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BainsBane

(53,001 posts)
Sun Jul 14, 2013, 04:33 AM Jul 2013

"Why the Latest Zimmerman Race Riot Conspiracy Theory Is the Dumbest Yet"

Not only dumb but racist. Remember that nefarious Black Panther in Philly who supposedly intimidated voters into voting for Obama? Well the right-wingers say he's going to bring a bunch of his friends down to Florida to make the state burn.

It's important to recognize the origins of these riot rumors. They come from racist Republicans looking to stir up trouble. Don't fall for it.


The conservative blogosphere is brewing with ominous warnings about the inevitable riots they think will come if George Zimmerman is acquitted of charges related to his killing of unarmed teen Trayvon Martin. (My colleague Lauren Williams has rightly questioned this mania here.) An email this week from Everett Wilkinson, a former tea party leader in Florida who now runs something called the Nation Liberty Federation, outlines many of the leading (and recurring) conspiracy theories about the verdict's aftermath, which he naturally thinks will include riots: martial law. FEMA camps. But he offers up some of the new ones, too.


Among those is the suggestion that the New Black Panther Party is busing people to Florida for the specific purpose of inciting riots after Zimmerman presumably walks out of court a free man. Wilkinson writes:

Reports have come in from eye witnesses in Sanford, Florida that the New Black Panther Party, an extremist group that has called for the killing of George Zimmerman if he is found not guilty, is busing in thousands to that town. Sanford is the location of the trial and near the place where the shooting of Trayvon Martin by Zimmerman occurred. There have been threats of riots if Zimmerman is not found guilty and it is believed that the New Black Panther Party and other extremist groups will attempt to take advantage of racial tensions after a non guilty verdict by organizing riots.

Wilkinson points out that the New Black Panthers supposedly put out a "dead or alive" poster with Zimmerman's face on it last year—proof that the "eye witnesses" in Sanford must be right. He writes ominously, "When Zimmerman was first arrested the Black Panthers threatened to burn the whole state of Florida down." Wilkinson suggests that the Obama administration might be bringing in Russian soldiers to fight off the angry mobs (through FEMA, naturally), a claim that follows on the heels of his suggestion earlier this year that Russian intelligence was warning that President Obama was creating teams of "death squads," a story that originated on a hoax website.


Clearly Wilkinson doesn't know much about the New Black Panthers aside from the overhyped reports about them on Fox News during the past few presidential campaigns. For one thing, they probably don't need a bus. Most of their members could fit in a taxi. And they're not especially good at organizing anything, even voter intimidation. Their erstwhile leader, Malik Zulu Shabazz, got his start in DC in the 1990s while at Howard University's law school, running as a candidate for the DC city council and trying to organize boycotts of Korean merchants in DC's poor, black neighborhoods. His first moment in the limelight came after he organized anti-Semitic chants at a Howard rally in 1994. Shabazz was good at getting himself in the news and not much else. Little has changed in that regard since 1995, when now-Slate editor David Plotz wrote this seminal profile of the guy. (A sampling: "Seated in the tiny chair in the tiny room, Shabazz looks somewhat like an overgrown schoolboy—an impression magnified by the large zit erupting beneath his right nostril.&quot . . .

It wouldn't take many paranoid, angry gun owners to create a bloodbath in Florida after a Zimmerman verdict, a prospect that seems far more frightening than Malik Shabazz and a cab full of New Black Panthers.



http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/07/zimmerman-race-riot-florida-new-black-panthers
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"Why the Latest Zimmerman Race Riot Conspiracy Theory Is the Dumbest Yet" (Original Post) BainsBane Jul 2013 OP
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