A video produced by a University of Wisconsin-Madison student showing black students beheading police officers wearing pig masks is a prime example of the double standards and hypocrisy of the Left. While the video has drawn fire, neither the university nor the university police have demanded that it be taken down and no disciplinary action has been taken against the students involved.
The video — which runs one minute and 45 seconds — was posted to YouTube on September 20. It opens with a voice-over of President Trump’s statement after the violence at the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally. It is more than a little revealing that the video’s producer, UW-Madison student Eneale Pickett, chose that statement to open the video. Trump’s words — “And you had a group on the other side that was also very violent, and no one wants to say that” — were condemned by the Left, including Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, which stands in solidarity and philosophical agreement with both Antifa and Black Lives Matter. According to their narrative, Trump’s words unfairly compared the actions of the militant Left with the actions of the “white power” element of the Alt-Right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIski313Lms
What is telling is that this video promotes the very violence Trump was condemned for condemning. And that is not the only disingenuous element of this video. While ostensibly condemning racism, the video is itself racist. The police officers depicted in the video are white. The victims, who overthrow oppression by hunting down and murdering police officers, are black. The less-than-subtle message is that while it’s wrong for anyone to hate or fear blacks, it’s perfectly acceptable and morally justifiable to hate and fear whites.
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That message is clearly seen in the clothing line for which this video is a thinly-veiled commercial. Eneale Pickett is the owner of Insert Apparel, which is described on its website as “a clothing line that helps facilitate difficult conversations that people wouldn’t necessarily have about race,gender, sexuality etc.” However, considering the nature of the messages emblazoned on Insert Apparel’s sweatshirts and hoodies (which are featured prominently in the video), it is not likely that any “difficult conversations” are going to take place by wearing this clothing line. The messages emblazoned on this clothing are about as subtle as depicting the beheading of a police officer dressed up as a pig.
The messages — many spelled out in what can fairly be described as either fragmented English or polished Ebonics — are anti-American, anti-police, anti-social, and militantly racist. This is nothing new to either the Black Lives Matter crowd in general or Pickett in particular; Pickett’s previous endeavor was selling hoodies bearing the message “All White People Are Racist.”
The messages emblazoned on Insert Apparel’s sweatshirts and/or hoodies include:
• “DESTROY the city THAT CAUSED YOU TO BURY ME.” (In the ad on the website, this sweatshirt can be seen worn by one of the “actors” from the video. He is shown holding the sledgehammer he uses in the video to murder police officers.)
• “F*** the Police. They the Biggest GANG in AmeriKKKa.” (The young “hero” shown advertising this particular article of clothing, supposedly designed to “facilitate difficult conversations,” is holding a bloody pig mask representing the severed head of a police officer. The “F” word on this shirt is spelled out, and the “o” in “police” is represented in the form of the head of a pig.)
• “I would ask for Justice, but she’s helping the cops burn my body.” (On the graphic for this sweatshirt, the crossbar of the letter “J” in justice has two nooses hanging from it.)
• “JUSTICE OVER THERE ACKIN’ [Ebonics translator: “acting”] LIKE SHE DON’T KNOW US KNOWING DAMN WELL SHE HEAR US CALLIN’ HER NAME.” (This sweatshirt is worn by the black victim in the video who is lynched by police officers using an American flag as a noose.)
• “#NOHASHTAG CAN EVER BRING ME JUSTICE. I have seen my DEATH way too many times to imagine anything different.” (Of course, while no hashtag can accomplish that, shelling out $45 for this cheap-looking hoodie supposedly can.)
And that is another hypocritical point exposed in all of this. On every page listing one of these items for sale, there is a quote at the bottom. The quote reads:
It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.
It is a quote from Assata Shakur, who was a communist member of the Black Panthers and Black Liberation Army. She was involved in bank robberies, bombings, kidnapping, and police killings. She was convicted of murder in 1977 but escaped prison and fled to Cuba where her comrades offered her asylum. She still lives there and has praised Cuba while working as English-language editor for Radio Havana, Cuba. Apparently, a black communist cop killer would be the ideal “hero” to quote when an angry black student is fanning the flames of racial hatred for the purpose of participating in the capitalist practice of selling an exclusive clothing line on the Internet. The definition of hypocrisy in an online dictionary should carry a link to Pickett’s video.
But even as disingenuous and hypocritical as all of that is, perhaps the point that takes the prize is the fact that Pickett and his fellow students are availing themselves of an education (or at least have the opportunity to get an education) in a system that they apparently would destroy. While claiming to be oppressed and endangered, Pickett made a video inciting the murder of police officers, published the video on several Internet sites, used that video to sell a clothing line inciting the violent and radical overthrowing of the very system he feeds off of, and faced exactly zero consequences for any of it. Oppressed and endangered people wouldn’t get away with that; their oppressors wouldn’t stand for it. If Pickett and his fellow black students were really oppressed, merely speaking out would bring swift and severe reprisal.
Instead, Pickett’s “oppression” at the hands of his white captors takes the form of a full-ride scholarship as part of the First Wave scholarship program. First Wave is a full-tuition, four-year scholarship program that is donor-funded, but facilitated by and overseen by University of Wisconsin faculty and staff as part of the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives. It is part of the First Wave Spoken Word and Hip Hop Arts Learning Community. That’s right. Poor, oppressed Mr. Pickett is getting a free college education on a rapper scholarship. And he’s complaining about being held down.
Pickett is not alone in his hypocrisy, though. Hypocrisy is a systemic problem in liberal circles. The University of Wisconsin — it would appear — is steeped in it. To see that in its sharpest contrast, compare the statements by both the university and the university police about this video with another episode from 2013.
When asked about what action the university would take in regards to the video (which had also been posted to a university website), UW-Madison released a statement saying in part:
UW-Madison strives to provide a welcoming and inclusive campus environment, while allowing everyone to share ideas and political views in exercise of their free speech rights. However, the university strongly condemns the glorification of violence such as that contained in the promotion of a student-produced clothing line.
The University of Wisconsin police issued a statement saying:
We do not agree with the message, but we appreciate and respect people’s opinions and their right to free speech. UWPD is not investigating the video as no crimes have been committed.
That is a far cry from the reaction of the leadership of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in 2013 when two white female students posted a Snapchat picture of themselves in their dorm room wearing facial masks. Because the compound of the masks was black, Chancellor Beverly Kopper, wrongly assuming it was an attempt at backface, publicly condemned the photo without asking any questions or hearing the girls’ side of the story.
The closest the university was able to bring itself to condemning Pickett’s video was to remove it from the university server because it was a violation of a university policy against using the server to host commercial activities. So, if he had not used the video to promote a capitalist endeavor (which — as this writer has asserted — appears to be his main objective), it would have been alright to host the video from the university server.
At least no one in the video was getting a facial.
If there is any bright side to this story it is that the video (shown above) has far more dislikes than likes. The official posting of the video on Pickett’s YouTube channel isn’t doing very well either. As of this writing, it has a mere 220 views and an equal number of likes and dislikes. Maybe America is losing its appetite for hypocrisy.
Photo at top: screen-grab from video
