Nothing & Everything at Lincoln Monument

on January 23, 2019

The 1990s sitcom Seinfeld was bemusedly said to be about “nothing.” Having watched over two hours of videos from Friday’s events at the Lincoln Monument, they also seem to have been largely about nothing. But social media projections and hype have made them about everything.

There was no social media when I witnessed my first DC demonstration at age six when my mother took me to the massive May Day 1971 anti-war mobilization that tried to shutdown the federal government. Across decades I’ve seen lots of protests. Iranian students were tear gassed outside the White House protesting the Shah. Labor unions and anti-nuke activists marched against the Reagan administration. Hundreds of farmers protesting foreclosures parked their tractors on the Mall for weeks, creating great damage. The KKK, all two dozen or so, tried to march down Pennsylvania Avenue but was confronted by thousands of counter protesters. So the Park Service instead put them on a Metro bus. Frustrated opponents rioted in response, smashing windows.

Protesters have been outside the White House for as long as I can recall. One troubled woman, recently deceased, parked herself there for 30 years with signage claiming the government had radiated her. The last time I gave money to a beggar, about 30 years ago, he ran across Lafayette Park to encamped marijuana rights protesters and bought a cigarette with my dollar.

When I worked at CIA as a young man, Amy Carter led protests there against USA policies in Central America. One woman waved a sign at me alleging my colleagues and I were murdering children. As a boy I marched to the White House and elsewhere to protest construction of highway I-66 near our home. One fellow marcher unselfconsciously led a chant of “I SICK SICK!!” Another marcher began shouting at the White House as though Jimmy Carter were listening.

The last time I joined a full march was over 25 years ago to oppose Disney’s planned history theme park in Northern Virginia. As we approached the White House a passing driver shouted: “Get a life!” It’s good advice for many chronic protesters. Marches can be noble and sometimes achieve historic results. Protests propelled the Civil Rights Movement in America and helped collapse communism in Eastern Europe. The annual March for Life is laudable, though I confess the cold weather usually prevents my full participation. I’m grateful for heartier souls. Even for good causes I’ve noticed demonstrations can attract zealots and odd people.

Almost every demonstration offers its own drama and street theater. Events at the Lincoln Monument on Friday after the March for Life were in this way unexceptional. Catholic schools boys were awaiting their bus home and were jeered by several loud Black Hebrews, a crazy sect believing itself a lost tribe of Israel and obsessed with opposing sodomy. They’ve performed in DC’s streets for many years.

Meanwhile, native activists who claim America is a corrupt and genocidal colonialist project were concluding their own small protest in front of the Lincoln Monument. Among them was Mark Charles, a speaker sadly popular in evangelical circles. With the great man’s statue behind him, he denounced Abraham Lincoln for genocide. Contrast this shoddy claim with Martin Luther King’s majestic embrace of Lincoln’s legacy while orating at the same spot.

Such majesty was not present there on Friday. Nathan Phillips, an apparently professional activist for native causes, for several minutes interposed himself between the Black Hebrews and the Catholic school boys, beating his drum as he approached the boys. Initial videos implied the school boys had surrounded him. Later, longer videos showed he initiated the encounter, with fellow native activists, one of whom told the boys they should return to Europe. (They’re from Kentucky.)

This encounter between Phillips and the boys was only minutes but has ignited an ongoing social media frenzy. Many initial critics of the boys have retracted their critique. But others still doggedly insist the boys were racist for supposedly disrespecting the native drummer. These critics have not explained what the correct protocol is when approached by a protesting stranger beating a drum, but apparently great reverence is expected.

Phillips later claimed he was protecting the supposedly threatened Black Hebrews, who for over an hour had been jeering the Catholic school boys as “dusty assed crackers” and “child molesting faggots.” The insults were so absurd and delivered with such aplomb that the boys reacted with smiles, laughter and school chants. As I watched the exchange on the lengthy video posted online by the Black Hebrews themselves I often laughed aloud, especially when they warned the boys: “Christ is coming back to kick your red cracker asses.”

The Black Hebrews were also unsparing with the native activists, whom they prophetically warned: “You’re not supposed to worship eagles, buffalos, rams, that’s why the Lord took away your land.” When some native women protested, the Black Hebrews responded: “There are always women thinking they can distract things with their loud assed mouth.  They’re not used to dealing with real men.”

Contra Phillips’ claim that he was interceding to protect them from the teenagers, the Black Hebrews later in their video told the police when asked about problems: “We’re good. It was okay dialogue. Sometimes stuff gets like that.  We didn’t feel threatened.”

By that point the Catholic school boys had been herded back to their bus for the ride home, no doubt unprepared for the media storm crashing against them. They would be defamed as KKK-style racists who had surrounded, mocked and threatened a solemn native elder. These indignant critics would claim a few minutes in front of the Lincoln Monument had encapsulated the ugly face of racist, fascist America.

Such critics ignored the racial views of the Black Hebrews, who believe all white people are cursed “Edomites.” And they ignored the racial views of Phillips’ native demonstrators, who think ideally all Europeans, Africans and Asians should leave America so that pure native people are liberated from colonization.

Of course neither the Black Hebrews nor the native zealots are more than tiny grievance groups. And they’re entitled to demonstrate and tout their craziness no less than anybody else. Washington demonstrations have always attracted crackpots. Their encounters with the Catholic school boys were unexceptional except that social media created mythical narratives onto which the politically aggrieved projected their angry polarities, chiefly demonizing the school boys.

Hopefully the boys and their school will emerge from their defamation with increased fortitude. And hopefully they and other young people are not deterred from future Marches for Life, now knowing they are culture war targets.

What should have been merely uneventful faux protest theater at the Lincoln Monument, as I have witnessed in DC all my life, was instead twisted into a national psycho political drama. That it occurred at the feet of Lincoln, a martyr of democracy and human equality, is ironic but maybe appropriate. He would have understood the power of twisted narratives and defamation, while still maintaining his confidence in American ideals. So should we all.

  1. Comment by bob on January 23, 2019 at 9:44 am

    And the march and its purpose? The tens of thousands who showed up despite weather and other obstacles? Totally off the screen, thanks to this convenient synthetic conflict.

  2. Comment by Michael on January 23, 2019 at 4:21 pm

    That may have been the MSM intent all along.

  3. Comment by Indy Jones on January 24, 2019 at 7:01 am

    bob: Exactly. I haven’t seen one word about the actual march and it’s turn out. If I had to guess, it had a great turn out and the Catholic boys were a minor distraction in the right place at the right time that couldn’t be let go to waste.

  4. Comment by Ted R. Weiland on January 23, 2019 at 4:50 pm

    Under the Constitutional Republic’s CRIMINAL Justice System, false accusations are rampant because those guilty of defamation are seldom, if ever, punished.

    Under the Bible’s Criminal JUSTICE System, false accusers are subject to the same penalty they intend upon their victims (whether punishable by beatings, two to five restitution, or the death penalty), per Deuteronomy 19:16-21.

    This judgment, televised on public television, would only have to be carried out once and false accusations (including most instances of fake news perpetuated by today’s renegade media) would all but disappear overnight.

    This judgment is but one of six biblical safeguards found in the Bible’s immutable moral law that assures a just juridical system, if only America would be courageous enough to return to it.

    For more regarding these six safeguards, see Chapter Fourteen “Amendment 5: Constitutional vs. Biblical Judicial Protection” of free online book “Bible Law vs. The United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective” at https://www.bibleversusconstitution.org/BlvcOnline/biblelaw-constitutionalism-pt14.html.

  5. Comment by Greg Stover on January 23, 2019 at 6:24 pm

    Thank you, Mark, for a thoughtful, level-headed analysis which accounts for what really happened.

  6. Comment by Richard A Hyde on January 23, 2019 at 8:36 pm

    Thank you, Mark. Imagine the Evening News wth Walter Cronkite covering this non-event.

  7. Comment by Pudentiana on January 23, 2019 at 9:49 pm

    No one is safe from the all encompassing sifting of the Gargantuan news media which has two objectives: create a false narrative and then to feed it to the masses as the drug/entertainment du jour.

  8. Comment by Penny on January 24, 2019 at 12:36 am

    The students have learned a hard lesson — what you are trying to accomplish can be misunderstood or simply defamed, and you will have few who will listen to you about what really happened. Taking any kind of political stand will earn you enemies for no particular reason. If you wear a MAGA cap, you are considered fair game by leftists. SAD

  9. Comment by Donald on January 24, 2019 at 11:03 am

    I was struck by the victim-blaming of all who piled on against the Catholics children. If women who dress provocatively cannot be held accountable for getting raped, then people who wear MAGA hats (or any other politically messaged garment) should not be held accountable for if activists are ‘offended.’

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