Legal Insurrection
The truth still matters. Elon Musk was right, the “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative from the Michael Brown shooting “was a fiction.” Deal with it.
. . ."Musk should not have taken down the tweet. He was right, as Legal Insurrection readers know well from our own detailed coverage of the Brown shooting when it happened, as well as my numerous posts about the fabricated narrative.
"This post of mine in early June 2020 summed it up, Reminder: “Hands up, don’t shoot” is a fabricated narrative from the Michael Brown case
The Black Lives Matter movement was born of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. While the BLM founders started their organizing after the prior Trayvon Martin case, it was Brown and Ferguson which launched the BLM movement into the public spotlight through the protests and riots in Ferguson.
Nothing was more associated with the BLM movement than the chant “hands up, don’t shoot,” based on the narrative that Brown had his hands raised and said ‘don’t shoot’ when shot. That same chant drives protesters and rioters ripping up cities after the George Floyd killing.
I know the history of BLM and how it shot to national fame after the Brown shooting. I followed it closely and wrote about it at the time in 2014. I documented the violent instigators, many of them cross-over anti-Israel activists. See my October 25, 2014 post, Intifada Missouri – Anti-Israel activists may push Ferguson over the edge.
More than anything, BLM seized on the claim that Brown had his hands raised in surrender, saying “don’t shoot,” at the time he was shot by officer Darren Wilson. “Hands up, don’t shoot” became the signature slogan of BLM.
But it was all a lie. Brown wasn’t surrendering and didn’t say don’t shoot. And he wasn’t a victim of police misconduct. Rather than the “Gentle Giant” he was portrayed as in the media, he sucker punched Wilson while Wilson sat in his police car, tried to grab Wilson’s service pistol, and was shot when he charged Wilson a second time.
"Telling that truth in June 2020 about the Michael Brown shooting almost cost me my job.". .
In the tradition of CNN: