Breitbart Bloggers Who Lied About UMSL Are Also Lying About Their Own Identities

After my recent post knocking down the silly arguments of Insurgent Visuals, the group of anonymous cowards who originally distorted the comments of University of Missouri system professors, they've posted a couple of responses on their blog too dumb to dignify with a real response. For any decent person, there's no defense for intentionally editing someone's comments to hide the fact that they were quoting someone else rather than personally endorsing a statement, nor for chopping out the middle of a sentence to completely change its meaning. Like typical right-wing hacks, instead of just admitting that their original edits were fabrications, they instead think the way to respond is to distract from the original point by producing a new litany of highly-edited, out-of-context quotes. And instead of producing a single decent argument, they simply produce an endless string of idiotic claims until everyone else gets too bored to continue. Oh, and they seem to think that they should be praised for "releasing a partial transcript" after they got busted lying, though before they were busted they denied even the possibility that the quotes were taken out-of-context. Finally, they falsely claim that I said that James O'Keefe was involved in the project, though I clearly didn't:

But the real point is, whether or not O'Keefe had anything to do with the execution of this particular smear campaign, his connections with the people involved are relevant.

Anyway, like I said, their posts are not worthy of a real response, but I did get a great tip in the comments of my previous post. Insurgent Videos has an "About" page on their website, which includes pictures and terribly written biographies for their "team."

The website is shoddy enough that you immediately begin to suspect that the profiles are all fake. And that is exactly correct. Since Insurgent Videos first soiled the world with their sad attempt at a smear campaign, Google released a search engine that allows you to search for identical images on the web. And guess what? The pictures Insurgent Videos uses for their "profiles" are fakes.

For example, the photo of "Frank C" is actually of a Norweigan professor:

The photo for "Dallas J." is from another Norwegian:

And "Misty" is a photo from a mail order bride site:


It's so funny that this group, even after being completely busted lying, still publicly pretends to care about the truth. The fact that they use fake photos to hide their identities demonstrates clearly that they know they are not a respectable group and that the garbage they put out is an embarrassment to all thinking people. If they had any brains at all, they would fold up this phony group and just start some new obviously fake front group for the next time they try to push a terrible editing job to the media.

Insurgent Videos Still Whining After Being Busted Lying About Missouri Professors

If you recall, a while ago Andrew Breitbart and Dana Loesch were caught red-handed pushing blatantly dishonest, highly-edited video designed to falsely claim that professors at the University of Missouri St. Louis and Kansas City were advocating violence. They were busted by Media Matters and Crooks and Liars, and I documented how Loesch had led the smear campaign locally by literally chopping words out of the beginning, middle, and end of the professors' sentences to change their meaning.

Like typical right-wing hacks, they won't apologize for their lies even though the full video clearly shows them for what they are. Yet for some strange reason, they refuse to say who actually did the video editing. Why, it's almost as if they know they're guilty.

But, without naming an actual person, they did push off blame about the editing on a group called "Insurgent Videos." And recently, Insurgent Videos along with Breitbart's site have been whining about the fact that various groups noticed connections between this smear job and disgraced smear merchant/clown James O'Keefe. Last week, in a lame attempt to defend Breitbart's sites for inventing a claim that a murder in Savannah had something to do with the Occupy movement, failed Congressional candidate and current editor for Breitbart Joel Pollak wrote the following:

The irony is that Media Matters and Boehlert often make false allegations based on little or no evidence. One small, representative example occurred when controversy erupted over video of radical classes at the University of Missouri in May. A Media Matters blogger speculated, falsely, that conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe “has something to do with this whole smear campaign.” No proof, update or correction was ever posted.

Pollak links to a Big Journalism post falsely claiming that Media Matters said that O'Keefe was "behind" their smear campaign against the University of Missouri system. Similarly, Insurgent Videos has a new, whiny post up, writing the following about Crooks and Liars:

2. C&L blames James O'Keefe
Without any reason to do so other than to assume that if it's 1) video + 2) center-right, it must be James O'Keefe.

Oddly enough, Insurgent Videos does not directly deny that O'Keefe is affiliated with the group.

Notice that in both cases, the groups are attacking a straw man: someone who claims that O'Keefe is "behind" the video. However, in both cases, the blogs were actually just pointing out real connections between people involved in the campaign and O'Keefe, which are relevant whether or not O'Keefe had anything to do with the actual smear campaign.

First, Phil, the student who sent the full videotapes to someone connected with Breitbart and then sat quietly as they lied about his teachers and classmates, was previously involved in an event on the Washington University campus with James O'Keefe. After that event, O'Keefe posted highly edited and dishonest video from a hidden camera that was designed to smear the Washington University administration. Like the UMSL tapes, it failed miserably. And also like the UMSL situation, Phil was initially silent about the smear attempts against his university and later wrote a column explicitly pushing O'Keefe's discredited attacks.

Likewise, as documented at Crooks and Liars, the original "Insurgent Videos" website did list someone named "James O'Keefe" as a contributor. It sure would be a remarkable coincidence if it was a different O'Keefe, and why couldn't Insurgent Videos just say so?

But the real point is, whether or not O'Keefe had anything to do with the execution of this particular smear campaign, his connections with the people involved are relevant. Why? Because he practices a dishonest and discredited brand of journalism, and people who choose to associate with that brand are endorsing the same dishonest tactics. The videos they presented were obviously dishonest, as anyone can see from watching them. So instead of admitting this fact, Breitbart's cronies instead demanded that we just trust the word of Insurgent Visuals and Phil instead of our own lying eyes. But even this lame distraction is flawed, because why would anyone trust people directly associated with James O'Keefe to provide a credible account of a politically-charged controversy?

This whole fiasco was a huge disaster for Breitbart and Loesch, so it's not surprising that they're working overtime to try to rewrite history.

Quick Rebuttal of "Insurgent Visuals"

Insurgent Visuals has another lazy, ridiculous post up at Big Journalism that tries to pretend that when they claimed that Ancel said that "violence is a tactic. It's to be used when it's the appropriate tactic," while deliberately editing out the fact that she was quoting a character in the movie At the River I Stand, they somehow were not being dishonest. Their latest claims are desperate and absent of substance, but here are a few quick points.

First, they said that the video was in relation to the idea that no tactics should be off the table:

It lacks the notice that but a few minutes before, it was made clear that the discussion was about tactics. It lacks the context to know that the statement was made “nothing is off the table

But that was a quote from students. There certainly were students in the class who advocated for "leaving violence on the table" as a tactic, but Insurgent Videos falsely claimed that the professors were advocating for that claim, which they weren't. In fact, the professors repeatedly emphasized that such tactics were counterproductive.

Second, they claim that Ancel is endorsing "militancy:"

These inflammatory and incendiary statements were made to set a certain tone: militancy in achieving union objectives.

This makes it sound like she endorses violence, and indeed use this as evidence that she supports violence. However, the class discussion actually clearly distinguished between "militancy" and "violence," as was clear in a quote they previously used from Ancel:

true militancy means high levels of participation and willingness to undertake creative and in-your-face tactics, I think. And the American labor movement never would have had the successes it had without that kind of militancy. There isn’t any major labor battle in this country, clearly, before the era of the 1950s that did not, in fact, break the law. And–but they didn’t do it by destroying property and smashing windows. They did it tactically, by violating the laws they had to violate if they were going to be able to continue their movement

What Ancel was talking about, as was made clear in the class discussion, was civil disobedience.

They also claim that Ancel was saying her quote in response to a student advocating for non-violence. Actually, even according to their own quote, the previous comment was a student discussing violence:

STUDENT 4: When they’re willing to give up violence, then I will too.

Ancel was jumping off that idea to get more discussion from the class. She was not "endorsing the idea." In fact, the movie she showed to the class, At the River I Stand, was extremely critical of people who used violence and clearly advocated for nonviolence as a strategy.

If Insurgent Visuals actually believed their claims that Ancel's quotes called for violence, they would have included the full quotes. However, they deliberately edited her quotes and, in fact, chopped Don Gilgim's quotes off at the word "and.." and then added a different quote to completely change the sentence. They have no defense for their smear, which is why they're already changing their story.