Liberals: stop making innocent bystanders symbols of resistance
MAGA is *always* lying in wait when you do
I really have issues with making people famous against their will.
No, I’m not talking about an average Joe that participates in a man-on-the-street interview without knowing the TikToker gets millions of views. And I’m not talking about Twitter’s Main Character of the Day (and the perpetual goal “to never be it”).
You should always remember that in either of those scenarios — or any other involving social media — your participation alone demonstrates not only an awareness, but a willingness to go viral. Until recently, we had the luxury of controlling how much we were exposed to the world, how far an image of us could go.
Even photojournalism, which does not require your explicit consent in public, had its exposure limits (pun absolutely intended). If an outlet published a front page photo of you minding your business on public transit, its reach was limited to those who pay to receive it. Sure, the last remaining print-reading family member may call, but you could find solace in your shelf life being 24 hours.
We are three days into an exercise in making someone famous who, I’m guessing, doesn’t want to be famous. A Reuters photographer, Cheney Orr, shot this image on the Washington Metro on the Fourth of July, as the train shuttled a few dozen members of white supremacist group Patriot Front to their extremely fufu lameshit rally.
From what I can tell, Phil Lewis posted the photo first, at 11:27 a.m. that day — which is closing in on 5M views today. Aaron Parnas’ post an hour and 20 minutes later has over 12M. Within hours, I had been served 100+ posts about the image organically in my feeds, which means me and tens of millions of Americans suddenly made eye contact with the photo’s subject.
It’s a deeply evocative photo: The undeniable contrast between a bare-faced Black woman and the sea of white-masked, anonymous men around her. A natural vignette emerges via the shirts and the shadows. Powerful sight lines draw your vision slowly backward, making the scene feel eerily infinite. I see thematic parallels to Philip Guston’s paintings.
This is how we engage with a piece from an artistic perspective. But this isn’t “art” in the traditional sense. The statement a photojournalist tries to make — through their framing, composition, depth, etc. — is different from the conclusion a viewer comes to while looking at the work. Which is different, still, from the experience of the subject actually living it.
The woman captivating America’s attention online has not come forward to share her experience actually living this metro moment. But that hasn’t stopped people on both sides of the aisle from telling her story for her and making her a symbol of their political crusades.
What the left is projecting onto their latest hero, how the right is twisting the narrative to fit their fight, and who is driving the dumbest conspiracy … all below!
YOU ARE WHO WE SAY YOU ARE
The journalistic stars came into alignment as Jasmine Golden from The Washington Post published a piece (gift link) as I write this. She spoke to Paul Bowlding, the brother of Bernita, whose face has been plastered across the internet seemingly without her knowledge.
Projecting our own personal narratives, of any kind, onto a stranger is one of our default settings when we engage on social media. But projecting political narratives onto unsuspecting people in this volatile — and yes, sometimes violent — atmosphere carries way more risk.
Here’s some of the language used by the left while promoting the photo:
Adam Mockler, 1.5M views: “You see the type of resistance, the type of defiance, from this sole Black woman that defines the struggle of America”
Millennial Mia, 812k views: “Yes, she’s incredibly brave. But I know this is not the first time she has ever experienced something like this or had felt anything like this”
Harry Sisson, 3.4M views: “And the fact that this woman is sitting on the metro surrounded by these freaks and she’s not moving, she’s not getting up, giving up her seat, is a beautiful, small act of resistance”
I’ve Had It, 162k views: “Sometimes images really define an era … sitting there bravely among all of these people”
Don Lemon, 120k views: (quote via his guest) “she is teaching a history lesson to anyone who is prepared to see it”
Adam Kinzinger, 172k views: “She’s simply unintimidated, at least it appears so, and existing” + “by her silence … she is calling out the cowardice of these men”
I assume these are well-intentioned messages. But all of it is a projection: of feelings, of worldviews, of experiences, of aspirations onto a woman who has not spoken for herself. Bernita’s circumstance and her mental health struggles aside, I think it’s true that the average American doesn’t hope to be elected the next face of liberal resistance on their ride home either.
But this has become foundational to the current Democratic identity. A person who suffers from a psychological “hero complex” is addicted to finding problems (real or manufactured) for the sake of saying they provided a solution. What is it called when a massive group of people with a massive amount of influence forces other people to don a cape and tights?
It may be hard for them to believe, but not everyone gets on the train with the goal of landing a contributor deal with MS NOW or MeidasTouch. Not everyone wants to be the hero in your story.
TWISTED FICTIONS
A hero’s welcome prompts a villain’s takedown. This is to be expected any time the left heralds the arrival of a new face of the movement — the right creeps close behind, frantically searching for any flaws, failures, or fuck-ups to test the person’s purity. That is how you get “Rosa Farts.” I know. It sucks.
The first wave of pushback came in the form of comparison. It was a lot of, “See how safe she was? See how nothing happened to her? The same can’t be said for Iryna Zarutska.” This is a race-based “whataboutism” using Zarutska (white) who was stabbed to death on public transportation by a man (Black) last year. That dominated conservative content bubbles all of July 5th.
A video surfaced at 1 a.m. on July 6th, providing a new angle.1 It’s rare that someone I’ve never heard of on the right starts a new fire that actually burns online. Ryan Sánchez, who has nothing but white supremacist content all over his feeds, shared a video of a woman on a train who appears to be Bowlding, pants down, but wearing the same shirt.
By morning, a mugshot had been found, shared, and spread like wildfire by marquee right-wing pot-stirrers like Libs of TikTok. On the other hand, I didn’t see many of said marquee right-wing pot-stirrers amplify the video, which is an immediate red flag to me. Add in the fact that the original poster didn’t claim credit, no one else came forward to take credit, and there were two different timelines argued for when the video was taken … I’m not buying it.
Lead Stories (who we love) fed the clip through Google Gemini’s video authenticator which determined it “was edited or generated using Google AI, as indicated by SynthID signals detected in both its visuals and audio.” The WaPo article confirms the arrest happened and the charges were dropped, but offered no added insight on the video.
FWIW, I think it’s fake. But that’s just my baseline mentality these days. I guess I’m not the only one.
PATRIOT FRONT OR STUNT?
Someone who displays better judgment by not humiliating a random person online might still be eager to participate in other forms of narrative experimentation. For example, declaring something is “staged” will always be on the table. Entry-level theorizing.
Gina Milan, Gunther Eagleman (three times), Vince Langman, Josie Glabach
Someone made an entire infographic about its “staged” elements
Grace Note: I do have to say that it probably just adds fuel to the fire that Reuters has not made the photographer, Cheney Orr, available for press. But it’s not his job to dispel the conspiracy du jour with his account of what happened. Something that might help questioning minds: You can actually review the full set of photos from the day on the Reuters website, timestamps included. The others are interesting!
Expert-level theorizing pushes psyop into psycho mode. Why not just call Patriot Front “antifa” and call it a day? This road is becoming well traveled. And it’s always a good indication of how deep this cohort is rolling when establishment normies are leading the charge. Like … Laura Ingraham “looks more like Antifa in costume.” Really? Lol.
“Based” Sen. Mike Lee: “Brought to you by leftists who don’t know that patriots don’t wear masks.”
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna: finds it “odd” that the Biden admin never investigated Patriot Front … suspicious!
Benny Johnson: unintentionally (?) admits he actually does believe Patriot Front are federal agents
It’s the SPLC: This conspiracy has shocking potency.
Here’s a video by @stevelovesammo explaining his theory that the Southern Poverty Law Center is funding Patriot Front like it funded the KKK.
Likely place for Elon Musk to be found, agreeing that “it’s just another SPLC false flag operation.”
My favorite piece of content came from Black Conservative Perspective on YouTube, who diligently tested all possible explanations in under 17 minutes.
“Obviously fake psyop from Democrats, from the left, from the mainstream liberal media”
“If you believe this is real [maniacal laughter], you’re a dumbass [maniacal laughter]”
“Nobody knows who these people are”
“Who am I to not question or not believe that this group is being funded by the left?”
“They pop up every now and then, every time the mainstream liberal media needs a distraction”
“Even if it is real … it’s free speech”
“I don’t know who these people are, no one knows who these people are”
“How is it that y’all [Dems] know so much about these people???”
Truly the Simone Biles of mental gymnastics. I sincerely thank him for the performance.
LOOSE ENDS
📺 Something you should watch today:
🕵️ Someone you should know today: This girl who looks exactly like Erling Haaland on IG … and she’s taking the absolute takeover of her comments surprisingly well. Emma, you’re a legend.
🥹 Something to make you smile today: Look at this comically cartoonish cherry!
a note here: because you can’t see minute-accurate timestamps on IG posts, I can’t tell if this video was posted before the one that hit Twitter.
Marked ✅ safe from Grace's wrath! No, but seriously -- agreed! And, there's also a fine line of walking between someone who has been made a literal martyr, and sharing content of someone who is now accidentally thrust into the epicenter of neo-nazi commentary.
Philip Guston reference??? Bravo!