A Huffington Post columnist has waded into the issue of NFL national anthem protests, and proclaimed that any white player who stands for the anthem is a racist infused with “white privilege.”
On September 25, extreme leftist Jesse Benn fired up another controversial column, this time insisting that the number of white athletes who remained standing for the national anthem was “particularly illustrative moment in white privilege.”
Benn was shocked that white people do (his emphasis) think the American flag represents “freedom, liberty and whatever other amorphous American values one might ascribe these symbols.” Making it shocking and non-nonsensical, in Benn’s view, do think that standing for the anthem “would be disrespectful to the privileges a white supremacist nation affords them.”
Benn has clearly missed the fact that white men have the highest rate of suicide in the country. Perhaps someone forgot to tell them that they have all that wonderful white privilege that makes their lives so perfect?
The HuffPo extremist went on to knock the “fairytale we Americans tell ourselves” that our soldiers fight for freedom. He then slammed American soldiers as tools of “imperial conquest” and ridiculed Americans for wallowing in their “blah blah blah patriotism” as well as for assuming that America is a “promise fulfilled.”
“This is the problem of privilege,” Benn proclaimed. “It skews our ability to grasp what the world looks like outside our view.
“But even in the terms of American values, Kaepernick’s point is quite straightforward — the promises that underlie those values remain unfulfilled for black Americans,” he adds.
This is not entirely wrong. Unfortunately for Benn, this is not what Kaepernick said of his protests. Kaepernick indulged no such deep analysis. While calling police “pigs” and saying they are racists, saying America was “never great” and wearing shirts that praised communist dictators, all Colin Kaepernick did was in no uncertain terms attack the U.S.A. with his protests.
There was nothing focused, subtle, or thoughtful about Colin Kaepernick’s protests. They were a blanket attack on the entire country.
Naturally, Benn thinks that the country suffers “systemic white supremacy” and you are all full of it if you disagree with him.
Benn says, “Anyone who professes to care about America’s alleged values should be fighting to extend them to those they’re deprived. If they aren’t full of shit, that is.”
Benn wrote, “And while the protest at the heart of all of this isn’t about the anthem or the flag, it is about calling on America to live up to its self-professed values. As long as black people are killed by cops in the streets or left to wither away in the state’s cages without recourse, that anthem and flag represent promises unfulfilled for millions of Americans.”
Benn seems blissfully unaware that all these things he decries are perpetrated in cities run by Democrats. Not to mention the insane implication that every black person killed by police, is an unjustified shooting. The number of unjustified killings of black people, at the hands of the police, while always tragic, is an infinitesimal number compared to the number of black people killed by other black people, which is an enormously high number.
Nor, is there any truth to Benn’s claim or implication that he police are seeing black and white when they pull the trigger.
Let’s assume for a second, that all police shootings of unarmed people are unjustified. That’s utter garbage, but let’s assume it for the sake of the argument. In 2015, 36 unarmed black people were killed by the police and 31 unarmed white people were killed by the police. Not an enormous disparity, but an even smaller disparity when you factor in that five of those unarmed black people were killed by the cops after they either physically assaulted the police. Or, actually tried to kill the officers with their own service weapons.
Meanwhile, only one unarmed white victim tried to grab a police officer’s gun, and three others were shot while being non-compliant.
Since the officers in those cases were in legitimate fear of their lives, those shootings cannot truly be called unjustified. Therefore in 2015, under the rules of our hypothetical argument, exactly 31 unarmed black people were unjustifiably killed by the police, and 27 unarmed white people were unjustifiably killed by the police.
A number that’s even more unbiased towards blacks when you consider that the police interact with blacks far more than whites, due to the higher crime rates in black neighborhoods.
Yet the fact that black people in black neighborhoods represent a far greater existential threat to the black community than the police do, doesn’t seem to alarm Benn. Because in Benn’s world, if a white person can’t be blamed for a problem, then it really isn’t all that big of a problem. Which of course, betrays the fact that none of his arguments are for the betterment of minorities, so much as they are the advancing of his radical, leftist agenda.
As he wrapped up his screed, Benn apparently copy-and-pasted a dense paragraph from some cliché-ridden college textbook to explain where we are as a nation:
Understand this. White supremacy — as in the structures of opportunity, the legacy of/ongoing oppression of non-whites, and the asymmetrical hoarding of resources by whites — is what affords us the privileges that limit our view, making a peaceful act of protest seem offensive in spite of the broader context of what’s being protested. And the ignorant result of that privilege was on full display Sunday as white players stood next to their black teammates.
And to end his hateful piece, Benn wanted to “be clear.”
“So let’s at least be clear that what those players stood for on Sunday was white supremacy. Full stop,” he said.
It may not be too surprising that Benn would be seen uncorking a piece so hateful of white people and the nation. He has a history of outrageously controversial, even seditious pieces.
Only a few months ago, for instance, Benn insisted that it was “logical” for liberals to turn violent to resist Donald Trump. He then said, “For violent resistance to work it’d need to be organized.”
In his post from June, Benn asserted that “Violent resistance matters” and urged liberals not to be “that liberal” by playing nice with their protests.
Benn also took to Twitter to celebrate the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise:
#SteveScalise once called himself "David Duke without the baggage" – the world would be a better place without him. End of story.
— Jesse Benn (@JesseBenn) June 14, 2017
In another hate-filled Tweet, Benn was exultant when cops were shot.
Chris doesn't seem to know me if he thinks two cops getting shot is going to upset me. https://t.co/swI7sEu7mK
— Jesse Benn (@JesseBenn) June 15, 2017
These are the kind of people to whom Huffington Post gives a platform to disgorge hate and lies.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.
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