Accuse the Accusers: @scrowder Gets the Left’s ‘Plate Glass Window’ Treatment

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After yesterday’s incident in which labor union activists tore down an Americans for Prosperity tent in Lansing and sucker-punched Stephen Crowder, this headline zoomed up the Memorandum aggregation:

Breitbart Folks Appear to Fake Violence in Lansing

Huh? This was a decidedly odd piece of blogging: The claim that somehow the union thug clobbering Crowder was part of a right-wing hoax, based on such “evidence” as the event having been reported by “James O’Keefe’s buddy” Lee Stranahan — because, hey, if anybody at Breitbart thinks it’s actually news, that means it must be phony, right?

Also, the video was edited. Anybody who edits a video is obviously engaged in some kind of evil conspiracy.

What the hell is this silly gibberish? Are these people crazy?

No, they’re engaged in a systematic effort to create confusion and discourage mainstream journalists from reporting on the incident.

“Accuse the accusers!” Re-arrange the narrative of events so that a story that obviously makes the Left look bad is, instead, a story about the Right unjustly trying to make the Left look bad.

This perversion of the narrative makes the teller of the tale (“Crowder works for Fox News! Stranahan works for Breitbart!”) the pre-demonized focus of the story, the villain whose tale can’t be trusted by any mainstream, legitimate journalist. And you can bet that any MSM reporter who does try to report honestly on what happened in Lansing will be brutally excoriated by Media Matters and others on the Left for taking this incident seriously as actual news.

Crowder is being smashed “through a plate glass window,” so to speak. If conservative New Media and citizen-journalists call attention to such an incident, that very fact — the involvement of conservatives, and their interest in the incident as news — will be leveraged by liberals as part of the counter-narrative to discredit and de-legitimize the story.

So it doesn’t matter to Marcy Wheeler at “Emptywheel” whether her bizarre version of what happened in Lansing is true or even rationally plausible. She has no interest in truth.

She only cares about “winning.”

In this case, “winning” means providing reporters with some flimsy pretext for ignoring what actually happened yesterday: Union thugs physically attacked their opponents in broad daylight.

This should frighten us. The Left has rejected any notion of objective truth. Instead, there is only political truth. And political truth is judged by the Marcusean axiom of “liberating tolerance.”

Look: Jim Hoft says the goon who punched Crowder is Tony Camargo of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 876.

Does that fact check out? Is there actually such a person?

Was Camargo actually in Lansing as part of the labor union protests?

If so — if Camargo exists and is an actual IBEW member — then this is not a “hoax” or a “sting” or any other kind of right-wing artifice.

If the basic facts of the story check out, then does this not also prove that Marcy Wheeler at “Emptywheel” is a contemptible liar?

And, strange to say, when I did a Google search just now, it led me directly to a Pastebin file by . . . Ron Brynaert.

Maybe this is just a coincidence. Or maybe not.

UPDATE: Patterico blogged about Marcy Wheeler yesterday without, apparently, wondering where she learned the “accuse the accusers” trick.

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

The question of whether to blame sloth, stupidity or liberal bias for media malfeasance is always a tough one.

Generally, I prefer to think of bad reporters as just being stupid and lazy. They might get angry if you accuse them of being biased liberals.

These varying explanations are not, of course, mutually exclusive.




 


90 comments

  1. Marcy Wheeler a contemptible liar? Well, by her timeline, I judge her to be discussing the MI decision re: Right to Work.

    She’s fixated on Union vs Employer.

    Doesn’t seem to realize, Right to Work is for EMPLOYEE. If I can arrange my own contract, to my own benefit, what is to stop me from doing so? In Union states, why, the UNION. Oh, I may be able to be a non member, but what does it matter? Depending on the state/employer, my understanding is that dues may be extracted from my paycheck, even though I, as a non-union person, do not owe them.

    Employers can take care of themselves, Marcy. It’s your thug-buddies that worry not the employer, but the employee, who wants only a job. If the UNION cannot provide a service that people WANT, the people ought not be forced to join. Period. First amendment. End of discussion.

  3. Just out of curiousity, was there a cut in the middle of the film? I’m sympathetic with Right to Work so I watched the video. It seems like there is arguing, then the camera gets knocked, but then it seems like there is a cut and then when it comes back, the guy starts swinging. I’m not trying to say that that guy shouldn’t be charged or that his actions are defensible. I’m just wondering on a legal level if things change if the video was cut, so that what happened immediately before that guy started swinging is missing.

  4. Marcy Wheeler is a first rate lefty hack of the tin foil hat variety. She squabbled with me on Twitter last night and kept repeating Crowder was suspect because of “heavy editing”. She would not acknowledge the video was not a fake. As far as she was concerned, Crowder was at fault for someone punching him four times. She is nuts.
    How she could know what was edited or how much is the punchline. Then Crowder was at fault because he didn’t go tell the cops. Again, how she knows he if he did or did not is of no concern to her.
    Check out her hugely popular ‘public figure’ page:

    https://www.facebook.com/pages/Marcy-Wheeler/113434088667511

  6. A quick perusal of the unedited source video should answer any such questions. And I am sure it does exist even if not posted on the intarwebs.

  8. Tip: all handheld operated videocams can stop recording if you’re getting shoved to the ground and your finger comes off the record switch.

    But you knew that. You and your cohorts on this thread are “Accuse the accusers” in action.

  9. This is mob mentally lefty battery, no question about it. These Michigan union thugs see that their gravy train is coming to and end and they react the only way they know how, with violence. One more example of how, if we don’t change our ways in America, we will be just like Greece in a few years.

    For any lefty to spin this as anything but a violent attempt to silence opposition is absurd.

  10. Apparently all the provocation that was necessary was for him to be there and not agreeing with the union. We’ve seen this before.

  11. The right will not win this debate until we come up with a workable replacement for unions as a worker’s movement that is

    1. better at meeting actual workers needs

    2. a better fit with capitalism

    3. universal for all workers

    At that point unions become undeniably a past oriented millstone around the necks of workers whose only real reason for continued existence is as Democrat party adjuncts.

    I’ve been working this angle for a good chunk of 2012 over at Chicagoboyz. You can see my take of it there:
    http://www.google.com/custom?domains=ChicagoBoyz.net&q=rethinking+union&sa=Google+Search&sitesearch=ChicagoBoyz.net

  12. I love your phrase “The Left has rejected any notion of objective truth. Instead, there is only political truth. And political truth is judged by the Marcusean axiom of “liberating tolerance.”

    By coincidence today I came across a review of Tarantino’s latest epic “Django Unchained”.

    The reviewer, Drew McWeeny of Hit Fix, excuses the liberties taken with the historical record in this and is previous “Inglorious Basterds” thus:

    “The emotional rush that hit at the end of “Basterds” was remarkable, this compelling feeling that we were getting to see something that we needed to see, no matter if it was 100% factual or not. It was emotionally correct, and that’s all that mattered. ”

    That’s what matters to the lefty -not facts but emotional truth.

  22. Snyder has ticked off a lot of people here, LOL. They are calling him ‘Hitler’ LOLouder. This has been a possibility in Michigan for at least six years. It began under Granholm with a forced unionism scheme. For the unions to suddenly not realize what hit them, is definitely a lack of ignorance on their part. Here is some of the back story if anyone is interested.:

    http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/18034

  24. She has no interest in truth. She only cares about “winning.”

    This attitude, like so much other nonsense, can only be sustained as long as a person feels safe. It will change as soon as she’s the one accused of wrongdoing. Then objective truth will suddenly matter. Unexpectedly!

  25. Is there ANY evidence indicating that Crowder provoked anybody? Any other video or first-hand testimony? Does Crowder have a history of provoking people to take swings at him? If so, bring it up, and provide the links. In the absence of any such evidence, then you raising the “possibility” seems to me in the same vein as Dingy Harry Ried’s accusations of Romney not paying taxes and then turning around and demand that Romney prove the accusation wasn’t true.
    In other words, you appear to be setting it up so Crowder is guilty of vague charges of “provocation” until he proves his innocence.

  26. Way to read a lot into nothing. I didn’t accuse Crowder of anything. There should be an arrest and investigation. All I’m saying is if there’s a gap someone will use it to excuse what happened.

  27. SDN: For the record, I’m pro “right to work”. I’m also for the legal process to work well, which is how my comment was framed above. My original question is whether there is a cut. I’m not suggesting if there is one that that justifies the guy who hit Crowder.

    For instance, hypothetically, what if someone started swinging at you and then you came back and swung at them. Then someone produced a video with only the part where you swung at them? Both are wrong, but the cut hides things.

    So, I guess I’m back to the forensics question: was there a cut in the video?

    Also, ironically, in asking this, I’m trying avoid the ‘mob’ mentality of rushing the judgment before all the facts are in.

  31. You’re not really up on the whole “liberty and self determination” thing, are you? It’s not our responsibility to build solutions for everyone; it’s THEIR responsibility to come up with solutions that do not violate the rights of others.

    And, frankly, “universal for all workers” is BS. Can’t happen, because “all workers” do not have the same circumstances. The only common denominator is that they’re all individuals, which suggests to me that the only “solution” that fits your criteria is individual liberty…

    Which is already our “workable replacement” for the “worker’s movement”.

  33. Why did Crowder tweet doctored video while Hannity showed full tape making clear union guy was knocked or fell to his knees first before throwing feckless punch at self admitted provacateur Crowder?

  34. Assault and battery is illegal, and is not “mitigated” by anything. The man who punched Crowder deserves to go to jail. Period.

  35. Don’t be naive – “political truth” is just the logical end-point of the Stalinist “politically correct” horseshit. That’s where it was headed all along.

  36. I apologize for misreading your intent. There are plenty of trolls out there “just asking questions.”
    None the less, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, there’s no justification for suggesting Crowder provoked anything, nor is there any evidence to suggest that AFP staged a false-flag operation to make the unions look bad. (Unions don’t usually need help to look bad.) The way I see it, we have no reason to be on defense here.

  43. So you have evidence that the video is ‘doctored’? Where is it? And why should we take anything you’re saying seriously until you produce said evidence?

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