Breitbart Starts Big Push To "Go After Teachers" With His Trademark Deception
April 29, 2011 1:59 pm ET by Ned Resnikoff
Andrew Breitbart is at it again.
A week after he promised to "go after the teachers and the union organizers," his website BigGovernment.com started running a series of choppy, heavily edited videos taken from labor studies courses taught at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The posts promoting these videos claim, among other things, that the professors "instruct students on how fear, intimidation, and, even, industrial sabotage are important and, often, necessary tools," and that they teach their students that the US flag is "racist."
But given Breitbart's history of dishonesty and his declared intention to "go after" teachers and unions, do we have any reason to think Big Government's claims are credible?
In a word, no. And in fact a quick review of the full context of these clips reveals that Breitbart is up to his old tricks again.
1.) Big Government Edited A Rejection Of Violent Tactics To Make It Sound Like An Endorsement
The opening to Big Government's first video, "Thuggery 101," quotes Professor Don Giljum to make it sound as if he recommends that unions use violent tactics.
Here's a transcript of his remarks as edited by Big Government:
GILJUM: Because I think if you look at labor's history over the years, you'll find that, you know, we've had a very violent history with violent protests-- [CUT]
GILJUM: ...in certain instances, strategically played out, and for certain purposes, that industrial sabotage doesn't have its place. I think it certainly does. But as far as -- You know, and I can't really honestly say that I've never wished, or have never been in a position, where I have haven't wished real harm on somebody or inflicted any pain and suffering on some people--
STUDENT: We're all human.
GILJUM: --who didn't ask for it, but, you know, it certainly has its place.
These comments are very clearly edited, with a jump in the video at the 0:52 mark. But the longer version of those remarks, as obtained by Media Matters, makes clear that Big Government carefully edited around all of the portions where Giljum explicitly rejected violence as an ineffective tactic. Here's a longer video and a transcript with portions that Big Government edited out in bold:
I tend to agree with you, because I think if you look at labor's history over the years, you'll find that, you know, we've had a very violent history with violent protests and reaction to suppression. OK? But as time has changed, the tactics have changed, or the need for those have changed. OK?
Now, you know, that's not to say that in certain instances, strategically played out and for certain purposes, that industrial sabotage doesn't have its place. I think it certainly does. But as far as -- You know, and I can't really honestly say that I've never wished, or have never been in a position where I have haven't wished real harm on somebody or inflicted any pain and suffering on some people--
STUDENT: We're all human.
GILJUM: --who didn't ask for it, but, you know, it certainly has its place. It certainly makes you feel a hell of a lot better sometimes, but beyond that I'm not sure as a tactic today, the type of violence or reaction to the violence we had back then would be called for here, and I think it would do more harm than good.
Big Government clipped out both crucially qualifying statements, and putting them back in changes the entire context of the quote. Given how they edited it, it's hard to see how you could argue that the deception wasn't intentional.
2.) Big Government Clipped Movie Quote To Make It Sound Like Professor's Own Words
"Thuggery 101" also depicts Professor Judy Ancel saying, "Violence is a tactic, and it's to be used when it's appropriate-- the appropriate tactic." (Around the 1:30 mark.) But as a longer clip of that statement makes clear, those are not Ancel's own words. She was only quoting a person being interviewed in the documentary At the River I Stand, which the class had just watched for discussion purposes. Media Matters has a longer video and a transcript with the key part bolded:
ANCEL: The one guy in the film, one of the guys who had been one of the young SNCC types, said-- What?
STUDENT: [Unintelligible.]
ANCEL: The invaders, thank you. Yeah, right, right, right. Yeah. Those-- But he represented the kind of thinking that went into the Student Underground Coordinating Committee and then later, probably-- Well, coinciding with the Black Panthers, I'd say. You know, he said "Violence is a tactic, and it's to be used when it's appropriate -- the appropriate tactic."
Whether they-- They never come back to him to ask him what he thought of the window smashing in that march. Or whether or not that was done by them, or others, or provocateurs. We don't know that.
There's nothing in the longer video to indicate that Ancel endorses the position of the man she was quoting. Yet Big Government presents this quote like it was Ancel's own original opinion.
After Ancel and Giljum pointed out that they had been deceptively edited by Breitbart's team, Big Government posted a subsequent rebuttal acknowledging the context missing from the tapes it provided to news outlets. But the editors fail to provide an even marginally reasonable explanation for why they edited the videos in the way they did. Nor do they concede how including it changes the entire meaning of those clips. But that's because the only explanation isn't reasonable: that they intentionally warped the meaning of Ancel and Giljum's words to score a cheap point.
Given what we know about Breitbart, and the given that the first video alone is saturated with dishonesty, how can we take anything about this new Big Government campaign to target teachers at face value?
A post on Breitbart's site says that "Insurgent Visuals" acquired and edited the video. Who is Insurgent Visuals?
Their web site doesn't say. However, I investigated further and I found an old blog on BlogSpot. It was no longer available, but I was able to access it via Google's cache. Once there I found that the contributors to the blog were Bruce Bronson and --- James O'Keefe!
Who'da thunk it?
These right wingers are just unbelievable pieces of garbage.
In high school, I had this horrible history teacher. On the first day, she decided we needed to know about this whole muslim thing, cause 9/11 was like a year or two previous. In attempting to describe the only two muslim groups (she wasnt very smart, as you will soon see..) she tried to create some little meme about how sunni are good because you can jsut think of "Sunny."
It should be easy to figure out what she said to her students about the 'bad' faction, the shiia/shi'ite. Sadly, i cant put the actual word she used up, because MMFA has obscenity filters.
This was among the reasons for my dropping out. I somehow did not suspect id get an enriching history lesson. That ANY teacher can get away with such blatant bigotry is disgusting. My english teacher, on the other hand, was bitched at constantly by the admins because he had a sign up in class stating it was a "LGBT safe place." The school tried to make him take it down to be replaced with a military advertisement (they were all over the school, using those stands that they have for maps at malls.)
We need a system where crap like this doesnt happen. I had a teacher fired for leading a student in prayer, and I saw hundreds of cases of high level harassment that the administration refused to resolve.
Bullying, bigotry, insufficient funding, overburdend class sizes, republican looting (My school suddenly became 13 million in debt because it was all embezzled and they couldnt get more funding that year, as the law allowed for no exceptions. They also didnt get the stolen money back. Because to hell with students, apparently)...All this and MUCH more is responsible for our awful schools.
The one thing that isnt responsible for the awful schools is our unions! Theyre the ones keeping it from descending into, well, the rightwing plan of ultimately shutting down public schools, making all private schools christian, and never giving vouchers to any other generaiton (they will also likely never give enough to those who need it actively, and they will utterly dry up forever wen they do.)
"describe the only two muslim groups" What I meant by this was, she actually thought there were only the two groups, and didnt know any others existed.
We also need to have parents who read to their children before they go to Kindergarten, who value doing homework over watching TV and playing video games, and who discipline their children when they do wrong instead of blindly defending them no matter what they are guilty of.
Placing the full blame on teachers is insane. If a student has great support from home where education has always been valued, it almost doesn't matter if the teacher sucks, that student will still learn. But if a student has zero support from home, lives in a home where there is no supervision, physical abuse, drug abuse, not enough food to eat, etc., then even the best teacher in the world would have major difficulties making a difference in that student's life.
Today's American society doesn't value education like other countries do. We have so many children that come to kindergarten having never been read to, and therefore have a hell of a time learning to read (many never do). We have so many middle and high school students who fail because they simply cannot be bothered to do the work AT ALL. For the people who constantly bash teachers to be blind to this is infuriating.
Breitbart's M.O. is full-blown filibustering when asked an uncomfortable question.
The only way he won't try this tonight is if Bill slips him some 'ludes.
Hmmmm... that might be kinda fun to watch - they might act as a truth serum.
That's so unlike Breitbart! I can't belive he failed to live up to his normally high standards!
With all this smear, blame and lies being directed at what used to be widely considered a noble profession, how can students possibly resist putting in all the hard work and investment required to become a teacher?
The Troglodytes are intoxicated with hubris right now, and they're gradually dropping all pretense. A budget plan that privatizes Medicare would have been unthinkable five years ago, yet the Teabagger House of Representatives just passed one.
Real nice.
Only when the country is run by billionaire conservatives like Murdoch & Koch will idiots like Breitbart be happy.
Why do you hate America? Why do you want to sabotage its future?
Of course they didn't. Once again, we see how conservative journalism works. These guys come to a conclusion, first. Then they collect "evidence" to corroborate their initial conclusion, and when said evidence doesn't agree with what they concluded (professors are pro union violence) they deceptively edit the evidence to make it say what they really want it to say.
BEHOLD! BIG JOURNALISM!
The Shirley Sherrods of Academe?
My sister is a PhD from Harvard and has decided to leave the ranks of her present university in order to attend PA school. She says the atmosphere now is that the teachers get graded by the students and of course teachers that give courses that are easier to pass get raises and promotions. I.e., they're treating students like clients. It's not about actually educating students anymore, at least in some institutions.
Only MMFA would call that and explicit rejection of violence. He is actually talking about actively wishing pain and suffering on people. At best he is only opposed to violence because it might do more harm than good. He defiantly has no problem with the violence itself. His remarks clearly show if he thought they could use violence to further their cause he defiantly would not have a problem with that.
I don't think what he said is what you read.
It certainly makes you feel a hell of a lot better sometimes, but beyond that I'm not sure as a tactic today, the type of violence or reaction to the violence we had back then would be called for here, and I think it would do more harm than good
Adult education. Look into it
It isn't just soldiers who have died for your freedom...all that we enjoy as a quality of life in our labor is due to the efforts of labor unions. Even here in SC...the "unions are evil" state...I know that life would be different without the established norms or our rights as workers.
For all you who hate unions...I wish I could transport you back in time...
I have been a member of the UTU, a transportation union for more than thirty four years and couldnt agree more. They used to shoot us like ducks. Check out the year of the great upheaval 1877. Or the book STRIKE by Brecher
Read the part that was left on the cutting room floor, highliter.
Doesn't sound like someone willing to use violence to further his political agenda.
can you read?
Did you read this part? Apparently, you have difficulty with critical thinking.
That isnt really talking about meaningful violence and is so vague it is virtually meaningless. You make it sound like the guy is a terrorist ready to murder or blow people up and he isnt even in the BALLPARK of talking about meaningful violence with that statement.
It also doesnt really specify anything that can be called violence in any meaningful way. What does who deserved it mean, what does ANY pain mean.
You are reaching to push your predetermined agenda driven opinion
Seems like you might have overlooked part of what you included in your own post.
So....you are saying, highliter, that when you find out about the beheading of Daniel Pearl or Nick Berg that you don't "wish real harm or pain....or pain and suffering" on the terrorists?!? Oh...and when 9/11 happened you were just "meh...so what" about it? Though I realize it was a guilty pleasure, I played Toby Keith's "boot in your ***" for therapy in those early days.
The problem the universities have is that they are easy targets for this crap. They actually talk about things in REALITY....challenging the students to examine and evaluate the world around them. The professor was reflecting on his own humanity and how WE ALL have moments of anger or rage at a given situation....it's how we react to those feelings that defines who we are.
You all complain so much about "the rediculous politically correct libs!"....yet here you are saying that someone can't talk about the reality of life and a given situation because it sounds bad.
Pathetic.
Please provide statistics to back up this absurd accusation.
Or should I just pull a kabniel and scream YOU LIE!!
Opening sentence of Chapter 8 in The History of Violence in America: A Report to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, ed. Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, 1969.
--"The United States has had the bloodiest and most violent labor history of any industrial nation in the world."
you can read on for yourselfYour text to link here...
Give it up. Were you marginally informed on this issue you woudnt even blink about that statement.
As I try to figure out your post here I hit several problems:
--Are you saying that since Europeans, who were starving and oppressed, came to the United States then we DIDN'T have the most bloody labor history of any industrialized nation? You do realize that the mass European immigration happened at the turn of the century...BEFORE the height of the bloody labor history, right? hmmmm...I don't think you knew that.
--If you ARE saying that and then using that as the basis of why our statements and those of a legislative report with enough data to fill a novel (or chapter book as you probably call it) are incorrect and your assumption is correct then boy don't you look silly!
--Finally...are you saying that we are saying that the US is terrible because it has the most bloody labor history of any industrialized nation? People here may have differing opinions, but I, for one, think that is one of the reasons why we are so great. We will not allow our right to be stripped from us. We will fight for what we believe is right...not cower in a corner and be thankful we have what someone else has allowed us to have "cause it could be worse"....no...we say we have rights that no one can take away.
You see how you all are on the wrong side of history....AGAIN! You claim to love the Constitution and the Declaration and all the founding fathers...yet you care so little for the vary things they stand for. There is corruption in today's unions but not all of them and not complete corruption...no more than when humans try to run anything else.
I made a claim. I showed it is agreed with by academics. You try to change the subject and snivel about Communism which I am not defending. Dodge, run, spin, avoid factual reality at all costs it will not change anything. Reality is not dependent upon you believing it to be, you know, REALITY
I HAVE put up facts all you have is stubborness and an inability to look at factual reality. Be as brainwashed as you want. Show everyone how little you know about what you are talking about. Its all good for me
I dismiss the definition of "communism" that has been used since the 1950s to stifle any form of dissent against the corporate fascist plutocrats that started to take over Washington with their lobbyist dollars. Anyone that didn't tow the line was blacklisted, discredited and financially ruined. The United States became more like the Soviet Union when the conservatives were fighting "communism" in the 1950s. And with people like the FOXPAC tea-tards, history will repeat.
Only this time, we'll have FOXPAC cheering on the fascists and convincing their moron followers that it's for their own good
Labor dispute are between workers and companies with political party action thrown in. You might want to read up on...oh....everything before you try again.
During the previous fifty-year period, seven hundred deaths were recorded in industrial conflicts, though the actual body count was probably much higher. These grim facts mean that the United State experienced the bloodiest, most violent labor history of any industrial national in the world
This is a common theme among academics who study this field. What is YOUR evidence this is NOT true?
You look like moron here thrashing around rejecting evidence because you say they are liberals as if that makes them liars. You are pathetic. Enough evidence has been given to show my claim to have merit. If YOU have evidence to the contraty lets see it otherwise you are just being a moron and a jerk
Between 1877 and 1968, 700 people have been killed in American labor disputes.[8] In the 1890s, roughly two American workers were killed and 140 injured for every 100,000 strikers. In France, three French workers were injured for every 100,000 strikers. In the 1890s, only 70 French strikers were arrested per 100,000. For the United States, national arrest rates are simply impossible to compile. In Illinois, the arrest rate for the latter half of the 1890s decade was at least 700 per 100,000 strikers, or ten times that of France; in New York for that decade it was at least 400.
Between 1902 and 1904 in America , at least 198 people were killed, 1,966 workers were injured. One worker was killed and 1,009 were injured for every 100,000 strikers.[9][10] Between 1877 and 1968, American state and federal troops intervened in labor disputes more than 160 times, almost invariably on behalf of employers.[7] Business was disrupted, usually by strikes, on 22,793 occasions between 1875 and 1900.
Other examples of the violence both by and against U.S. union members in the late 19th and early 20th centuries include the Centralia Massacre, the Great Railroad Strike of 1922, the Haymarket Riot, and Copper Country Strike of 1913-1914
Six were killed in Centralia, 19 were killed in the Ludlow massacre, 13 were killed during the Pullman strike, over 100 were killed in the great upheaval of 1877, the National Guard was called in in 1877, 1984, and 1922 and those are just RAILROAD strikes, read about the Coal field wars of the twenties.
So can you show which industrial country has a MORE violent labor history?
I HAD enough evidence to make this claim. Either show counterevidence or admit you are just pitiful and deseprate
"I refuse to accept any evidence that does not support my contentions."
Is the above statement an endorsement of a thing or the rejection of it, you idiot?
1.)Have you ever been angry or indignant/offended at someone before?
2.)When you were did you wish you could hit said person or wish them harm or suffering in any way?
If your answer to any of these questions is no, then let me call the pope to canonize you St highliter. Because these 2 things are indicative of normal human behaviour and emotions, it's something that happens to us all the time.
That's what the guy was referring to. In fact in the rebuttal piece that Big Gov posted, there was an interjection where someone said "We're all Human". Excepting the most pious of saints, there really isn't someone who has never wished ill/harm/suffering on another, especially when they get angry.
If conservatism is the beat all, end all of how a country ought to be run, why do you have to lie so much to make your points? You'd think the facts ought to be able to speak for themselves.
Just read the rebuttal in big government. All they did was to point out that:
a.) Ancel misquoted from a movie.
b.) That the editing of Giljum's interview was valid and even in it's original form it still showed his "true intentions"
In case you're wondering, that was an article that sought to justify their editing of the interviews (which they admitted to) which painted Ancel as favoring "violent tactics" as well as Giljum "confessing about inflicting pain and suffering"
Let's take a look at that rebuttal shall we?
First of all, Ancel's case. Apparently they felt that they were justified in editing her interview because she made a misuote. The actual quote was, according to them from the 1993 film At The River I Stand:
Whereas her quote was:
Assuming she was indeed quoting from that movie, they are right saying she misquoted. However they then went on to push the point that because she misquoted, those words were no one's but her own and therefore it was proof that she subscribes to "violence is a tactic", and therefore, editing out the portion of the speech which shows her quoting was legit because those were her own word, he real intentions.
Are you following the logic here? I can't because I sure don't see any.
While I admit that misquoting someone means those words spoken do not belong to the source you ascribe them to and therefor can (if no one else has mentioned them) be considered yours. The only way you can prove that those words express your own views/intentions is if you can prove that the misquote was deliberate and misquoted with the intention of expressing one's true belief.
Big government weren't able to do so as evidenced by this segment:
There can be no perhaps about it there, if you cannot prove she was deliberately misquoting with the intention of expressing her true belief, then you "view" that those were her true beliefs is simply just that, an opinion. And a potentially false one at that.
Here's a hypothetical situation to show you what I mean. In trying to explain the actions of fundamentalist Islamists, I make a reference to a quote (this is hypothetical too) that the quran states "that, by jihad, Allah instructs all muslims to kill any enemies of their faith whoever they may be". However in reality the Quran says that "jihad means the right to fight if necessary to defend the muslim faith" (don't know if this is exactly true or not, treat it as hypothetical as well). In this instance I misquoted the Quran as extolling violence for Muslims when all it said was they had the right to fight if needed to defend Islam (2 very different things). Does that mean that I believe in and support the view that Muslims can kill anyone they perceive as their enemy? In reality I support no such belief, I simply made an honest mistake. That doesn't mean however that people cannot simply say because I misquoted, that means those words are my own and therefore I support fundamentalist Islamic views.
In Giljum's instance, the issue is even more clear cut. Big Government pointed out that their editing was valid because it clearly shows him "confessing to inflicting pain and suffering":
If you were to look at the part where Giljum made his confession, you can see that it was no confession, but rather a statement of fact. Here's the "confession" which Big Government edited out:
The underlined part is presumably what they meant by him confessing to "inflicting pain and suffering". Hoever what Giljum is really referring to is a statement of fact, that we're all human, and there is no one who has never ever had a moment where, perhaps in a fit of anger, they haven't wished someone pain or suffering. The interjection says it all, we're all human, and as humans we have emotions and we get angry. Has there never been a time when, being angry or indignant at someone, you haven't wished you could hurt them or make them suffer? Contrary to what they say, this does not indicate violent intentions on the part of Giljum toward anyone! They are trying to equate this to say, Beritbart or Beck saying they want to/would strangle someone, that's a false equivalence.
A pathetic attempt indeed by Big Government. This apology only proves that they have their predisposed, own biased views of both characters. Without being able to explain the reason for editing the interviews, one can only believe that the actual intent of the editing was to characterize both individuals according to those pre-disposed views. In other words Big Gvernment painted these 2 according to how they wanted them to be painted.
If only the world were as simple as men such as he see it.
Okay, not really. This is a person who gets paid to manipulate opinion by ommission and editing. Any show that has him on should be questioning his methods, motives and goals, not talking with him about the content of his propaganda clips.
Journalists need to make a stand about who is considered a journalist and what is really a news story and what is manufactured propaganda.
I think news agencies should be held responsible for claims of their employees. Bloggers are not always journalist. Matt Drudge, Breitbart and O'Keef are simply taking advantage of weak minded people.
It will never happen. So many americans are ideologically driven rather than driven to want truth or facts.
I want people to challenge lies, not accept them and spread them. But hey...
It's not.
Most people, whether you agree with them or not, are at least honest. He isn't.