False Accusations Got Innocent People Attacked in Oakland
Activists including Oakland's mayor and Shaun King made incorrect statements about the Proud boys and events in Oakland leading to innocent people being attacked by a mob of protesters.This stems from false claims that an attack in Oakland was carried out by Proud boys with no evidence.Gavin McInnes and the proud boys deny any involvement in the event and state they had no intention of being in Berkeley and denounce racism. The group attending the event was actually a Donald Trump support meet up.Support the show (http://timcast.com/donate)
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A brutal attack in the Bay Area has resulted in the death of 18-year-old Nya Wilson.
Police have apprehended a suspect, 27-year-old John Cowell.
At the time, they are investigating all possible motives, but they don't have any evidence to suggest this was racially motivated.
This story, as of right now, is a tragedy, but what's worrisome is what goes beyond this story.
Almost immediately, rumors were flying that this man was a white supremacist, that he was a member of the western chauvinist fraternity, the Proud Boys.
Gavin McInnes and the Proud Boys deny any involvement.
They say this man was not a Proud Boy.
Protesters then started spreading rumors that the Proud Boys were planning a meet-up in Oakland.
So they then marched to a bar, demanding to confront these Proud Boys.
Many people started reporting that Proud Boys had infiltrated the vigil for Naya Wilson in an attempt to interrupt the vigil.
But Proud Boys deny this.
Videos surfaced of people being attacked and photos of men being attacked, and they claim these men were Proud Boys, but once again, the Proud Boys deny this, saying flat out, why would we organize a meetup on a Monday?
They've even said, rest in peace, Naya Wilson, and have denounced the brutal attack.
So why are these rumors flying?
Are the people being attacked by these crowds actually innocent?
And what is the greater implication for the culture war?
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The story first from BuzzFeed News.
A 27-year-old man was arrested in the deadly stabbing of a black teen on a subway platform.
The brutal attack on 18-year-old Naya Wilson shocked people in California and led to mass protests, although police have not said it was a hate crime.
Authorities said that the 27-year-old suspect, John Cowell, was apprehended Monday while riding a BART train after officials were tipped off to his presence by other riders.
Describing the charges against Cowell, BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas said that the 27-year-old suspect had appeared to pull out his knife unprovoked and very rapidly stabbed Wilson after she exited a train at MacArthur Station in Oakland.
Wilson's sister, Latifa Wilson, 26, was also wounded and is now in stable condition at the hospital.
Cowell then fled the BART station while authorities rendered aid to the two women, Rojas said.
The brutal killing of Wilson, a young black woman, had prompted protests in downtown Oakland and other parts of California Monday sparked by the as-yet-unproven belief that the crime was racially motivated.
Things started to get very complicated as rumors were flying that this man was a member of the Proud Boys, that he was a white supremacist.
Even the mayor of Oakland got involved.
Libby Schaaf, the 50th mayor of the city of Oakland, tweeted,
We refuse to be intimidated and will not back down or stand by quietly,
as racist hate groups threaten violence and bring messages of hate to our neighbors.
And she linked to this Facebook post.
This post from Make Westing, a pub in Oakland, said, The Proud Boys, a group of white racist nationalists
notorious for violent confrontations across the country, including the terrible events in Charlottesville,
have decided to throw a meetup in our city.
They declared an intention to host their event at Make Westing, an establishment whose values stand in direct opposition to
this alt-right group.
Those of us at Make Westing stand united with our community to say,
racists, fascists, and the alt-right are not welcome in our establishment.
We are asking the community to come join our celebration of our city and each other.
We strongly oppose the violence this group supports and all acts of violence in our place of business and in our communities.
Following statements like this, protesters marched from a vigil to the Bar McWesting in an effort to confront the Proud Boys, and this resulted in several people being attacked.
In one tweet from Breaking911, we can see this.
An alleged member of the Proud Boys, an alt-right group, was beaten during yesterday's Nia Wilson protest in Oakland.
and we have this video.
You can't actually see what's happening, the camera's shaky, but you can see there's a
man being beaten.
A photo was posted of this man with several middle fingers, and we can see he has no shoes, and he is pulling his shirt up in front of his face as he is surrounded by police.
The person on Twitter said, And here we can see another photo of the man who was attacked wearing an American flag shirt and camo shorts.
around him and protected him, someone identified this white terrorist.
And here we can see another photo of the man who was attacked wearing an American flag shirt and camo shorts.
However, Gavin McInnes tweeted, For the record, Proud Boys are a multiracial club.
Naya Wilson was not stabbed by a Proud Boy.
We never planned to meet at Make Westing.
You're attacking random strangers based on lies.
I reached out to the Proud Boys for a statement and this is what they sent me.
No Proud Boy was attacked in Oakland.
No Proud Boy was at Make Westing.
No Proud Boy was ever going to be there.
No meetups were scheduled in California for Monday at all.
We do that ass on the weekend, Tim.
We drink at meetups.
Who drinks on a Monday night?
In response to a video of this man being attacked, this user, popit4mizzy, said, He wasn't a Nazi, though.
He's a foster parent to two African American girls and a close friend of my sister.
Keep in mind, pop it for Mitzi on Twitter.
We don't know who this person is.
and you sound like a closed-minded person who believes anything that comes out of your mouth.
Coming from people who are there or who weren't, you have no room to talk. Good day, sir.
Keep in mind, pop it for Mitzi on Twitter. We don't know who this person is.
I wasn't able to reach out to them for comment.
I think it's interesting what they're saying, but it very well may be a sock puppet.
We don't know.
I did look into this person's Twitter and their Instagram, and it really does look like a real person making real statements, but take it for what it is.
This is not something I could independently confirm.
In response to this, Sean King published this statement.
unidentified
White supremacist in Trump hats.
They're calling themselves Proud Boys.
It's a new white supremacy.
It's like the new KKK.
They just put on nicer shirts, but it's just the KKK in a different form.
With Trump hats, show up to disrupt the vigil.
Show up to interrupt people grieving.
How sick do you have to be to show up and interrupt people during their moment of grief?
The statement made by Sean King is seemingly factually incorrect, as most organizations have either retracted or not even reported on Proud Boys interrupting the vigil.
When you do a Google search of Proud Boys Vigil, you can see this story from the cut.
Proud Boys interrupted vigil for BART murder victim Naya Wilson.
However, when you actually go to the story, the headline reads, Naya Wilson Remembered as Sweetest Person on Earth, and the article actually makes no reference to the Proud Boys.
But, upon inspection of the article, you can see this in the description.
A vigil and protest in honor of Naya Wilson, the young woman murdered by John Cowell on a BART station in Oakland on Sunday, was interrupted by members of the right-wing group Proud Boys.
This has been removed from the story or was never included in the first place.
I wasn't able to find any archives that showed any change to the reporting, so I don't know why, in their headline and description, they referred to this incident as the Proud Boys interrupting the vigil, when, as of right now, there's no evidence that actually happened.
According to NBC, two men detained after disputes during March remembering Bart's stabbing victim.
A crowd of more than 1,000 people eventually walked from the BART station at 550 40th Street in Oakland to the Make Westing Bar in downtown Oakland to then deter the alleged alt-right Proud Boys group.
It would seem then that official reporting contradicts the narrative of activists And Sean King.
That the Proud Boys did not interrupt a vigil, but in fact, the vigil marched to a bar seeking out the Proud Boys, who, by their words, were never actually there or planning on being there in the first place.
Sometime during the march, the dispute erupted in the downtown area, and police detained the two men, who were later released.
As they were being taken into custody, police said the crowd became disruptive, and also tossed M80s, although police didn't say whether they threw them at officers.
One of the marchers, Cat Brooks, who's running for mayor of Oakland, said the group left the BART station at about 6 p.m.
Monday and walked peacefully to the bar at 18th and Telegraph to deter the Proud Boys.
However, as I stated earlier, the Proud Boys claimed they had never planned a meetup, that none of their members were attacked, and no one was even there.
They issued this statement on Twitter.
This is the result of the left calling everyone right of Bernie a Nazi.
This is what happens when you dehumanize a group.
Proud Boys were never going to be there.
We were surprised people thought we would want to disrupt this.
Rest in peace beautiful Nia Wilson and God bless you.
They tweeted again.
We don't care about your race. Be proud of who you are.
We don't care about your religion. Pray however you want.
We don't care about your sexual preferences. Love whoever you want.
We are a diverse group, but we do all have one thing in common.
God bless the West.
So there's a lot that is unconfirmed right now.
But according to the Proud Boys, the man that was attacked was not a Proud Boy.
At least according to one Twitter user who seems to be legitimate, but I can't confirm if they're telling the truth.
They claim this man is the foster parent of two African American little girls.
It's scary to see then that a large group of people Marched through the streets to a bar to seek out a group of people who claimed they weren't planning on being there and attacking people in the street.
Then seeing activists claim that the Proud Boys interrupted the vigil.
And the only reason I state this is that official reporting does not confirm the claim that the Proud Boys interrupted the vigil.
Sean King made the statement to his massive following, but no reporting reflects that.
In fact, NBC News reports the opposite.
What I find to be downright worrisome is that even the far-left website, It's Going Down, did not make a direct connection between the murder, Proud Boys, and the far-right.
With the story, brutal Oakland murder takes place amidst backdrop of far-right meetup and August 5th Berkeley rally.
Distancing themselves, they say, some on social media drew a connection between the murder and an alt-right meetup supposed to happen in downtown Oakland on a Monday night at the bar, Make Westings.
According to posts on Reddit originally, alt-right trolls associated with the California subsection of the page The Donald were planning to hold a meetup at the bar.
And this is a Reddit post from 27 days ago that says, Oakland, Monday, July 23rd at Make Westing.
When it's going down, it does a better job of separating the murder from the far right and even highlighting that it was The Donald and not the Proud Boys.
It becomes worrisome then.
When protesters, when activists go out in the street and attack people because they believe the Proud Boys are going to be there.
But more worrisome than that is that the mayor of Oakland made this statement.
That Make Westing made this statement without evidence.
The rumor mill is much more powerful and dangerous than even far-left propaganda outlets.
It's going down.
Far left.
Supports their ideas and supports their messages, but was still more factually correct and careful with how they reported the story than activists were, than the mayor of Oakland, than even the bar.
The Proud Boys weren't planning on being there.
It looks like it was a group of Donald Trump supporters who were planning on being there.
And the activists and those at the vigil planned to go to the bar to confront them.
And then they claimed the Proud Boys confronted the vigil, which seemingly never happened.
I have to wonder, then, if it's possible the people who were attacked were innocent people walking by.
Let me know what you think in the comments below, and we'll keep the conversation going.
On August 5th, there's supposed to be a right-wing event.
Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys may be showing up.
As of right now, I believe it is all on for August 5th.
With events like this happening in the Bay Area, with M80s being thrown at men who we don't even know who these men are, I can only imagine it's going to get particularly bad.
So stick around.
I will have more coverage on these events as they happen.
