That isn\u2019t what happened. Phillips was the aggressor in the situation. It\u2019s a curious feature of our culture that people aggressively seek to be victimized, go out of their way in hopes of getting punched in the face, but here we are. People do that because they know the media hand out condemnation based on perceived ranking in the victim hierarchy. \u201cOld Ypsilanti man\u201d is near the top, while \u201cprivileged-looking young white male probable heterosexual in a MAGA cap\u201d is the absolute bottom. The surface appeal of the story short-circuited the reporters\u2019 brains to such a degree that they failed to perform basic tasks such as asking the people they were accusing for their version of events. The Times<\/em> and other outlets had zero evidence that a \u201cmob\u201d \u201csurrounded\u201d Phillips, except a claim of Phillips that he has since backed away from.<\/p>\n Nathan Phillips (right) confronts a student from Covington Catholic High School in Washington, D.C., January 18, 2019. (Kaya Taitano\/Social Media\/via Reuters)<\/p><\/div>\n Phillips has on at least one other occasion gotten himself into what he says was a racist altercation<\/a> with a group of youths. This one, four years ago, also involved him approaching others, in this case a group of college students. (\u201cWhy did Phillips go over to the fence? Why not just walk away?\u201d wondered a reporter. \u201cFor me just to walk by and have a blind eye to it,\u201d Phillips said. \u201cSomething just didn\u2019t allow me to do it.\u201d)<\/p>\n Friday he waded into a group of Covington students, evidently hoping to troll a response out of them suitable for a viral video. According to the Washington Post,<\/em> Phillips, 64, said that he felt threatened by the teens and that they swarmed around him as he and other activists were wrapping up the march and preparing to leave. This is a lie. They didn\u2019t swarm around him. He strolled right into the middle of their group:<\/p>\n https:\/\/twitter.com\/matthewschmitz\/status\/1086994001801158656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1086994001801158656&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationalreview.com%2F2019%2F01%2Fnathan-phillips-lied-the-media-bought-it%2F<\/p>\n Phillips then pivoted to a completely different version of his story with the Detroit Free Press<\/em>, in which he admitted that he approached the students, not the other way around. His interviews and the various videos of the incident paint a picture of him saying he is a) terrified of the Catholic students yet b) walking right up to and into their group; a) doing his best to leave yet b) pressing forward insistently; a) trying to go up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial yet b) not noticing that there is a clear path up those steps approximately ten feet to his right.<\/p>\n Phillips, who claims to be a former Marine and a Vietnam veteran, told the Free Press<\/em> the Covington kids \u201cwere in the process of attacking these four black individuals. I was there and I was witnessing all of this. . . . As this kept on going on and escalating, it just got to a point where you do something or you walk away, you know? You see something that is wrong and you\u2019re faced with that choice of right or wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n Because naturally, when you see a group of individuals \u201cattacking\u201d another group in a public place where there are lots of police, the proper response when you\u2019re a 64-year-old man is not to inform a cop but to take charge of the situation yourself. Go up to the \u201cattackers,\u201d stand toe to toe with one of them and start loudly banging a drum in his face. This is a known mollification technique and it absolutely can never fail to defuse tensions. However, if it does fail, what you should do is move the drum even closer to the other person\u2019s face, so it\u2019s just a few inches from the guy\u2019s ears, and keep banging away for several more minutes.<\/p>\n There is a nearly two-hour video<\/a> of the incident in which a group of about five black individuals from the Black Hebrew Israelites shout abuse at Catholics and Trump supporters near the Lincoln Memorial. \u201cYou believe in a f***** child molester,\u201d they shout. \u201cThe Purge is coming.\u201d \u201cChrist is coming back to kick your cracker asses.\u201d Etc. One youth, apparently part of the Covington group, takes off his shirt, leads the group in what looks like a choreographed school cheer (this appears consistent with the account<\/a> one student provided to WKRC TV in Cincinnati), everyone joins in, then most of them sit down or take a knee at about the 1:12 mark. At that point Phillips emerges from the crowd and walks up to the kids with his drum. The kids get up and start dancing and jumping again.<\/p>\n A lot of people were making videos of the incident. At least one of these videos, it appears, was taken by an ally of Phillips. Yet I haven\u2019t come across a video that shows the Covington kids chanting \u201cbuild the wall,\u201d much less \u201cattacking\u201d black people as Phillips says.<\/p>\n If you insult someone, and that person insults you back, you don\u2019t get to cry, \u201cOh my gosh, for no reason whatsoever I\u2019ve just been insulted!\u201d The Christian thing to do is of course turn the other cheek, but if we\u2019re being honest, people do tend to take the bait when they\u2019re being baited, and teens are less likely than others to turn away from outright provocation. Nathan Phillips went out seeking to create an incident, and he fooled the New York Times<\/em> and the Washington Post<\/em> into accepting his false version of it.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/nathan-phillips.jpg\")
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