Topic: Liberal Fascism
You will—or should not be—surprised to learn that the Department of Justice has cleared former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson of civil rights violations in connection with last summer’s shooting of black teenager Michael Brown. No doubt the hopes of cop-bashing lefties and race baiters have thereby been dashed but it was easy to see this decision coming. In such a case, charging the officer under federal civil rights statutes is a heavy lift for the prosecution. The standard of proof demands clear and compelling evidence of racial bias, i.e. that the cop acted out of bigotry or race hatred. Obviously no such evidence would have been forthcoming in the Ferguson case. So Darren Wilson has now been exonerated of both murder and racism. But of course the Left will not be satisfied.
Though it’s based on an entirely false narrative—or to use plain language, a lie—the Left’s “hands up, don’t shoot” mantra seems too compelling a piece of agitprop to be abandoned. Who cares if it isn’t true? When a police officer shoots a black person that’s racism—period. Never mind the facts. Somehow, in some way that can’t quite be defined, “hands up, don’t shoot” is claimed to expresses a higher truth. It’s the same mind-set that leads campus feminists to explain away a false rape charge with the argument that, after all, the lie does highlight a real problem.
What I find remarkable about this is the Left’s inability to see that an embrace of the lie in the face of the facts harms their own cause. Notwithstanding the outrage and hysteria over Ferguson, it turns out that the police were in the right. Even the argument that the cops overreacted immediately after the shooting by putting on a paramilitary show of force was undermined by the violent rioting that followed the grand jury’s decision not to indict Wilson. So maybe the Ferguson Police Department knew what it was doing. When the Obama/Holder light footprint method was tried, Ferguson burned.
Ditto the Eric Garner case in New York. On the face of things this was a clear-cut example of police brutality leading to the death of an unarmed black man. As the Left tells it, Garner was choked to death by a racist cop. But in fact Eric Garner was not subjected to a chokehold: The autopsy of his body disclosed no damage to his windpipe or neck bones. Moreover, experts who studied the video record concluded that the officer was applying a submission hold, which is intended to deprive the brain of oxygen by stopping blood flow through the arteries. Unlike the chokehold, this technique is not prohibited by the NYPD. Bottom line: Eric Garner did not die of asphyxiation. He died of complications triggered by the submission hold, said complications deriving from preexisting medical conditions: acute and chronic bronchial asthma, diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. These facts explain why the grand jury declined to indict the police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, on murder charges. So while there are many troubling things about the Garner case, racist cop violence isn’t one of them.
It goes without saying that the Left isn’t interested in the facts of either case. On the contrary, the leftie blogosphere is still pushing various conspiracy theories, e.g. that the Ferguson grand jury was lied to in some way. Perhaps the Justice Department’s decision to leave Darren Wilson in peace will steal some of the wind from the sails of this ideological Flying Dutchman. I doubt it though. Like Dr. Goebbels, progressive activists have considerable faith in the power of the Big Lie.
