New York Magazine had a Sunday profile on Black Lives Matter leader DeRay McKesson that is essentially a puff piece. The reporter, Rembert Browne, called McKesson “selfless.” They talked about important issues such as how Beyonce follows McKesson on Twitter and if McKesson drinks coffee or soda.
There is more to McKesson that Browne did not bother to ask him. Here are five things you need to know about McKesson that Browne did not discuss in his piece.
1. McKesson Thinks Looting is a Legitimate Form of Protest.
McKesson gave a two-day lecture at Yale University about the Black Lives Matter movement, during which he read aloud an article that argued that looting is a valid protesting method.
The article, titled “In Defense of Looting” by Willie Osterweil, argues the following, via Hot Air:
The mystifying ideological claim that looting is violent and non-political is one that has been carefully produced by the ruling class because it is precisely the violent maintenance of property which is both the basis and end of their power. Looting is extremely dangerous to the rich (and most white people) because it reveals, with an immediacy that has to be moralized away, that the idea of private property is just that: an idea, a tenuous and contingent structure of consent, backed up by the lethal force of the state. When rioters take territory and loot, they are revealing precisely how, in a space without cops, property relations can be destroyed and things can be had for free.
On a less abstract level there is a practical and tactical benefit to looting. Whenever people worry about looting, there is an implicit sense that the looter must necessarily be acting selfishly, “opportunistically,” and in excess. But why is it bad to grab an opportunity to improve well-being, to make life better, easier, or more comfortable? Or, as Hannah Black put it on Twitter: “Cops exist so people can’t loot ie have nice things for free so idk why it’s so confusing that people loot when they protest against cops” [sic]. Only if you believe that having nice things for free is amoral, if you believe, in short, that the current (white-supremacist, settler-colonialist) regime of property is just, can you believe that looting is amoral in itself.
Osterweil continues, “White people deploy the idea of looting in a way that implies people of color are greedy and lazy, but it is just the opposite: looting is a hard-won and dangerous act with potentially terrible consequences, and looters are only stealing from the rich owners’ profit margins. Those owners, meanwhile, especially if they own a chain like QuikTrip, steal forty hours every week from thousands of employees who in return get the privilege of not dying for another seven days.”
Osterweil is basically justifying looting as part of Marxist theory using the “ends justify the means” mentality. Yale did not approve this part of McKesson’s lesson, and McKesson defended teaching the essay.
“The relationship and tension between protest and property destruction is something that America has grappled with since the Revolutionary War & the Boston Tea Party,” McKesson told Fox News on Twitter. “The reading … allowed us to explore all sides of the American historical relationships and tensions present in protest.”
McKesson helped organize riots and protests in Ferguson, Mo. and Baltimore, Md. that resulted in almost half of 500 businesses in Ferguson suffering “property damage or lost revenue.” In Baltimore, the damage was worse:
** At least 61 buildings were torched.
** Over 144 vehicles were torched.
** 350 businesses were damaged
** And 113 police officers were injured.
To compare the looting that occurred in those cities with the Boston Tea Party and Revolutionary War is a false comparison.
2. McKesson Supports Cop Killers
McKesson has expressed support for a couple of cop killers:
We watched an officer kill an unarmed Eric Garner on video. Don’t try to convince me that the justice system is just. Free Assata & Mumia.
— deray mckesson (@deray) March 31, 2015
Assata and Mumia refer to Assata Shakur and Mumia Abu-Jamal, both of whom have murdered cops in cold blood. McKesson has also written positively about Shakur, via FrontPageMag: (emphasis bolded)
By October, the protest community became both highly organized, as actual organizations began to form and solidify, and more thoughtful and conscious about the symbolism and intent of protest actions. Whether invoking Assata Shakur’s, “We have nothing to lose but our chains,” or Dr. King’s, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” the protest community actively began to shift to speak to larger narratives of social justice, while situating Ferguson as the site of resistance.
Shakur, previously known as Joanne Chesimard, was convicted for murdering a New Jersey state trooper in 1973, but fled to Cuba, where she currently resides. Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death for murdering a Philadelphia police officer in 1981.
3. Where McKesson Goes, Anti-Semitic Organizations Follow.
At protests organized by McKesson, two organizations typically come to join him: the Nation of Islam and New Black Panther party.
Both organizations showed up at McKesson’s protest at McKinney, Tx., and the Nation of Islam was at the Baltimore protests. Here is a tweet from McKesson about the New Black Panther party at the Ferguson protests:
And the New Black Panther party is a critical factor in managing the crowd n #Ferguson. They have a legitimacy the police here simply don’t.
— deray mckesson (@deray) August 17, 2014
The Nation of Islam was run for many years by Louis Farrakhan, a virulent anti-Semitic, who still frequently speaks for them. The New Black Panther party has promoted violence against Jews and whites. And yet McKesson appears to have no problem with these organizations at his protests.
“And the New Black Panther party is a critical factor in managing the crowd n #Ferguson. They have a legitimacy the police here simply don’t.”
DeRay McKesson
4. Mckesson Has Ties to George Soros
Soros is the puppet master of the Democrat Party; he wants to create chaos in the country while enriching himself in the process. Soros is the funder of many far-left organizations, including Media Matters and Center for American Progress.
The Gateway Pundit has detailed McKesson’s numerous ties to Soros, including organizations such as Teach for America and Open Society Institute. The Daily Wire has previously reported on how Soros funded the Ferguson riots, as well as other important facts about him.
5. McKesson Stands With the Pantywaist Fascists
McKesson spoke glowingly of the pantywaist fascists at the University of Missouri in his NY Mag profile.
“The Mizzou students are the true embodiment of the Ferguson effect, people believing a better world is possible and fighting for it — there’s no better example than the students at Mizzou,” McKesson told Browne.
McKesson stood in solidarity with Jonathan Butler, the Mizzou student who went on a hunger strike, via Breitbart:
w/ @_JonathanButler, @Nettaaaaaaaa, and @DevaSTating_14 at Mizzou, just finished the last meeting. pic.twitter.com/mSHMfy4Jrk
— deray mckesson (@deray) November 12, 2015
McKesson apparently has no problem with Mizzou students creating so-called safe spaces where freedom of speech is not allowed and has no problem with a professor forcing a student journalist away from the protest.
And yet, Browne did not ask McKesson about any of the above issues.