Elon Musk tweeted a hard truth about the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” false narrative from the Michael Brown shooting, which led to the Ferguson (MO) riots and national prominence for the Black Lives Matter movement, which adopted the slogan.
It started when musk tweeted about some shirts he found stocked at Twitter headquarters with the hashtag #StayWoke
According to Business Insider, Musk’s mockery upset some people because #StayWoke was a BLM slogan:
The shirts, which date back to 2016, were made to support the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and were promoted by Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, who spoke in support of the BLM movement at a Recode event in 2016.Dorsey said that he took two weeks off to work with the civil rights organization in 2014, creating a Twitter hashtag to promote the movement following the shooting of Michael Brown, a Black teen who was shot by police in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown was unarmed at the time, and the shooting sparked protests over police shootings of Black people.Dorsey said at the Recode event, where Recode said organizers handed out the t-shirts, that the hashtag represents, “being aware, staying aware [of] what you’re seeing on the TV screen [in Ferguson] versus what’s happening on the ground.”
In response to the faux outrage, Musk tweeted a hard truth:
#StayWoke shirts stem from the Ferguson protests. Obama’s own DOJ proved this & exonerated the cop. “Hands up don’t shoot” was made up. The whole thing was a fiction. [links to DOJ report]
Which of course generated more outrage. For some reason, Musk deleted the tweet and substituted a tweet that only had the link to the DOJ report.
But that didn’t stop more outrageous outrage, such as from Tech Times, Elon Musk Deletes His Tweet, Defending the Ferguson Cop Who Shot Unarmed Michael Brown. John Sexton did a good job dissecting how various lefty outlets tried to whatabout the DOJ report in response to Musk’s now-deleted tweet.
Well, yes, Brown was unarmed. Including when just prior to the shooting he strong-armed a local convenience store.
And Brown also was unarmed when he sucker-punched officer Darren Wilson in the face as Wilson sat in a patrol car, and tried to steal Wilson’s gun. That was the first time Brown was shot, and then he was shot fatally when he made a second charge at Wilson.
Wilson was exonerated and never charged by the local prosecutors or the Eric Holder – Barack Obama Justice Department. Here’s the key finding from the DOJ report (embedded in our earlier post Darren Wilson Cleared by DOJ of Civil Rights Violations) particularly noting the lack of credible evidence for the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” meme (page 8):
Although there are several individuals who have stated that Brown held his hands up in an unambiguous sign of surrender prior to Wilson shooting him dead, their accounts do not support a prosecution of Wilson. As detailed throughout this report, some of those accounts are inaccurate because they are inconsistent with the physical and forensic evidence; some of those accounts are materially inconsistent with that witness’s own prior statements with no explanation, credible for otherwise, as to why those accounts changed over time. Certain other witnesses who originally stated Brown had his hands up in surrender recanted their original accounts, admitting that they did not witness the shooting or parts of it, despite what they initially reported either to federal or local law enforcement or to the media. Prosecutors did not rely on those accounts when making a prosecutive decision.While credible witnesses gave varying accounts of exactly what Brown was doing with his hands as he moved toward Wilson – i.e., balling them, holding them out, or pulling up his pants up – and varying accounts of how he was moving – i.e., “charging,” moving in “slow motion,” or “running” – they all establish that Brown was moving toward Wilson when Wilson shot him. Although some witnesses state that Brown held his hands up at shoulder level with his palms facing outward for a brief moment, these same witnesses describe Brown then dropping his hands and “charging” at Wilson.
Musk should not have taken down the tweet. He was right, as Legal Insurrection readers know well from our own detailed coverage of the Brown shooting when it happened, as well as my numerous posts about the fabricated narrative.
This post of mine in early June 2020 summed it up, Reminder: “Hands up, don’t shoot” is a fabricated narrative from the Michael Brown case
The Black Lives Matter movement was born of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. While the BLM founders started their organizing after the prior Trayvon Martin case, it was Brown and Ferguson which launched the BLM movement into the public spotlight through the protests and riots in Ferguson.Nothing was more associated with the BLM movement than the chant “hands up, don’t shoot,” based on the narrative that Brown had his hands raised and said ‘don’t shoot’ when shot. That same chant drives protesters and rioters ripping up cities after the George Floyd killing.I know the history of BLM and how it shot to national fame after the Brown shooting. I followed it closely and wrote about it at the time in 2014. I documented the violent instigators, many of them cross-over anti-Israel activists. See my October 25, 2014 post, Intifada Missouri – Anti-Israel activists may push Ferguson over the edge.More than anything, BLM seized on the claim that Brown had his hands raised in surrender, saying “don’t shoot,” at the time he was shot by officer Darren Wilson. “Hands up, don’t shoot” became the signature slogan of BLM.But it was all a lie. Brown wasn’t surrendering and didn’t say don’t shoot. And he wasn’t a victim of police misconduct. Rather than the “Gentle Giant” he was portrayed as in the media, he sucker punched Wilson while Wilson sat in his police car, tried to grab Wilson’s service pistol, and was shot when he charged Wilson a second time.
Telling that truth in June 2020 about the Michael Brown shooting almost cost me my job.
The truth still matters. Elon Musk was right, the “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative “was a fiction.” Deal with it.
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