Every Adult American Should Watch Candace Owens' New Documentary
Candace Owens' October, 2022, 80-minute documentary,
The Greatest Lie Ever Sold: George Floyd and the Rise of BLM, a Daily
Wire production, is an agonizing watch. Beginning in spring, 2020, destructive
and deadly riots broke out across the United States. These riots
self-advertised as being all about a "racial reckoning."
If you were a leftist living in a
comfortable suburb far from the arson, looting, and public
torture, you could look on and cheer the apparent downfall of the country
and the value system you benefit from, and that you irrationally and
hypocritically hate. If you were, like me and millions of others, living in a
majority-minority, low-income city already burdened with high murder rates,
2020's riots felt like a terrifying, demoralizing death spiral. We never knew
when our homes would burn, when our grocers would be looted and permanently
closed, when our fragile economies of immigrant-run mom-and-pop shops would be
cut off at the knees, when our banks would shrug, give up, and leave town, when
our cars would be incinerated, when our property values, already low, would
plummet, when our black and Latino police officers would be shot dead, and when
we would be the bystanders whose random death would add to the body
count. In addition to those killed in the riots, 2,457 more black Americans
were murdered in 2020 than in 2019, "marking
the largest single-year increase in killings since the agency began tracking
the crimes." Anti-policing policies and attitudes and increasing
lawlessness are to blame for these deaths and thousands more, research
has shown.
Money is less of a concern for rich leftists
than it is for those of us who are living on the edge. The poor know that
poverty can be a death sentence. As we watched looters empty stores, especially
stores in neighborhoods like ours, majority minority, economically weak urban
enclaves, we knew: everything is about to start costing a lot more. Someone has
to pay for the CVS, the Walgreens, and Walmarts being emptied out. The looters
aren't paying, so we will. The over-the-counter medications we rely on for
chronic illnesses, drugs not covered by insurance, will take income away from
our food budgets. Insurance rates will skyrocket, as will inflation. The little
money we have will be worth less.
No, if you were a comfortable leftist
living in a safe suburb you didn't have to confront the consequences of your
support for BLM. I just had a quick look at the pages of Facebook friends who
posted wall-to-wall BLM support during 2020's riots. One is now posting updates
on the performance of her thoroughbred horses in various show competitions.
One, who sobbed over the death of Queen Elizabeth, is now visiting Buckingham
Palace. One has gone back to posting her scores in online word games. Another
posts stunning photos of her expansive gardens. Their BLM passion was as
short-lived as it was shallow.
Clearly, rich leftists have moved on to
the next fad. We in blighted urban neighborhoods will never move on. Riots scar
a city for generations. Capital, jobs, and safety depart and move to greener
pastures. Newark has yet to recover from the riots of the 1960s. One estimate
of the total cost of the George Floyd riots is $2 billion. That number is too
low, for a few reasons. The Foundation for Economic Education explains.
"Seventy-five percent of US businesses are under-insured and about forty
percent of small businesses have no insurance at all. Their untold millions in
losses don’t show up in the $2 billion figure …
riots leave a lasting shadow on a city that haunts its economy for
decades. The afflicted areas face higher insurance rates, lower property
values, higher prices, reduced tax revenue, and decreased economic
opportunity." Finally, the damage done to human bodies and souls is not
factored in to the $2 billion tab. An elderly man attempted to defend a
property. Rioters
broke his jaw. His pain and suffering, and subsequent sense of isolation
and insecurity, and that of thousands of others, inevitably produces an
economic drag, one it is difficult to estimate, but is no less real.
And all for nothing. Every last looting
spree, every
last rock thrown at the head of a beaten, bleeding white man lying helplessly
in the street, every defaced synagogue, every not just ignorant but insane
tearing down of a statue of a martyr to abolition like Hans
Christian Heg or Abraham
Lincoln, was for absolutely nothing. As Heather MacDonald, Roland
G. Fryer, John
McWhorter and others struggled to communicate, America is not racist, and
there is no statistical support for the claim that there is an epidemic of
white cops shooting unarmed black men to death for no reason. Officer Derek
Chauvin was arrested four days after the death of George Floyd. He was rapidly
charged, convicted, and imprisoned. In mainstream and social media, Chauvin was
universally condemned, by both the left and the right. Former New York City
Mayor Rudy Giuliani, beloved by police officers, famous as a tough-on-crime icon,
roundly and repeatedly condemned Chauvin on his WABC radio show.
Owens' The Greatest Lie Ever Sold adds
to the agony with simple truths. I want every American to watch this
documentary, even though I know that watching it may well hurt.
The film opens with a quote from Malcolm
X. "The Media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to
make the innocent guilty and the make the guilty innocent." I differ from
Owens on this point. The media includes Candace Owens, and the media includes
this review. The media is vast and consumers can select what media they
support.
Next we see video of Floyd purchasing
cigarettes with a counterfeit twenty dollar bill. The employees in the store
are clearly minorities themselves. Cup foods employee Mike Abumayyaleh explains
that they only call the police if the person using a counterfeit bill refuses
to pay with other tender. George Floyd, apparently, when confronted, refused to
pay with a real bill. In his refusal to use real money, even when confronted,
Floyd made one of many choices that preceded his death. Officer Thomas Lane's
bodycam shows Floyd in a car with his drug dealer, not cooperating with the
police. A caption reports that he resisted being placed in a squad car for
eight minutes. Derek Chauvin was called in as backup. Had Floyd not resisted
arrest, Derek Chauvin would never have been on the scene.
The film cuts to Candace Owens' June
3 video. Owens, a black woman, rejected worldwide hysteria turning George
Floyd into a Messianic figure. "I do not support George Floyd and the
media depiction of him as a martyr for black America." She cited Shelby
Steele, paraphrasing him as saying that blacks are unique in that they
"cater to the bottom denominator in our society." Jews, whites, and
Latinos, she said, would not hold up a felon as a culture hero. Owens made
clear that she was not defending Derek Chauvin and she hoped to see Chauvin
receive appropriate justice. She said also that the family of George Floyd
deserves justice for the "way that he died." "But I'm not going
to accept the narrative that this is the best that the black community has to
offer.' "It has become fashionable for us to turn criminals into
heroes." "The only way you can be black is to say that this person
was amazing. I'm not going to do that. George Floyd was not amazing."
"Everyone agrees that the police officer was wrong and the police officer
has been arrested. That's not something that has been misconstrued in the
media." Any black person who does not go along with the celebration of
criminals is labeled a "coon." Condoleezza Rice, Dr. Ben Carson,
Larry Elder are all, in this understanding, "coons," because they are
educated high achievers.
Any fair minded person watching Owens'
June 3 video immediately realizes two things. The first thing a fair-minded
person realizes is that Candace Owens is a straight-shooter and a person of
depth and conscience. She is struggling to be as fair as possible in a very
difficult situation. She never says that Floyd deserved to die as he did; she
says quite the opposite. She never defends Chauvin; she says he deserves
"justice." No matter how hard Owens works to state a simple truth –
she does not believe that black people benefit from making criminals their
heroes – the viewer knows that Candace Owens will be vilified, threatened, and
damned for what she had the courage and decency to say.
Dave Chappelle exhibited his signature
cruelty, bullying, cowardice, misogyny, and, most important, his complete
dishonesty. "Candace Owens tried to convince white America, 'Don't worry
about it. He's a criminal anyway.'" Chappelle is lying. Candace Owens said
no such thing, and she clearly wasn't talking to "white America." In his pot-and-tobacco ruined voice, his eyes
bugging out of his bald head, Chapelle gurgled out that Candace Owens is a
"rotten bitch" and he mentioned kicking Owens in her "stinky
pussy."
Owens said that such attacks made
everything "personal" for her. "I am going to scream the
truth" more loudly than others "can scream the lies." Candace
Owens has more courage and integrity in her little finger than Dave Chappelle
has in his six foot frame.
Owens visits George Floyd's housemates,
Alvin Manago and Theresa Scott. Their previously shared home looks lovely; his
roommates, a man and a woman, come across as nice people. Both are kind and
respectful in their comments about Floyd. They acknowledge that Floyd was an
addict, but say that he kept that out of the house. The man they knew was a
valued friend, they insist.
Manago says that at memorials people
would circulate metal boxes and ask for money. "I don't know who you are
or where this is going." Clips show the Floyd family acknowledging trips
to the White House and crying. The documentary reports that none of them ever
went to Floyd's house to pick up his things. His car was still in the driveway.
Neither Manago nor Scott had the paperwork necessary to address the car. Owens
herself arranged to have it removed, and she gave Manago and Scott money to
cover the rent they lost after Floyd's death.
In the film, Scott emphasizes how
surprised she was that no family members ever came to Floyd's home for the
final years of his life, the home where his belongings were still to be found. Manago
says that he would like to meet Floyd's daughter, as that daughter is "an
extension of him." Manago and Scott chat about people coming forward and
claiming to be Floyd's children, but proven wrong through DNA checks. Evidently
there were rumors that some tried to capitalize on worldwide sympathy for Floyd
by claiming false relationships. The documentary does not make clear if these rumors
are accurate.
Owens lays bare George Floyd's extensive
criminal
history. In 2007, Floyd and his accomplices forced entry into the home of Aracely
Henriquez, pistol-whipped her, and ransacked her home. Henriquez's seven-year-old
son identified Floyd. "How absolutely traumatized that child was,"
Owens remarks. "Just a few years later, children are wearing his shirt,
and referring to him as hero and savior. That's wrong … Two things can be true
at once. George Floyd didn't deserve to die. And this person was not a saint,"
she says.
In a 2019 arrest video, "I want my
momma, man," Floyd moans. Who exactly was George Floyd's
"momma"? On the witness stand, Courtney Ross, Floyd's girlfriend, with
whom he sometimes used opioids, testifies that Floyd called her "momma,"
and indeed his listed her phone number on his phone as "momma." "Calling
out for his mother was a nice victim narrative," Owens observes.
Owens is shown speaking on her phone to
an interlocutor we cannot hear. This, we learn, is Derek Chauvin's mother. For
understandable reasons, she is afraid to speak to Owens. Unable to gain access
to Chauvin or his mother, Owens turns to people who knew him. Sargent Joey
Sandberg says that "Derek is quiet, somewhat quirky, very dependable.
Derek is the kind of guy you want to show up on your calls with you. He's very
level headed." Sandberg says that Chauvin is allowed no reading material,
no TV, no computer, and he is alone in his cell twenty-three hours a day. Since
the documentary was filmed, Chauvin has been moved to another prison.
Lieutenant Kim Voss insists that Chauvin
never revealed any racist tendencies. Indeed, Minnesota Attorney General Keith
Ellison, a Muslim and a black man, said, "I wouldn't call [Floyd's death a
hate crime] because hate crimes are crimes where there's an explicit motive and
bias. We don't have any evidence that Derek Chauvin factored in George Floyd's
race as he did what he did."
In the "widely circulated video
taken by a bystander" "the camera angle suggests" that Chauvin
"kneeled on George Floyd's neck the whole time." But Officer Alexander
Kueng's camera showed Chauvin's knee on Floyd's shoulder blade. How
long Chauvin's knee was on Floyd's shoulder has been debated. In other
video, Floyd also says "I can't breathe" before he is put on the
ground, at his own request.
Dr. Ron Martinelli is a forensic
criminologist and Certified Medical Investigator. Martinelli tells Owens that
there was evidence that Floyd had consumed a lethal cocktail of fentanyl and
methamphetamine. In video from the trial, Dr. Andrew Baker, Chief Medical
Examiner of Hennepin County, testifies that the level of fentanyl found in
Floyd's system, had he been found dead absent any interaction with police,
would have been assessed as enough to have killed him. "I would certify
his death as fentanyl toxicity."
Martinelli says that Floyd's heart
suffered from cardiomegaly, that is, an enlarged heart, a sign of ill health.
"That is significant." "There is zero evidence," he says,
to prove that Floyd was unable to intake sufficient oxygen. The suggestion is
that Floyd
did not die of asphyxiation. This conclusion is controversial and
debated. On October 17, for example, the Washington
Post accused Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, of lying when he
said that Floyd died from a drug overdose. The reason that the asphyxiation v.
drug overdose battle is so hot is clear. If Floyd died of a drug overdose, he
was responsible for his own death and the larger narrative becomes an anti-drug-abuse
narrative. If Derek Chauvin asphyxiated Floyd, Chauvin is responsible for his
death, and the larger narrative is one of black innocence, white racism, and
police brutality.
Owens interviews a few people whose
lives where damaged by Floyd protestors. Liz Collin is a former news anchor.
She is married to former Minneapolis police chief Bob Kroll. "Within
minutes" of Floyd's death, Collin reports, tweets appeared saying,
paraphrase, Bob Kroll and Liz Collin will be dead by the time the year ends.
The mob also threatened to murder their seven-year-old son. Protestors made
pinatas of Collin and Kroll dressed as Klansmen. and Representative
John Thompson, spewing obscenities, beat these effigies in Collin's and
Kroll's home driveway. Collin lost her job, and was unable to get any other
job.
Kitson is a boutique in LA where
celebrities sometimes shop. Fraser Ross is the owner. He called Kitson "a
general store for the rich." Looters stole over $400 thousand dollars of
merchandise. Chrissy Teigen posted that she would donate hundreds of thousands
of dollars in bail money for rioters. "They all live in gated communities
and it's not their stuff being destroyed," Ross observes.
Ross posted a looting photo and said
"Thanks Chrissy." She replied, "I'm gonna not shop at your store
so hard." Influencers Jen Atkin and Dana Omari inevitably accused Ross of
being a racist. Omari sent Ross a lengthy private message detailing how he must
grovel in public to avoid further wrath. During a phone call, Omari extorted a
ten thousand dollar donation to Black Lives Matter. Without that donation, she
said, she would ruin his business through her internet posts.
Not just individual lives, but the lives
of communities were destroyed by the Floyd riots. These were largely non-white,
low-income communities. Pastor Charles Karuku grew up in Kenya. He is president
of Unity Movement Institute. Of the Floyd riots, Pastor Karuku says, "I'm
used to this in Third World countries, but not in America, and not in Minnesota
… This is not 'Minnesota Nice.'" Karuku and Owens walk past a sign
reading, "You are now entering the Free State of George Floyd."
Karuku explains, "This is an
autonomous zone that operates outside the laws of the United States … They do
whatever they want … We've seen a woman who was pregnant shot right in front of
us."
Shops are boarded up. Insurance would never
cover all the losses. Owens and Karuku pass an open-air altar to George Floyd.
There is a drawing in the street representing his body. Flowers and artwork
surround it. A cardboard sign reads, "Sacred space."
"We have better people to
follow," the pastor says. "Like Jesus Christ, who epitomized what we
would like to emulate."
"BLM raised ninety million dollars
on the back of George Floyd. Where is that money?" Owens asks.
"I don't know. It's not here …
Everything looks worse than it was… Some of these organizations can only get
money if they propagate hatred. They are not helping the community. They are
helping themselves," Karuku says.
George Floyd's former housemates say
that they have not seen a dime of BLM money, though they are carrying the
expenses Floyd used to carry.
Silicone Valley entrepreneur and
bestselling author Vivek Ramaswamy says that during the Floyd riots, his
business milieu insisted on "a pledge of allegiance to this one man into
some type of new modern messiah figure. The religious quality was odd. The
bending the knee … I didn't recite the same ritual incantation that every other
CEO was pledging allegiance to across the country."
A BLM front person bought a mansion for
three million, and then sold it to BLM for six million within days, creating a
personal profit of three million. "That's a self-dealing
transaction."
BLM founder Patrisse Cullors hired her
mother and her brother to work at the property. The brother is a graffiti
artist. He was hired to handle security. His salary is $840 thousand for one
year. Cullors' baby daddy received $969 thousand. Cullors also channeled money
to her wife, Jenaya Khan, who appears to have had surgery to appear as a male. Even
so, a photo of Khan can receive this kind of caption from Vogue,
"Louis Vuitton vest and pants. Mejuri pendant necklace. Hair, Marcia
Hamilton; makeup, Tasha Reiko Brown. Fashion Editor: Yashua Simmons. Produced
by: GE Projects. Photographed by Melodie McDaniel." A
bit different from "Arise ye prisoners of starvation. Arise ye
wretched of the earth."
BLM has poured over two million dollars
into trans groups, including groups for trans sex workers. Owens attempts to
investigate Living through Giving, an organization that received $2.3 million
from BLM. Photos reveal that Cullors knew the recipient, AJ Vreeland, at least
as early as 2019. Living through Giving purports to distribute free lunches.
Owens was unable to find any such distribution.
$32 million of Marxist, anti-Western,
anti-American BLM's assets went into the stock market.
Owens goes to "celebrity
enclave" Laurel Canyon. In this segment, petite Candace Owens is very
obviously pregnant. She is dressed, as ever, impeccably. She merely approaches
the gate of Cullors' mansion, a mansion purchased with the blood of innocents
like David Dorn.
Intercut with Owens' inoffensive
approach to Cullors' mansion is video of Cullors herself, whining online that
Candace Owens is threatening her. It would be comical were it not so
disgusting. Owens is a petite woman; she is carrying a child; she is speaking
in soft, polite tones. All she wants is to speak to someone. Cullors labels
Owens' visit a veritable terrorist assault. "She was demanding that I come
outside," Cullors lies into her video camera. "It's unacceptable and
it's dangerous to come outside of my house." One thinks of the houses
burned to the ground by Cullors' followers. "What happened this morning is
not safety. It's not what I deserve. It's not what any of us deserve. They're
trying to destroy me." No, Cullors. Owens was just trying to tell the
truth.
It goes without saying that Cullors'
security team is, as Owens reports, a white male and a German shepherd.
"What could be more emblematic of BLM
than that?" Owens asks. "Playing the victim, to the public, hoping
that you can get sympathy and that sympathy will transform into dollars."
"The real story" of George Floyd's death, Owens insists, "is a
story of addiction. That could have brought people together globally. This was
a man who was high on drugs … it is a story of a man who overdosed." Instead,
BLM uses "black emotion and black pain to extort dollars from white
America."
In 2020, Minneapolis saw a 58% increase
in murder. In 2021, the city recorded the highest number of homicides in over
20 years.
Danusha Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery
