Post
by L'Emmerdeur » Mon Jan 21, 2019 1:44 am
Yeah, OK. If you check out the video that I posted, at the beginning the MAGA crew is nowhere to be seen. It's the clown from 'The House of Israel' standing there haranguing the passersby. After the 13 minute mark the preacher and his group are involved in a discussion of their theories on race and you can hear the Indians singing in the background. At about the 14:15 minute mark, you can hear one of the 'preacher' group mention the Indians, something about 'that's some real natives, right there.' Still no MAGA types around.
By 14:30 you can hear the drumming from the Indians, and at 15:15 the camera shows them doing a dance circle. By the 23 minute mark you can hear somebody in the Indian group giving a speech. Still no MAGA boys. At the 27 minute mark the preacher has started back up again. It isn't until 29:23 that MAGA is even mentioned. One of the preacher's group says, 'that's why you got little Billy and them over there with their Make America Great hats.' The preacher harangues the Indians then one of them gives him some back, and the preacher calls him an 'Uncle Tomahawk.'
At 38:10 the first MAGA hat actually appears in the video. Up till that point it had been the preacher's small group and the large Indian group. At about the 55 minute mark the MAGA group has formed on the stairs behind the preacher, to the southern side (this is all taking place in front of the Lincoln Memorial). By the 58:30 mark the preacher has begun to turn toward the MAGA group and is making remarks about 'red hats.' He's changed his focus to them, and most of the Indians have left. Some of the MAGA group moves to the north to stand behind the preacher's group and he turns around to rail at them directly. By 1:09:00 they've begun to chant at him, as he continues to preach his nonsense, which at this point has become all about them. He's egging them on. They begin to move closer to him, and the chanting gets louder. The situation has an edge to it, with a real possibility of violence. This is the point where Phillips comes between the groups.
Right wing outlets have portrayed it as Phillips confronting the MAGA group. To me it's obvious that he's attempting to defuse the situation. The MAGA group changes its focus from the hate preacher (he's made it clear more than once that his ideas are not about peace, but war) to Phillips, and that's where most of the clips are taken from. They weren't there just innocently observing; they'd been building up steam responding to the preacher, and Phillips took the brunt of it.
If people want to believe the right wing slant, fine, but it's certainly not accurate to blame Phillips for what happened. I think what he did was foolhardy but I also think he probably prevented something much uglier from happening.
Last edited by
L'Emmerdeur on Mon Jan 21, 2019 1:53 am, edited 2 times in total.