Peter Sterry
21st Century Wire
It’s sad to see a young man lose his life. It happens all too often these days. It should have been a time for the nation to stop and take a deep breath, and think. But that didn’t happen.
Instead, restless crowds became angry. Flags are being burned, and windows are being smashed. Some say the worst is yet to come.
High ranking partisan members in Washington and the media took control of the conversation last spring. The politically charged race debate that has ensued may end up being more tragic by the time it’s energy – and political capital, has been totally spent.
“Never let a good crisis go to waste”, has become a political maxim in Washington these days. Since 911, it’s something that most Americans have become used to.
So how did race become such a prominent feature in this conversation? Generally speaking, those who identify politically with being Liberal, Progressive, Democrat or Obama supporter, have always assumed that George Zimmerman has lied and that Trayvon Martin was a victim of “racial profiling’ and was innocently walking back from the shop.
The whole story has been reduced to this: “Innocent child/black boy on snack run was being stalked by racist white man with gun (who is actually Latino) and then shot and killed.”
From the onset of this bizarre media trial, those who identify themselves as a Liberal, Progressive, Democrat, or Obama supporter would not dare suspect that Martin was the aggressor and that Zimmerman could have been acting in self defense. Few will admit that their views are rooted in politics. They will tell you privately, “Even if Zimmerman is innocent, we need this outrage to bring the issue of race to the surface in America.”
It’s political. Those views remain today.
In general, no Liberal, Progressive, Democrat or Obama supporter will entertain any amendment to that original narrative which was created in April 2012, nor any details in between, and will proceed to write off any evidence to the contrary. This is an interesting tribal phenomenon. Let’s find out how and why this came about…
Washington injected race early
Some will blame race-baiting by political opportunists pandering to their core supporters, and media who will only run with a story if polarity can be established and political currency is involved. Both these may be true, but the answer to the race issue is much more complex than this.
What began last April as a petition to the Florida District Attorney’s office for murder charges to be brought against George Zimmerman for the death of 17 year-old Trayvon Martin, quickly transformed into a ‘racial profiling’ and racial injustice’ campaign. President Obama weighed in early, by subtly but effectively placing the race element centre stage by saying, ‘If I had a son, he would look just like Trayvon Martin’, while White House adviser Al Sharpton took a lead role in organising race protests in Sanford, FLA, as well as managing public relations for the deceased Martin’s parents.
US Attorney General Eric Holder and his Federal Department of Justice were involved at the petition stage and helped to apply pressure on the Florida Attorney General’s office, and then went on to open a federal investigation into a ‘race hate’ crime by Zimmerman. While all this was going on, Attorney General Eric Holder and his Department of Justice were financing security for Sharpton’s anti-Zimmerman/pro-Trayvon protests in Sanford.
When has the federal government and its partisan agencies ever been so actively involved in advance of a local criminal case?
The fact is that this is the first time, and the level and depth of their involvement, including the organisation of populist street protests against a defendant yet to be tried, would be in violation of the US Constitution and will be viewed by many as stepping way over the line of the federal government’s, or any government’s functional remit in the United States. This should be a cause for concern to all Americans, but sadly it’s not.
It’s fair ask the White House, considering all of the above: Is this responsible? Is it legal? Is there any political advantage to be gain by steering such a movement?
Trial by media + disinformation = Twitter lynch mob
Mainstream media coverage was spear-headed by MSNBC, a channel which is fully staffed by Democrat pundits and White House heads of staff, including the architect of the Obama election campaign, the President’s chief communications adviser David Axelrod.
Organisation and campaigning online was centred around social media, targeting youths from as young as high school age to over Democratic voters over 40. Petitions were driven through a number Democrat Party-founded activist web portals like Moveon.org, Change.org, and George Soros-funded Avaaz.org.
Once it became a murder case, the conversation quickly morphed into a political media-driven, sustained effort to try a defendant in a murder case, George Zimmerman, as guilty of ‘race hate’ and felony murder – in a media kangaroo court, all well in advance of his actual court case. Kangaroo court might sound harsh to some – but by definition, that is what we are looking at here.
Following Zimmerman’s acquittal this past weekend, Democrat-affiliated and other ‘activist’ organisations were announcing the details of their marches, the most radical of which are calling for riots, and even ‘eye for an eye’ retaliation. With the mobs on standby, the nation was on edge this weekend, and for good reason.
Phase 2: Twitter mobs, banners, slogans and maybe violence
As was the case with the Occupy Movement, most protesters may never be able to grasp how their whole campaign was conceived and driven forward by powerful interests.
Mobs are upset at the jury’s verdict acquitting Zimmerman and they want Eric Holder and the DOJ to mount a federal ‘race hate’ trial of Zimmerman. This will empower the federal government in a big way if it is successful – but who it really empowers are the twitter mobs.
Party operators in Washington launched phase two of its operation on Sunday with “Justice for Trayvon” social media organised events staged at over a dozen locations across the country, including New York, Boston, Oakland, San Francisco and Washington DC.
It would be a mistake to characterise these mass demonstrations as spontaneous protests. They were in fact, very sophisticated and well organised campaigns, organised in advance of the verdict and also with a very distinct political shape to them.
Trayvon twitter mobs are brandishing slogans like, “No peace without justice”, indicating that what these crowds want is a reversal of a jury’s verdict in Sanford, Florida. “No peace” generally infers that their will be war unless the opposing party is satisfied with the terms of armistice.
So here we have mob attempting to face down the system, and indeed the right, of trial by jury in the United States.
The solution was ready-made as soon as Eric Holder’s Department of Justice parachuted into Sanford last April to investigate alleged ‘race crimes’ in the Zimmerman case.
Dominant social theme: municipal courts and juries are racist and deliver unpopular verdicts, so the job is best left to the federal government and its Department of Justice, and the Federal government knows best, therefore the Federal gov’t will now step in to protect the children, etc.
Assumption of guilt: Opinions trump facts
Rather ironically for those who have joined in solely on the issue of minority discrimination and oppression in America – “Justice for Trayvon” is beginning to resemble a lynch mob – of those who seek to deny the defendant, George Zimmerman, of all the rights that a democratic society has fought so long and hard to secure – due process to a defendant and a trail by jury.
From last April 2012, the conversation was set up like a template, and most people just fell neatly into their positions without even questioning why because they were merely following along established political group-think lines. Media conditioning and political identifiers were two main factors in why many were led that George Zimmerman was guilty in advance of his trial, but the facts revealed during the trial later proved otherwise.
Alarmed bells should have went off last year when the media began streamlining that George Zimmerman was “white”, when in fact he is actually Latino. The rest was a greasy downhill slide, where the stage was set as a battle between black vs white.
In this case, the inferences by the White House team and NBC, MSNBC and even CNN were quite clear to the audience: black = victim, white = aggressor/oppressor.
When it came time for the actual trial, those who believed in their gut of guts that Zimmerman was “stalking the young black man, hunting him down – because he was black” (actual words from petition), could not be persuaded by any evidence to the contrary. Group-think generated its own verdict, which was a political one. Twitter lynch mobs believe this is what happened, despite any evidence to the contrary.
The court and jury upheld that Zimmerman’s defense was not exactly relevant to Florida’s controversial “Stand your ground” law, but rather, it was ruled as a case of self-defense. The burden of proof on the prosecution was already high when it initially charged the defendant with Second Degree Murder, but it became even more difficult for the prosecution to ‘debunk’ all the evidence which pointed to self-defense. In the end, after the legal process was totally expended, they could not do it, and that’s why Zimmerman was acquitted of the prosecution’s charges.
The response from the angry mob is then: “Well, the defendant is lying, he was just making it up, and the jury believed him and the jury could also be racist as well, and therefore, the Florida court system is ‘racially biased’. Zimmerman is still a murderer in our eyes.”
In such a situation, the facts of the case become completely irrelevant to the activist who has already identified with the “victim” and therefore taken the side of the “victim” – which is their ‘opinion’. It’s a bit like rooting for a football team, but without actually watching the match. Victim identification is classic liberal politics and has been used throughout history to mobilise mobs. It is also the psychology behind the relative successes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
Some may laugh when reading this line of argument, but it’s no laughing matter. These exact talking points have been transposed on to the minds of millions of activists who are now out disrupting and protesting, with some even engaging in random violence. The saddest part of this affair – is that the majority of the protesters are either ill informed, or misinformed.
It wouldn’t be the first time either.
Here is a quick digested forensic review of the case so far:
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Political Correction and the accusation of ‘Racial Profiling’
For Obama supporters, Democrats and Liberals, there is a group-think “opinion” on this, where they believe it was racial, and thus will not entertain any amendment to their group-think thesis, and are not interested in looking at any evidence to the contrary – because they believe their decision is 100% politically correct.
Angry protesters and activists should march against racism, ethnic or class discrimination in America. Why? Because that’s their right, but more importantly… because it’s a reality that people must be aware of. Yet, this is the whole crux of the whole post-verdict, public outrage political campaign – ‘racial profiling’ by George Zimmerman, and ‘racial discrimination’ by the Sanford PD.
In the case of Zimmerman vs Trayvon, however, there is still no real evidence outside of populist mob conjecture and “opinion”, of a ‘race hate’ crime in the Zimmerman case. The mob in this case, is massive. This means that the many crowds are protesting on a false pretense that actually has nothing to do with the hard facts of the case.
By contrast, when OJ Simpson allegedly got away with a violent, premeditated, First Degree Murder of white woman Nicole Brown (with the help of his dream legal team) – white people in America did not march, protest, or even decry the legal system. At the time the trial was classed as nationwide entertainment, and it produced many celebrities as a result. The abuse of money and power and injustice in the OJ trial appears to be many times greater by order of magnitude than the Zimmerman case.
So where did the crowds get this idea from originally? We will give career agitators Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, along with President Obama and Eric Holder the majority of the credit here for making it happen early on this talking point.
The real work comes in owning the label of the victim, and familiarising the mob with the victim. Once this is done, then the ‘racial’ element is easier to tack on.
The phrase “Skittles and Ice Tea” has made the rounds since day one in this case and went viral on the internet, and there’s a reason for that. It was even used again by Al Sharpton after Zimmerman was acquitted this past weekend. It’s a great tag line – almost Madison Avenue level.
All of the online petitions for “Justice for Trayvon” gave over-simplified, reduced, incomplete, and heavily biased accounts of events, which helped sway millions towards their campaign.
IMAGE: Democratic website Moveon.org used iconic ‘hoody’ imagery early on to attract youth to the campaign.
Change.org helped to codify the petitioning language and imagery early on, with the iconic “hoody” and by reducing the case to that of, “Murdering an unarmed teenager who has not done anything wrong”.
” Zimmerman should be charged with the murder of this unarmed teenager who was doing nothing but walking back home from the store after going walking to the store to purchase a bag of skittles during half-time of the game he was at home watching with his father.”
This is expanded by Soros funded activist network Avaaz.org, in a presentation cynically entitled “9mm Defense“:
“This is the heartbreaking story of young Trayvon Martin – a teenager who loved horseback riding and wanted to be an aviation mechanic. Late last month, 17-year-old Trayvon was watching a basketball game on TV with his dad. He decided to go out to a nearby 7-11 convenience store in Sanford, Florida, to buy candy. On the way home he was shot dead by a neighbourhood watchman.
The exact facts are under dispute, but here’s what we know. As Trayvon returned home from the store, 28-year-old George Zimmerman, captain of the neighbourhood watch, called the police to report a suspicious person. The police told Zimmerman, who’s white and Hispanic, to stay put; he did not. It appears he followed Trayvon, there was an altercation, and Trayvon was killed. Zimmerman had a 9mm handgun; Trayvon had a pack of Skittles and a can of iced tea.”
Finally, Moveon.org makes it into a race issue:
“George Zimmerman’s shooting of Trayvon Martin, an African American teenager, reveals a history of racism in Sanford, FL that has stubbornly refused to die. Weeks after the shooting, the Sanford police department is slow to release details of the shooting and, more surprisingly, has not arrested George Zimmerman, a man who has a history of violence.”
Now that the trial has presented all the evidence and delivered a verdict, the charge of ‘racial profiling’ against Zimmerman case seems to be a verdict that no court could rightful uphold (the DOJ may try to though), but when left to the mobs, it’s a “guilty, guilty” because after all, the mob demands justice for their victim, Trayvon Martin.
That is the crux of the issue now, and the Justice for Trayvon activists – who themselves are led by some of the country’s most prominent professional agitators, do not appear willing to back down from their stance on ‘racial profiling/racial hate crime’.
Unfortunately, in this case, both sides can’t be right.
Washington operators created this story, and the media promoted it. Now the people are marching for a civil disobedience narrative which was launch by the state itself. Amazing.
The danger comes when the mob on the street, and the mob in the White House, both believes it is above the rule of law.
Time for a reality check.
More from RT…
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Thousands protest Zimmerman verdict as Justice Dept vows to restart hate crime inquiry
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RT
Thousands took to streets across the US on Sunday, as protests against the acquittal of George Zimmerman entered their second day. Zimmerman, a former neighborhood watch volunteer, shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012.
Follow RT’s LIVE UPDATES on Zimmerman verdict fallout.
The Justice Department said Sunday that it will restart its investigation into last year’s killing to consider possible separate hate crime charges against George Zimmerman. The news follows huge public outcry and calls from civil rights leaders to reopen the inquiry.
“Experienced federal prosecutors will determine whether the evidence reveals a prosecutable violation of any of the limited federal criminal civil rights statutes within our jurisdiction…and whether federal prosecution is appropriate in accordance with the department’s policy governing successive federal prosecution following a state trial,” a Justice Department spokesman said in a Sunday statement.
Massive “Justice for Trayvon” marches took place in New York City, Boston, San, Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities across America on Sunday. At least five people were arrested in New York, RT’s Marina Portnaya reported.
US President Barack Obama has called for peaceful reaction, urging Americans to respect the verdict of the jury, which cleared George Zimmerman of the murder of Trayvon Martin.
“I know this case has elicited strong passions. And in the wake of the verdict, I know those passions may be running even higher. But we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken,” the president said in a statement.
In New York City, a few thousand people marched from Union Square to Times Square. Demonstrators blocked traffic while chanting slogans. Police tried and failed to funnel the crowd into controlled lanes…
READ MORE POLITICALLY CORRECT NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire PC Files
