You Can’t Spell Hatred Without “Red Hat” - Covington Catholic High School Edition
Every year, Catholic high schools from around the country bus students to Washington DC for the anti-choice March for Life to make it look like opposition to abortion is bigger than it actually is.
This year, a group of students from Park Hills, Kentucky’s Covington Catholic High were left to their own devices for a time, waiting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for a bus to take them home.
What happened next has flooded social media for the last two days. A video showing the students, many wearing MAGA hats, mocking and harassing a Native American elder went viral.
For those of you who want to watch videos, this link will lead you to a compilation of many views of the incidents. (Yes, that’s plural.)
What should have been a teachable moment about racism in the United States was transformed into gaslighting of the first order. We were told the student with smirk on his face was the victim.
By the time Fox News's primetime hosts were done with coverage of the Covington Catholic School story, you’d have thought the students would be nominated Nobel Peace Prizes.
From the Louisville Courier-Journal:
But by Sunday evening, the coverage of what happened provided a more detailed account of events, along with a statement from Sandmann that seemed to tamp down the explosion of anger against the teen — thanks in part to extended video from the rally and the involvement of Louisville public relations firm RunSwitch PR.
On Sunday night, Sandmann released a three-page statement in which Nick defended his actions and offered his version of events. Describing himself as a Christian and practicing Catholic, he wrote that the Native American man, Nathan Phillips, had approached him, not the other way around. Phillips supported that in separate interviews later in the weekend.
Wow. High school students with their own PR firm.
Let’s back up a moment. Thanks to the large numbers of people in the area there are more videos to be seen.
Prior to the now-famous confrontation, twitter user @roflins posted video of these Kentucky stalwarts were recorded harassing a group of women walking in the area.
...all we specifically heard was "MAGA", "Build the Wall", and some people say they hear "slut" at the end of the video...
Later, the students encountered a group of men associated with the Children of Israel, a black sect more akin to the Westboro Baptist Church than Judaism. They’re known for confrontational condemnations of passers-by they consider to be impure. The high school kids took the bait.
Theologian David Russell Mosley watched a 90 minute version of the video made by the Children of Israel and noted:
Things only get worse once the students get back in front of the small group of men calling Catholic priests faggots. Soon they begin calling the students school shooters and blame them for what “their judges” make people, such as swear on the Bible even though the Bible comdemns faggots. I am sorry for using that term so often, but I think it is necessary to show the full-story and what the initial group of men being responded to before Nathan Philips arrived were saying.
Omaha Nation elder and American military veteran Nathan Philips, was present to take part in the Washington version of the Indigenous Peoples March, which was organized by the Indigenous Peoples Movement. Other events for January 18th were taking place around the world, from Asia to South America and Oceania to Africa. To accommodate two groups protesting in Washington on the same day, the Indigenous Peoples March moved the location of their rally at the last moment.
Philips walked in between the two groups, playing his drum and praying for peace. He was surrounded by the high school students who had no idea of what was being said. They started out mocking him, and from there it went downhill.
From Daily Kos:
I saw the teens chant “you need to drink the Trump water” and tossing water bottles at the feet of the Black Israelites”. The situation seemed to me that the kids were acting like a mob towards the Black Israelites, who were “preaching” (and saying some offensive things too, something like “hey we are against the homosexuals so you should be on our side”; seems they were preaching against the Native Americans, legally using space adjacent to them). Phillips stated from his perspective there were a few kids, who left and came back with more, then on and on until there were a couple hundred surrounding the Black Israelites and escalating the animus. So he started his peace chants and walking toward the mob feeling he needed to defuse the conflict between the mob and the Black Israelites (who he did not agree with but respected their right to be there preaching).
Here’s a snip from an eyewitness account published at The Cut:
By now, you have probably seen the video of what came next. There were just a few of us left at that point, chatting and lingering on the steps of the memorial. Across the square, a large group began to form, full of young boys in red hats and red shirts. All of it emblazoned with that tired slogan many of us now wearily associate with white supremacy, racism, xenophobia, and fascism. I had never seen so much MAGA apparel in the flesh until then.
As more of the “MAGA teens” flooded the plaza from behind us, our small group of remaining demonstrators moved forward, away from them. We were following Nathan Phillips, who played his drum with confidence and courage, and sang a sacred prayer for peace — to de-escalate the growing nervousness on the plaza. It was Nathan who’d lead us in the circle dance. A tall man with a drum and voice like his is hard to miss. And now the MAGA boys noticed Nathan, too.
Here’s a snip from Philips interview with CNN:
When I was there and I was standing there and I seen that group of people in front of me and I seen the angry faces and all of that, I realized I had put myself in a really dangerous situation. Here's a group of people who were angry at somebody else and I put myself in front of that, and all of a sudden, I'm the one whose all that anger and all that wanting to have the freedom to just rip me apart, that was scary. And I'm a Vietnam veteran and I know that mentality of "There's enough of us. We can do this."
So, is this as the student’s defenders are claiming, just making a mountain out of a molehill? Or a misunderstanding? Or a plot by the left?
Maybe some context is in order:
https://twitter.com/arlenparsa/status/1086990333987168267
The teen boys in MAGA hats who roundly mocked a native American elder during the Indigenous Peoples March in a video that went viral this weekend, arrived at the protest in Washington D.C. from Covington Catholic High School in Covington, Ky. a district where, just this May, the Catholic diocese banned a gay valedictorian from delivering his speech calling it "inappropriate," according to USA Today.
Then there’s this photo from 2015:
I think if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and wears a MAGA hat, it's probably racism.
UPDATE:
https://twitter.com/Mediaite/status/1087788114116898816