Robert Borosage takes heavy poetic license with both history and reality in the posting of an ad hominem attack on those who dare to identify Van Jones by the words and actions with which he identifies himself.
Contrast that to the right-wing smear merchants, the modern day McCarthyites, that have gone into high gear to slime Van Jones. Jones has been a favorite target of Glenn Beck, Andrew Breitbart and many castigators on the right for over a year now. The most recent ad hominem slur from Breitbart was characteristically beyond the pale.
Van Jones is an extraordinary leader, so it isn’t surprising that the right has targeted him.
What don’t we know about Van Jones? He’s a 9/11 truther who apparently believed our government murdered thousands of Americans — instead of terrorists. He supports cop-killing. He’s an admitted Marxist. He’s admitted to using the green movement as a ruse to destroy capitalism.
He’s not targeted because he’s an “extraordinary leader,” he’s targeted because his admitted goals are entirely antithetical to the Constitution. That Borosage believes Jones a great leader says a lot about Borosage’s own ideology and agenda.
Let me help Robort Borosage before he gets himself banned from AOL/HuffPo for his severely partisan ad homenim propaganda piece!
They didn’t propagate the lies about Obama’s birth because he lost; they propagated them because he won big and had to be brought down.
The birther movement was started by Phillip Berg, attorney for Hillary Clinton, and a Democrat. Next.
They didn’t target Acorn because it was ineffective; they targeted it because it was the most effective organization registering and getting out the vote of minorities that increasingly feel locked out of the Republican Party.
If by “effective” you mean “effective at voter fraud” then Borosage would be correct. Anita MonCrief blew the whistle on the fraud rampant within ACORN; in my own city a handful of ACORN employees plead guilty to voter fraud. Minorities are increasingly feeling included in the conservative movement, despite the best efforts of modern day ideological plantation owners like Borosage who like to promote an ideology that says you simply CAN’T be black and a conservative because only DEMOCRATS are for the black community. Really? Then tell me why heritage Democrat-controlled cities like East St. Louis, Detroit, St. Louis, DC, etc. see sky-high taxes, crumbling infrastructure and schools, high unemployment, while their Democrat leaders enjoy fat kickbacks for their “public service?” Tell me why black conservative congressional candidates like Cedra Crenshaw, Antoine Members, Herman Cain, Allen West, Issac Hayes, et al. are routinely targeted with dirty tricks to knock them off the ballot or racial slurs by the “progressive” community who insist that they’re “uncle Toms” because they’re not Democrats. Who says that blacks can’t be conservative? Borosage supports this behavior by casting his lot with those who perpetuate it; does he still want to call such actions “extraordinary leadership?”
Like most progressives, I generally don’t listen to nor bother to respond to right-wing bile. But the campaign against Van Jones has been unrelenting and slanderous.
Except with his post here which, by it’s nature, is libelous. The campaign against Jones? Who is it that has created an action network to bully those with diverse viewpoints off the air and out of print? VAN JONES. Yes, it is unrelenting and libelous. Next.
These are his words so no, Mr. Borosage, this isn’t “slanderous [sic]” to write Jones’ own admitted beliefs.
They propagated the smears and lies that continue to this day. Rather than let the administration be dragged into that muck, Van Jones took the high road, corrected the record, and moved on.
No, he was forced to resign because it was discovered he was a 9/11 truther. And no, Jones didn’t take any high road; he founded an organization to go after those who criticize them and wage campaigns against their advertisers and free speech.
Truth: Van Jones believes and has stated repeatedly that the 9/11 terrorist attacks on our nation’s soil were planned and carried out by Osama bin Laden and members of Al Qaeda. He never saw, signed, or endorsed any statement indicating otherwise. Six years ago, a group claiming to represent 9/11 families asked for his support and then attached his name, without his knowledge or permission, to abhorrent language that they never showed him. The group has since admitted they do not have his signature.
Actual truth: First the obvious — if Jones was innocent, then why step down? But since fact eludes Borosage, Jones worked for the group (for over a year) that posted the truther petition. So yes, let’s trust “War Times” immediate about-faced excuse for Jones, the magazine that said:
“Bush Administration Used American Flag to ‘Beat’, ‘Whip’, ‘Lynch’ Iraq War Dissenters”
Says Jim Hoft, who discovered Van Jones’s name on the 9/11 petition:
The Truthers who, along with Van Jones, said they were misrepresented by the Truther petitioners were found out to be Truthers after all.
I ask that Mr. Borosage print an apology and correct his above-referenced article for peddling falsehoods as a way to defame people with whom he disagrees. Next.
Truth: Van Jones is a leading champion of free market solutions and American innovation.
His award-winning work is rooted in business-friendly, market-based ideas. His bestselling book, The Green-Collar Economy, argues that government should provide incentives for private sector innovation. Van has forged successful partnerships with green businesses and served on the board of a national business association. (And isn’t this slur beyond its expiration date? The Soviet Union is no more; the Cold War is over. Global corporations vie to gain a foothold in China still governed by so-called communists. Can’t we can the 50s calumnies now that we’re in a new century?)
Actual truth: I don’t know what alternate reality Borosage calls home, but in this reality, advocating for the redistribution of wealth and the destruction of capitalism is neither “business friendly” or “market-based.”
fh4Z0V0zNQg“Right after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat if the civil rights leaders had jumped out and said, ‘OK now we want reparations for slavery, we want redistribution of all the wealth, and we want to legalize mixed marriages.’ If we’d come out with a maximum program the very next day, they’d been laughed at. Instead they came out with a very minimum. ‘We just want to integrate these buses.’
“But, inside that minimum demand was a very radical kernel that eventually meant that from 1964 to 1968 complete revolution was on the table for this country. And, I think that this green movement has to pursue those same steps and stages. Right now we say we want to move from suicidal gray capitalism to something eco-capitalism where at least we’re not fast-tracking the destruction of the whole planet. Will that be enough? No, it won’t be enough. We want to go beyond the systems of exploitation and oppression altogether. But, that’s a process and I think that’s what’s great about the movement that is beginning to emerge is that the crisis is so severe in terms of joblessness, violence and now ecological threats that people are willing to be both pragmatic and visionary. So the green economy will start off as a small subset and we are going to push it and push it and push it until it becomes the engine for transforming the whole society.” [my emphasis]
After the Soviet collapse, Marxism is a relic, a pathetic anachronism reduced to its last redoubts: North Korea, Cuba, and the English departments of the more expensive American universities.
Truth: Van Jones is a law-abiding citizen and has never been to prison or convicted of any crime. Van’s only scrape with the law was when he was wrongfully detained for four hours in a San Francisco warehouse where police held thousands of peaceful protesters in May 1992. A Yale Law student at the time, Van had attended the event as a legal monitor. In a lawsuit, he won monetary compensation for his false imprisonment.
Actual truth: Please take a moment to enjoy the Orwellian doublespeak employed here. Would a “law-abiding citizen” be detained by the police? No.
More on Jones’s jail experiences.
Does it sound consistent with the behavior of a “law-abiding citizen” to support a cop killer over the cop shot in the back? Familiarize yourself with Officer Daniel Faulkner. During a routine traffic stop Faulkner was shot in the back by Mumia Abu-Jamal, the brother of the man Faulkner stopped.
On December 9, 1981, at approximately 3:55 a.m., Officer Danny Faulkner, a five year veteran of the Philadelphia Police Department, made a traffic stop at Locust Street near Twelfth Street. The car stopped by Officer Faulkner was being driven by William Cook. After making the stop, Danny called for assistance on his police radio and requested a police wagon to transport a prisoner. Unbeknownst to him, William Cook’s brother, Wesley (aka Mumia Abu-Jamal) was across the street. As Danny attempted to handcuff William Cook, Mumia Abu-Jamal ran from across the street and shot the officer in the back. Danny turned and was able to fire one shot that struck Abu-Jamal in the chest; the wounded officer then fell to the pavement. Mumia Abu-Jamal stood over the downed officer and shot him four more times at close range, once directly in the face. Mumia Abu-Jamal was found still at the scene of the shooting by officers who arrived there within seconds. The murderer was slumped against the curb in front of his brother’s car. In his possession was a .38 caliber revolver that records showed Mumia had purchased months earlier. The chamber of the gun had five spent cartridges. A cab driver, as well as other pedestrians, had witnessed the brutal slaying and identified Mumia Abu-Jamal as the killer both at the scene and during his trial. On July 2, 1982, after being tried before a jury of ten whites and two blacks, Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted of murdering Officer Danny Faulkner. The next day, the jury sentenced him to death after deliberating for two hours. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania heard the defendant’s appeals and upheld the conviction on March 6, 1989.
Relatedly, Van Jones endorsed an “anti-police day”:
Van Jones, the controversial Green Jobs Czar in the Obama administration endorsed an anti-police day of action initiated by a Maoist communist cult group, the Revolutionary Communist Party, in 2006.
Hmm, “law-abiding” by encouraging the disrespect of it and celebrating the refusal to follow it. That’s a new one.
Mr. Borosage would save himself a lot of time by simply saying that he agrees with Van Jones’ beliefs and actions instead of trying to spin them to be more acceptable to a society that doesn’t believe in the destruction of capitalism and actually honors its law enforcement. That Mr. Borosage feels the need to attempt to manipulate the truth this much simply indicates that he realizes how offensive the actual truth is, thus the need for spin. It would also indicate that he values agenda over truth.
*Thanks to Bigs’ contributor Jim Hoft for providing some information for this story.