08 Mar MISSOURI – WHEN THE DOTS DON’T CONNECT
The mainstream media has delivered the narrative:
Oppressive racism and bigotry permeate the main campus of the University of Missouri in Columbia; an heroic student initiates a hunger strike to right the wrongs (which include reports of a hateful swastika); the student body president joins in the protest, along with the football team; and the President and Chancellor of the University resign in what amounts to a tacit admission of inadequacy in addressing the many injustices, and a triumph of righteous protest is proclaimed throughout the land. After all, this is the state that brought us Ferguson, so this protest was long overdue.
But a little time passes, and facts start to emerge that conflict with the narrative.
Hunger striker Jonathan Butler, the primary instigator of the University of Missouri protests, is in his eighth year at Mizzou, having completed an undergraduate degree, and then returned for a graduate degree. He says he has never felt ‘safe’ at Mizzou. But he attended for four years and then came back for more. ?
Butler is also the son of a prominent, intact Omaha, Nebraska family in which his father is a senior officer of the Union Pacific Railroad who earned $8.4 million in compensation in 2014. His mother runs “Joy of Life” Ministries.
The Butler family is a story of life in oppressive, racist America??
Payton Head, another primary figure in the University of Missouri protests, is a gay, black man who was elected student body president of Mizzou.
A narrative that proclaims the University of Missouri to be a hotbed of racist, homophobic bigotry has a gay, black student body president elected by a student body that is 7% black. ???
Head even posted to Facebook that the KKK had been confirmed to be on campus, and that he was working with law enforcement to deal with this threat. But when it became evident that there was no evidence whatsoever that the KKK was on campus, or that Head was working with law enforcement as he claimed, Head took down the post, because it was false. ????
Payton Head visited the Obama White House in 2011 and is reported to have worked as an intern for Chicago Mayor and former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. ?????
These little facts about Butler and Head do not prove that there are no racist, homophobic bigoted attitudes somewhere in Missouri. But does the mainstream media narrative pass the smell test?
And what about the report of a swastika made out human feces? Swastikas are hateful and nobody likes them (though it’s not clear how such a swastika relates to racism vis-à-vis black Americans).
But when the police finally released their report, with photos—the facts seemed to point to the prime suspect being a black student previously alleged to have made racial slurs toward a white student, and later to Jewish students. In other words, the actual facts surrounding the swastika story don’t fit the narrative.
But what about the Ferguson effect? After all, another mainstream media narrative told America that Ferguson is where a ‘gentle giant’ named Michael Brown put his hands up, yelled ‘don’t shoot’ and yet was mercilessly gunned down by a white Ferguson police officer.
Except that not one part of the Ferguson narrative described above was or is true. Michael Brown was not gentle; actual video showed he robbed a convenience store and shoved the store clerk out of his way immediately prior to his decision to charge a police officer and try to take the officer’s gun away. Brown never put his hands up; he never said ‘don’t shoot’.
How do we know this? Two separate comprehensive investigations, one by the Ferguson grand jury and another by no less than Eric Holder’s Department of Justice, found no evidence that the police officer acted improperly. And this conclusion was reached after extensive questioning of multiple witnesses, the majority of whom were black.
Stated more succinctly, we know without a shadow of a doubt that ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ never happened. It is another made up story.
So what really is happening at Mizzou?
If a high profile community organizer wanted to manipulate, deceive and agitate toward racial division, hatred of the cops, intimidation of existing authority figures, and spread an atmosphere of protest and mistrust feeding a demand for fundamental transformation of America, and could find some willing accomplices at a university, which one of the dots would NOT connect?