How Activist Journalists Run Defense For Antifa Violence
CNN and Vox actually called out Antifa violence which some found surprising. Following this however activists in media called them out and criticized them for presenting a "false equivalence." The media tends to report the right as the violent ones but this is usually activist journalists at Huffpo and The Daily Beast. Larger outlets really are left with no choice but to report on this when 95% of the violence is from Antifa.
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I was really taken by surprise yesterday when Brian Stelter and Jake Tapper of CNN called out Antifa violence.
The day before the Unite the Right 2 rally, we saw journals attacked, we saw scuffle with some police, and yeah, these personalities tweeted about it.
I don't know if they covered it on air, but they did bring it up, which is rather interesting because It seems to be that the rhetoric is always anti-right, that it's the right-wingers who are violent when, for the most part, when it comes to your run-of-the-mill political individuals, it seems to be Trump supporters who get the brunt of violence.
Yesterday's Unite the Right 2 had a really low turnout.
Some estimates put it around a couple dozen, if that.
But the counter-protest side was nearly a thousand or more, many of which were Antifa.
And there were reports that they were attacking cops and journalists.
So it seems in the absence of the far-right, they target the police.
In one instance saying that the police were the far-right they were targeting.
I think there's an extremist problem on the left.
The right has no problem calling out the extremists on the right, but it seems like many people in the mainstream left don't say anything or embrace it.
And now that we're seeing individuals associated with mainstream media and mainstream news outlets calling out Antifa, of course they're getting attacked by activist elements of the left.
So my question is, why are some people willing to call out Antifa?
What is the reaction from the far left?
And does this mean that the media is finally waking up to the violence on the far left?
This story from Vox, and it's really interesting because Vox is typically associated with being far left.
They said, Antifa clashes with police and journalists in Charlottesville and D.C.
Antifa says it fights fascists and neo-Nazis, but this weekend members attacked cops and journalists.
Sunday's counter-protests against the white nationalist Unite the Right to Rally in Washington, D.C.
were largely peaceful.
Thousands of people held multiple rallies across the city to celebrate diversity and push back against the hateful views the white nationalists espouse.
But a few left-wing antifa, short for anti-fascist, counter-protesters did engage in violence, throwing eggs in water bottles and shooting fireworks at police officers and some journalists who were covering the demonstrations.
The article highlights Tim Mack from NPR says Mack narrowly missed getting hit with an egg himself.
And then may bring up, demonstrators also clashed with journalists in Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday during an event marking the one-year anniversary of the killing of Heather Heyer by an alleged white supremacist at the first Unite the Right rally.
NBC News' Cal Perry posted a video of protesters shoving their hands into Perry's camera, trying to cover the lens and asking him to stop filming.
And then a bit later, we have this video, which many of you may have seen, where someone actually hits the camera operator.
The article says, this is not the first time Antifa protesters have been violent.
In August 2017, about 100 anarchists and Antifa members assaulted far-right demonstrators
who were marching peacefully in Berkeley, California, with pepper spray, water bottles,
and direct physical assault.
This weekend in Charlottesville and Washington, D.C., though, it wasn't neo-Nazis and white
white supremacist Antifa attacked.
It was police who were there to help keep the peace among all the demonstrators and journalists who were there to cover the events.
How that factors into Antifa's ideology is anyone's guess.
And Brian Stelter tweeted, unacceptable behavior by a protester in Seville last night,
violently swatting away a journalist's camera.
I asked CalNBC for more info and he deferred to his tweets, which described the protest as almost exclusively Antifa at
this point.
Jake Tapper said, totally unacceptable and not at all out of the norm for Antifa,
referencing Brian Stelter's tweets.
And there are a lot of people that are asking why Antifa would attack journalists
and why they would attack police.
Well, as we saw in one article the other day, they equated the police to the fascists, to white supremacists.
In a press release posted by NBC 29, there's a quote from the activists.
And the Washington Post also accurately mentions that aside from confrontations between Antifa, protesters, and police after the rally had ended, there were no reports of violence.
That is to say, there was no violence between the white nationalists and the anti-fascists.
But there were clashes and violence between Antifa and the police.
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Unsurprisingly, if you cover this in an honest way, you will be attacked by left-wing aligned journalists.
In this instance, we can see Christopher Mathias saying, this is a bad article.
And is a good example of how not to cover white supremacy.
Any links to the title of the article, Antifa Clashes with Police and Journalists in Charlottesville and D.C.?
I tweeted something earlier.
People are saying that journalists shouldn't present two sides to the argument because they're equating the ideologies of anti-racists and racists, but that's because these activists don't understand how journalism works, and it's because many of them don't believe in a free press.
I am not being hyperbolic.
They do not.
We've seen them attack journalists.
They have burned signs that say free speech.
They do not agree with the free exchange of information.
There aren't two sides in terms of ideology.
There's probably millions.
But here we have an instance where white nationalists wanted to hold a rally.
Another group said, we will counter your rally.
You have now created two sides.
Rally attendees and rally counter protesters.
So journalists will then ask the two sides what they think.
But to act like there aren't two sides because you're conflating ideology with a physical event is absolutely incorrect.
And then we see journalists aligned with Huffington Post and the Daily Beast calling out accurate reporting simply because they are activists who don't want real exchange of information.
It is important that people know that Antifa is violent.
Just because you support them doesn't mean people will immediately hate them for being violent.
I'm sure when people read that article about Antifa attacking cops, they're not going to read it and get angry at Antifa, they're going to appreciate it.
What someone interprets from an article is entirely up to them.
Simply reporting the fact is not bad or incorrect.
And it is actually how you should cover all events.
Tell people exactly what happened.
I'm not surprised to see activist journalists from the Huffington Post and Daily Beast now confusing how journalism actually works and getting angry that accurate reporting has come out.
In response to the attack on the NBC reporter, one man, Brendan O'Connor, who says he's a reporter covering fascism, said, And honestly, the refusal of some journalists to ask why it is that these communities might not want to be filmed to instead just get defensive and self-righteous doesn't do any of us favors.
And what that statement means is that these activist-aligned journalists will omit information and refuse to get statements and cover certain individuals who they are in alignment with.
He's willing to cover fascists.
He's willing to approach them and challenge them and all that stuff.
But he's not willing to stand up to those who are on the other side of the rally, not the ideology of the rally.
And that means the coverage from him is going to be biased on purpose by his own admission that he respects the community and understands why they don't want to be filmed.
Well, all you can do in that instance is not film, and then your coverage will be slanted in favor of those you refuse to scrutinize, and that is not holding anyone to account.
Kelly Weil of the Daily Beast said, Portland police did their dirty work for them on a crowd that was dispersing.
And this is in reference to a tweet that says Portland police claim they didn't almost kill this protester.
We examined the evidence and spoke to him.
They did.
This is from a Daily Beast story.
Now this is from a few days ago in reference to Portland.
However, Eric Clanton took a three-year probation deal because he bashed people over the head with a bike lock.
So if you want to be critical of people claiming they are pushing for violence, you have to point out that Antifa is literally violent and has actually caused serious bodily harm to people.
And I would say there are many more people associated with the left who are willing to forgive and apologize for the violence.
As I showed you the tweet from Christopher Mathias, he said the article was bad.
Why?
Because Vox pointed out that Antifa was attacking police and journalists?
It happened.
We should know it happened.
But I want to highlight this story from the 10th.
Trump supporters urge people to donate to Charlottesville Victim Scholarship Fund on anniversary weekend.
As the anniversary of the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville approaches, and the organizers plan another rally for this weekend, supporters of President Donald Trump are taking a firm stance against it and urging people on the right to donate to the Heather Heyer Foundation as a show of goodwill.
There are a lot of people who aligned themselves with the alt-right in the early days, and then when the alt-right showed its true colors, they called them out and denounced them.
And to this day, they're still attacked for that association.
But these Trump supporters who are willing to rally their supporters to donate to the Heather Heyer Foundation are showing that they're willing to denounce the far-right and racism.
But for some reason, there are many people on the left who won't do the same of Antifa, in fact, defend Antifa and decry the journalists who are doing a good job.
When journalists are going to be scared that other publications with massive resources
will attack them for telling the truth.
People are going to be scared when they know full well you will be attacked by Antifa on the ground
if you report accurately.
A Washington Post reporter tweeting, a lot of anti-media sentiment among protesters.
Journalists are being cursed at for doing stand-ups and asking questions.
F-you effing vulture, one TV journalist was called.
A lot of this too.
Blocking journalists from taking photographs.
There's no consistency among the far left.
If you're on the ground live streaming and you're showing the protests, people say, thank you for showing us what is happening.
They'll say, we can't be there and we can't see what's happening, so thank you for showing us.
But as soon as one person says you're oppressing a marginalized community and you can't film, everyone will just agree.
The media knows full well Antifa will attack you.
And if there's going to be journalists with the Daily Beast and Huffington Post who are going to defend those people who attack journalists, why would journalists want to speak out?
They could face being ostracized or accused of being alt-right.
The important thing here to remember is journalists were attacked more than once in this rally by Antifa and far-left activists, and there are actually people working at Huffington Post and Daily Beast running defense for those who would attack journalists.
But let me know what you think in the comments below and we'll keep the conversation going.
Do you think that the media is actually waking up to the violence of Antifa?
It's not the first time they've reported on this.
They have reported on the violence of Antifa as referenced in the original Vox article.
They talked about how you had peaceful demonstrators in Berkeley get attacked.
For some reason, the narrative tends to be dominated by this idea that it's the right that's violent.
And there have been instances where the right has been violent, or what we associate with the extremists of the right.
Typically, the Unite the Right rally last year, where someone actually killed another person.
So violence isn't necessarily equal.
Some acts are worse than others.
A Bernie volunteer, yes this is true, actually shot a Republican at a baseball game.
These things happen.
I don't want to play the game of trying to figure out who's worse.
Suffice it to say the violence exists and whoever is doing it needs to be called out.
So it's worrisome to me.
When journalists are willing to defend those who would attack other journalists, and anyone for that matter.
But again, comment.
We'll keep the conversation going.
Stay tuned.
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