Isabel Oakeshott Gofer Excuses More Racism

When Steven Edginton penned his post for ConHome last week, telling anyone who would listen that shadow home secretary Diane Abbott could not possibly have been the victim of racism on Question Time, it seems he knew rather more about the subject than he had previously let on. Quite apart from his flagrant dishonesty in not revealing that he had met Ms Abbott previously - he suggested otherwise - is his ability to excuse racism elsewhere.

Steven Edginton - with another totally unbiased pal

Edginton has now turned his attention to an incident which took place in Washington DC last weekend. As Vox has reported, “[on] Friday, a group of young white teenagers were following in [Donald Trump’s] footsteps by taunting Native American elders at the Indigenous Peoples March in Washington, DC on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial”.

There was more. “A young man wearing a red ‘Make America Great Again’ hat stands inches away from a native elder who is beating a drum. Different angles of the incident show a group of a few dozen young people, mostly boys, in the background, jumping up and down and jeering in unison at the group of elders present for the day’s march. In some shots, the teens appear to be shouting, ‘Build that wall, build that wall.’”

But Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Kentucky, was not impressed: “The boys’ school announced late Saturday that it is now investigating the incident to see what punishment for the students is appropriate - even expulsion could be on the table”.

So the parents of the teenager who stood, leering, confronting Nathan Phillips, an Omaha Nation elder, have decided to get their retaliation in first. They got Nicholas Sandmann an interview on the Today Show, with Savannah Guthrie no less. As Medhi Hasan noted, this showed “The power of having parents who can employ a crisis management firm for you”.

Edginton wasn’t having any of that. “Mehdi spreads misinformation about this teenager, doubles down after the facts come out & now abuses him for putting his story out there. Hasan has his own show to virtue signal as much as he wants, then complains when a teenager in an international news story does 1 interview?”.

That attitude may be familiar to Zelo Street regulars, because pro-am motormouth Katie Hopkins has already trodden the same ground. She decided that Phillips was a liar: “Please stop now @AP - do not further launder his lies”. That, of course, is because Hatey Katie is a white supremacist bigot. Which puts Edginton in A Very Difficult Position.

That position is made worse by evidence now coming to light that the group of teenagers wasn’t just harassing the Native Americans: “A video has emerged on social media reportedly showing the Covington Catholic High School boys 'harassing' young women, said to have taken place before the viral moment with the Native American protestor happened … A young woman posted a video to Twitter on Monday of a group of white boys in MAGA hats yelling at her and her friends as they walk past, alleging that the boys are the same ones who harassed elderly Native American protestor Nathan Phillips”.

What that looks like is that not only is this a bunch of racist creeps, it’s a bunch of misogynist ones, too. And Steven Edginton is backing them. Because he knows all about racism - enough to excuse it, whoever is on the receiving end.

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