Dana Loesch Led Despicable Smear Campaign Against University of Missouri System

The past two weeks, Dana Loesch has led a smear campaign against two course instructors at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) and University of Missouri-Saint Louis (UMSL) based on shamelessly chopped-up video designed to create a false narrative. Two days ago, UMSL called the videos "distorted" and "definitely taken out of context" in a written statement and even right-leaning local CBS station KMOX finally reported on the misleading editing job. The fact that Loesch is being dishonest should not be news to any readers of this blog, but this case is substantially different from the norm for a couple of reasons. First, it's different because the instructors targeted by the smear campaign have already received numerous threats based on the right-wing's deceptive attacks. And second, in this case, Loesch has unquestionably been the leader in pushing out the manufactured lies recently debunked by Media Matters and Crooks and Liars. Her role in this story is similar to the role Andrew Breitbart played in the Shirley Sherrod story.

On Monday of last week, the day the story broke, Loesch repeatedly advertised having "exclusive audio" on the smear campaign on her radio show:
`
Here's Loesch on her Monday radio show playing her"exclusive" audio that suggests that a UMKC professor said, "Violence is a tactic. It's to be used when it's the appropriate tactic," and implies that an instructor at UMSL endorses the use of industrial sabotage:


This, as shown in unedited versions of the tape, is completely false. Ancel was actually quoting a character from a movie shown in class, At the River I Stand, which emphasizes the success of nonviolent tactics:


And in the full video (which Loesch' friends chopped in the middle and at the end) Giljim explicitly stated that violent tactics do more harm than good:


At no point in the show did Loesch explain the full context of the professors' remarks.. Loesch repeated the claim later in the show, again calling it "exclusive" content, and characterizing the professors' attitudes as, "oh well, violence is all right. Ho hum. It's what we have to do."


Here's Loesch misleadingly quoting Ancel and saying that this is in the context of "spreading communism via unionization:"


In this video, she suggests the class is advocating for "violent means...for an end that we want."


There's a lot more, but you get the idea. Loesch was shamefully pushing completely dishonest interpretations of the videos and using them to rile up her listeners. While calling for the teachers to be fired, she compared the class to the shooting at Virginia Tech and called it "institutionalized violence:"


Then Loesch told her listeners to harass Ancel via email over the dishonest quotes:

As I mentioned earlier, both Judy Ancel and Don Giljim have been the subject of numerous threats since Loesch and Breitbart started pushing the distorted videos.

Just think about that. Loesch and Breitbart create completely distorted smear videos, then direct their followers to contact them, resulting in the instructors getting threats. I mean, it's bad enough for them to send their hordes after people when they're using their standard misinformation, but in this case they actually manufactured the story themselves, riled people up, and then directed those people to send angry messages to the instructors based on false information. What could possibly justify such despicable behavior?

One thing that wouldn't really justify the behavior, but might at least lessen it's level of despicableness, would be if Loesch really had no clue that the videos were distorted. However, she repeatedly has claimed that she knows about the content of the full videos.

Here's Loesch claiming that she "can't wait" to release the full videos:


She also has stated that she's seen the full 30 hours of footage multiple times:




And she repeatedly bragged about having "exclusive" content:


So let's put in context what Loesch is saying. She is admitting she had access to the full videos. Yet she is amazingly pretending that they were not edited out of context. In order for her to be telling the truth, she would have to literally believe that the quote, "Violence is a tactic. And it's to be used when it's the appropriate tactic." is identical to this quote:

...he represented the kind of thinking that went into the Student Underground Coordinating Committee and then later, probably-- Well, coinciding with the Black Panthers, I'd say. You know, he said "Violence is a tactic, and it's to be used when it's appropriate -- the appropriate tactic."

Whether they-- They never come back to him to ask him what he thought of the window smashing in that march. Or whether or not that was done by them, or others, or provocateurs. We don't know that.

No one, not even Dana Loesch, could believe those quotes are equivalent. Thus, she deliberately distorted information, pushed it out, and used lies to get her followers to send angry (and possibly threatening) messages to the university instructors she smeared. And yet CNN seems to think it can still have a shred of credibility with her as a contributor. Truly mind-boggling.