into the black community, this constant guilt-mongering of white privilege and racism and slavery and Jim Crow and so on, this constant creation of these savage divisions has an effect.
	And if you've contributed, then you are a small part of the cog in the machine that leads to these kinds of tragedies.
	93% of blacks are killed by other blacks.
	93% of blacks are killed by other blacks.
	Now, 85% of whites are killed by other whites.
	I get all of that.
	But white on black crime?
	It's not what most blacks have to worry about.
	It is black-on-black crime.
	Now, of course, you can always play Six Degrees of Separation and find some way to pin the murder of blacks by blacks on white people, particularly white males.
	I guess you can play that game as long as you want, but it simply strips an entire community of any kind of moral responsibility, and that is the most insidious and insipid form of racism there is.
	The soft bigotry of low expectations.
	So yes, there are problems between not minorities.
	No, no, no, no.
	Not minorities.
	Asians are a minority within the United States, and we'll get to them in a second.
	The problem is not with people of color or minorities.
	The problem is, since we're talking about blacks, the problem in particular is blacks and law enforcement.
	Blacks and law enforcement.
	To a smaller degree, Hispanics, and we'll talk about that another time perhaps.
	But again...
	Assuming that facts don't offend you too much, again, the sources for all of this will be listed below.
	In 2010, blacks 10 to 17 years of age were 16% of the youth population.
	Black males under 18 were 1.8% of the total population.
	And black males under 18, despite being 1.8% of the total population, and these crimes are not segregated by sex, but they're mostly males, Black males under 18, 1.8% of the total population in the U.S. responsible for 54.3% of murders and non-negligent manslaughter.
	Black males under 18, 1.8% of the total population responsible for 34.3% of forcible rape.
	71.4% of robberies.
	43.4% of aggravated assault and 43.6% of motor vehicle theft.
	Now, these aren't all of these crimes.
	These are crimes committed by people under the age of 18.
	I'm going to go over this again.
	You need to understand this stuff.
	1.8% of the total population, 54-plus percent of murder, 34% of forcible rape, over 71% of robbery, 43.4% aggravated assault, 43.6% of motor vehicle theft.
	Blacks are 12% of the population.
	They commit 53% of homicides.
	In the nation.
	A black male born in 1991 has a 29% chance of spending time in prison at some point in his life.
	Nearly one in three African American males aged 20 to 29 are under some form of criminal justice supervision, whether in prison, to jail, on parole, or on probation.
	6% of American citizens are black males.
	They're 42% of murder victims.
	Now, most people jump to the conclusion that this must mean that the criminal justice system is racist.
	There is no evidence for that whatsoever.
	No evidence for that whatsoever.
	When a black man or woman is accused of crime, it's because a witness came forward and said, this black person committed, or some black person committed a crime against me, and since most of the people who are coming forward are blacks themselves...
	Then blacks would have to be racist against blacks for the criminal justice system to be racist against blacks.
	And the numbers have been examined six ways from Sunday, and no evidence can be found for systemic discrimination against blacks in the criminal justice system.
	They are simply committing more crimes, mostly against other blacks.
	Now, somehow, I'm sure you'd like to pin that on white people too.
	It's somehow white people's fault that black people commit more crimes.
	That may give you some emotional comfort in the moment, but that is absolutely devastating to the black community because if it's all white people's fault, then the blacks can't do anything about it.
	They can't change.
	They can't improve.
	So you're basically damning them to a continuation of the same.
	And the black family is less stable than it was in the 1950s when they were much closer to institutional racism.
	And crime rates are worse than they were in the 1950s and 1960s.
	So as racism has diminished within society to the point where there's a two-term black, half-black president, you're saying that racism is worse now than it was 50 or 60 years ago.
	This is simply an unsustainable position.
	If you look into the studies on speeding, well, blacks speed more.
	If you look into the studies on drug arrests, well, blacks tend to sell more on the street, whites tend to sell more in the home, blacks have priors, blacks sell more quantities, and so on.
	It doesn't work to simply create this magical spell called racism and use it to explain away everything that makes you uncomfortable.
	Look at the facts.
	Look at the data.
	Look at the realities.
	And you can't just use the word racism.
	Because look, if white people are so racist, then they're racist against all non-whites.
	We saw and heard the numbers for black criminality in the United States.
	Asians are a little under 5% of the U.S. population as a whole, and Asians under 18, 0.6% of the U.S. population.
	So we saw these numbers for blacks, you know, 50, 30, 70, 40% for violent crimes.
	Let's look at Asians.
	0.6% of the U.S. population, 1% of murder and non-negligent manslaughter.
	0.9% of rapes, 0.7% robberies, 1% aggravated assault, and 0.9% motor vehicle theft.
	So just look at robbery.
	For Asians under 18, 0.7% robbery.
	For blacks under 18, 71.4% robbery.
	They say, ah, yes, well, but there was racism and so on.
	Oh, come on.
	Don't think there was racism against Asians?
	Just look up things like the Anti-Cooley Act, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Pigtail Ordinance, not to mention the mass incarceration in concentration camps of Japanese Americans during the Second World War, along with a massive stripping of their property.
	So, there are problems between the black community And law enforcement.
	And these are the facts of the amount of crimes that are committed.
	Look, I think it was Jesse Jackson who said that he was so depressed that after 20 years of working in civil rights, when he hears footsteps behind him on a street, he turns around and sees white people, he's relieved.
	Until black criminality goes down, It's going to be hard for law enforcement to not be focused on the black community.
	I mean, as Giuliani said, the reasons why there's such police presence in black community is because there's such a huge amount of crime.
	The reason why there are fewer black cops than some people would like is a variety of reasons.
	Of course, there's the anti-cop prejudice, which means most black young men or women don't want to become cops.
	Also, of course, that if one in three blacks, black men, are involved in the criminal system, I don't think you can become a cop if you've got a record, which also eliminates that opportunity for blacks.
	Now, I've talked before about solutions, and I won't go into them here.
	I mean, very briefly, marry the mother of your children, finish high school, get jobs and keep jobs, corporal punishment, which is very heavy in the black community, needs to be pulled back, and so on.
	But holy crap, I mean...
	This idea that blacks are only the victims is shocking and astonishing.
	Of course, the majority of blacks are perfectly nice and wonderful people and so on.
	But there is a very strong undercurrent of propaganda and leftist-fueled hatred and resentment and entitlement in the black community.
	And there is this weird sense of victimhood when there are significant portions of the black communities that are incredibly aggressive and violent within their communities and outside their communities.
	You simply need to look up the statistics on how many blacks rape whites versus how many whites rape blacks and see that the victimhood situation is very hard if you're in any possession of the facts to take with any seriousness whatsoever.
	So, look, the media spins these narratives because the media is generally leftist and leftists are focused on creating divisions between men and women, between races and so on to destabilize the success of the free market.
	They're not willing to Have a fair fight of ideas.
	They constantly have to jig the system and cheat by creating these artificial divisions.
	So this one seems to have failed.
	And I'm sure I'm not talking about the rumors that are out there about Michael Brown, because they remain only rumors.
	And we'll find out more if and when his juvenile records are ever released, which I think would be an important thing to do, given the controversy.
	I'm not going to talk about those rumors because they are as yet unsubstantiated rumors.
	But justice has been done.
	Whether you like it or not, the evidence is out there.
	And look, if you believe that an injustice has been done, then instead of, say, setting fire to buildings and throwing bricks through windows and spray-painting RIPMB everywhere you can lay your aerosol, what you could do is you could roll up your sleeves and...
	Get down to reading the evidence that has been published, the thousand plus pages, the evidence that has been published, and find where the injustice was committed.
	And if people can do that, I for one would be very interested to see what alternate evidence people can find or what evidence has been overlooked or misused.
	But the idea that narrative overtakes reality is tragic and destructive.
	And this one may not have worked in terms of being the vast evidence of white racism and so on and gentle giant and innocent young black kid who didn't do anything wrong and all that.
	This narrative may have failed, but all that means is that another one will be coming down the conveyor belt at any moment and they will try the same thing again, which is to portray the black community as innocent victims and whites as horrible racists, which is a horribly racist thing to do, but it's okay.
	See, because it's racism against white people, so that doesn't count.
	But you just have to learn to resist these narratives as best you can.
	Simply refuse to buy any newspapers that produce this narrative.
	I mean, the newspapers and the mainstream media is a dying breed anyway, because people get eventually allergic even to the most bilious of lies.
	So you just need to exercise the democracy of your dollar and vote against the race baiters.
	Keep looking at the facts.
	Keep working.
	To provide practical and tangible solutions to these problems, they're not intractable.
	They can be solved.
	But first, like the solution to all problems, it requires a relentless commitment to reason, facts, and evidence.
	This is Stefan Molyneux for Free Domain Radio.

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