A group calling for officers of the New York City Police Department to be stripped of their guns is planning an action to destroy “a symbol of oppression and genocide” in a Brooklyn park.
Members of “Disarm NYPD” say want to burn the American flag in Fort Greene Park.
On Facebook, the group says more than 300 people plan to attend.
Though the group is mostly focused on alleged police brutality against African-Americans, in a flyer distributed to promote the July 1 event the group linked the protest to the actions of Dylann Roof, the accused shooter in the massacre at a Charleston, South Carolina, church.
The group wrote, “Roof isn’t an isolated actor – he is a product of a consistent pattern of state-sponsored terrorism and racialized dehumanization in America.”
It is also praising the desecration of Confederate flags, noting “the Confederacy only lasted four years” and “between the years of 1776 and 1861, slavery was upheld by the United States of America.”
The page features numerous images of American and Confederate flags burning and expresses solidarity with other actions of flag desecration.
The website containing Roof’s manifesto, found after the shootings, also featured images of the accused killer burning and spitting on American flags.
The burning of flags has become commonplace in recent protests.
Flags were burned in Ferguson, Missouri and ripped down from a flagpole and replaced with a black and white variant during protests in Chicago.
The “Eric Sheppard Challenge,” calling for African-Americans to express solidarity with a reported member of the New Black Panther Party by stomping on the American flag, became a social media craze in April, with students posting themselves stepping or jumping on the flag on Facebook, Youtube and Instagram.
Following the shooting in Charleston, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan called for a campaign against the American flag, because, in his words, “we’ve caught as much hell under that as the Confederate flag.”
Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh had predicted such a campaign would follow the effort against the Confederate flag.
Colin Flaherty, a reporter who chronicles inner city violence and is the author of “White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Racial Violence to America and How the Media Ignore It,” warned figures like Farrakhan are not marginal.
“Farrakhan … is a figure of respect and influence among a large number of black people. So when he calls for burning down the flag, quitting the military and treating cops as occupying forces, he is not just encouraging black mob violence against police and white people – he is reflecting it.”
The motif of “occupation” and the idea of America as somehow constituting a foreign power has been exploited by the Disarm NYPD group in its propaganda.
It writes: “While the so-called patriots yell that we should just leave, we instead choose to dream. We dream of what real freedom looks like: freedom from paramilitaries occupying our communities, beating and killing our sons and daughters; freedom from our communities being destroyed by the speculative capital of gentrification; freedom from mass surveillance; and freedom from systemic racism.”
In another example of how the flag has been used as part of a protest against the police, the rapper Kendrick Lamar appeared on the Black Entertainment Television Awards on June 28 with a giant torn American flag in the background. Lamar performed his song “Alright” while standing on top of a vandalized police car in what was widely perceived as an attack on alleged “police brutality.”
Civil Rights leader Jesse Lee Peterson, founder and president of the Brotherhood Organization for a New Destiny (BOND) and author of “Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America,” condemned the performance and what he sees as a larger hate campaign against the police.
“The 2015 BET Awards were full of hate. Allowing rapper Kendrick Lamar to open up the show rapping about police killing blacks in the streets while standing on top of a vandalized police car only incites hate and violence.”
Peterson, a WND columnist, claimed Lamar’s performance “reinforces the lie told by ‘Black Lives Matter,’ Al Sharpton, the Obama Department of Justice and others that police are racist.”
“I would like to know who at BET approved this song? Would BET approve a song by a white artist accusing black leaders of hating white people? The answer is no. This shows how rampant and out of control black racism is today. This is black racism gone wild. BET needs to be repudiated and scolded for allowing this type of hate and lie to be put center stage. I thought liberals were supposed to be about love and compassion. Where’s the love in this?” he asked.
“It’s not true that police are killing innocent blacks, but when a popular rapper says it on BET, some will believe it. It should be illegal to incite this type of hate against police. Shame on all the black ‘leaders,’ record executives, business people, most of all the parents and adults who sat in the audience and went along with this madness. Until black Americans start cleaning up their own mess and repent of their own racism, they have no room to point the finger at anyone else.”
Peterson believes conservatives who think the effort to destroy and marginalize traditional symbols will ever stop are simply fooling themselves.
“All of this is not about the Confederate flag at all. Dylann Roof’s actions weren’t about the flag either. What these people are doing is not about ‘freedom,’ it’s about destroying every symbol that represents the straight white male. They don’t want anything that reminds them of the white male that they hate. The idea of America and the flag is a reminder of the white male. They’re driven by racism and hate toward whites. After burning the American [flag] they will find something else to destroy. I invite them to go somewhere else and create the ‘freedom’ they’re seeking. They can go back to Africa if they so choose.”
Speaking of those who would burn the American flag to attack police, Peterson charges: “These people have no self-governing at all. They carry the same hatred for white men and America that Farrakhan and the New Black Panther members have. They need to be shunned just like white skinheads or Ku-Klux-Klan groups.
“They should be arrested for inciting violence and charged. But because they tend to be black, they get away with it. If we don’t say no to these thugs, there’s no end to their destruction. They’re using the Charleston shooting to justify their actions. They don’t care about the people that died in the church; they have no love or compassion for them. They just want to destroy America.”
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2015/07/01/flag-burners-driven-by-racism-and-hate/
from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2015/06/30/flag-burners-driven-by-racism-and-hate/
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