As I reported yesterday, Fox's reporting of an alleged black-on white hate crime, perpetrated on a heroic ex-Marine, dovetails nicely with their narrative of a dystopic America overrun by rampaging black thugs. So are we surprised that today's Fox & Friends would feature the actual victim of this alleged "hate crime?"
The segment began with a visual of soldiers over the caption "Abandoned Brothers." (So, there are no abandoned "sisters?") Brian Kilmeade reported that DC police are trying to find four teens accused of assaulting ex-Marine Christopher Marquez who suggests that the assailants were part of Black Lives Matter. Over a photo of a visibly injured Marquez the caption read "Veteran Violated, Decorated Marine Attacked at DC McDonald's." The "Abandoned Brothers" phrase, which seems to have nothing to do with this story, stayed in the lower right hand corner of the screen.
Kilmeade wasted no time is reporting that, according to Marquez, the teens asked him if he thought black lives matter and when he didn't respond (guess he doesn't think that black lives do matter?), "they called him a racist and the next thing you know, they attacked him, knocked him unconscious." Kilmeade expressed great admiration for Marquez who, despite "constant head pain," came on Fox & Friends.
As Kilmeade gushed over Marquez' war record, the banner read "American Hero Attacked, Exclusive: Marine Knocked Unconscious in DC." Marquez told his story which he couldn't totally remember because his memory is "getting worse." He said that when the teens asked about "Black Lives Matter," he ignored them because "they just wanted confrontation." He said that after he told them to leave him alone, the situation "got fuzzy" because even though he thought he was attacked inside McDonald's, video shows that it happened outside. He noted that the attackers stole everything from his pockets.
After some back and forth about how awful it was that nobody in the area offered to help him, Marquez got to the MAIN PROPAGANDA MESSAGE: I'm telling this to everybody because this has been happening a lot around here and across the country. There was a hate crime, they were targeting me because of my skin color so we're seeing a lot of events where people are being attacked because they're white." Kilmeade: "Right." Marquez continued his community organizing: "We have to speak up more about this because it's just going to continue to happen [inaudible]."
After Kilmeade described how when Marquez was in Iraq, he fought with a diverse group, Marquez said that he "found it very ironic because the person calling me a racist was the actual racist and they have no idea what I did for this country..." Kilmeade added that Marquez's assailants didn't know about his outstanding war heroism and that "they only saw a white person in your estimation."
Obviously, the brutal attack on Marquez appears to be unwarranted. But we only have Marquez's word that it was connected to race (and Marquez is Hispanic) and not the more common motive which is connected to money and credit cards. That Marquez is using this event to push a right wing meme, on a network that just coincidentally pushes that same meme, diminishes his credibility. And talking about irony, when Muslims, gays, blacks, and Planned Parenthood workers are victims of real hate crimes, Fox doesn't really seem to care and, in the case of the poisnoned Flint MI water, actually blamed the victims. I guess not all victims are created equal?
This story gained traction because the guy is somewhat famous. He and his fellow Marines were photographed carrying a comrade out of a firefight, and several huge statues were created based on the photograph and placed prominently on Marine bases.
Finally, the fact that he didn’t answer doesn’t mean that he doesn’t think black lives matter. According to accounts that I read in the Washington Post and in several European papers, a group of black guys walked up and surrounded him as he sat alone eating. They began to demand to know whether he believed that black lives matter. He said he felt threatened and didn’t answer because he thought they were looking for a reason to escalate what was for him a tense situation.
If you’ve ever been in a similar situation, you know that those guys are simply looking for an excuse to harm you. It happens a lot, and yes, it happens to a lot of white people.
Anyone who doesn’t acknowledge that there is a serious problem of racially motivated violence by young black males in cities like DC is simply mistaken.
I don’t know if this happened exactly as this guy described it, but according to the DC police, he was attacked by several black males and a black female.
That Fox and the rest of conservative media is making the usual racist hay with it doesn’t change that fact, does it?
