Jonathan Choe, was a reporter for KOMO News in Seattle, WA.
He wrote an article on Medium that he was fired for how he covered a Proud Boys rally. The Proud Boys are a group that has been falsely labeled as a white supremacist hate group by alt-left extremist organizations in spite of The Proud Boys clearly rejecting racism in their charter and allowing all races to join their ranks while being led by a man who is not white.
Choe was covering the rally in the Washington state capital of Olympia earlier this month. He tweeted a photo montage of the Proud Boys rally, including some controversial music in the clip. That drew outrage from the Twitterati, who allegedly accused him of being a “white supremacist.”
In a Tweet recapping the day, I decided to create a photo montage with natural sound from the march(in TV news this is what’s called a “NAT Pkg”). One of my videos picked up music blasting from a speaker strapped over the shoulder of one of the protesters. I could not make out the words and had never heard this song in my life. You could also hear car horns and the footsteps of marchers as I weaved in and out of the crowd. I laid some photos over this natural sound from the video and hit send.
I later learned the song is called “We’ll Have Our Home Again,” and is sometimes played at white nationalist rallies. This piece was never meant to air on KOMO News and it never did. I wanted it to be a conversation starter, and it sure did incite an unexpected response. In hindsight, I wish I added more context to this Tweet. But before I could clarify or respond to the criticism, my news director told me to take down all my social media related to the Proud Boys march. I was also told by my boss not to speak to any outside media. The following day, I was fired from KOMO.
I’d never heard the song before either. The version used during the rally appears to be Pine Tree Riots – We’ll Have Our Home Again.
The Pine Tree Riot was an act of resistance to British royal authority undertaken by American colonists in Weare, New Hampshire on April 14, 1772 – Wikipedia
Everything that has its roots in patriotism is labeled as ‘white nationalist’ by the alt-left blue anon conspiracy theorists.
There’s nothing in the lyrics to suggest the song is racist in any way without severe mental gymnastics. Whether or not it’s played at ‘white nationalist’ rallies is irrelevant. I’m still waiting for someone to define what a ‘white nationalist’ actually is. They keep freezing up when I ask that question.
Allowing any group to coopt anything to become their own is a sign of societal weakness. Just because a small group uses a symbol that is commonplace, doesn’t mean that symbol now exclusively represents that small group. To say otherwise is silly.
Choe was fired by KOMO because he didn’t lie about The Proud Boys and their rally. It was peaceful and he reported it as such. For that, he was fired.
MY SIDE OF THE STORY. It's official. I parted ways with KOMO News. Thank you to all my amazing colleagues who gave me a chance in one of the most important media markets in America. But I am not done serving the good people of #Seattle. Stay tuned. https://t.co/jplr2VCUq1
Our community is being rocked by the tragedy of Rio Allred. Rio is a 12-year-old girl who took her own life after she was relentlessly bullied after she came down with alopecia and began losing her hair.
Elkhart Community Schools knew about the bullying and did nothing to intervene on Rio’s behalf, that we are aware of.
Marla Godette is a mental health professional who was at Rio’s candlelight vigil. She offers advice to parents who might have the same thing happening to their child at school. Advice that most parents don’t know and most schools don’t want you to know.
To learn more about Rio and the light she brought into the world, please go here:
I always ask the audience to take a step back, take a deep breath, then read the story again. Does what you read make sense? This exercise will allow you to see a whole lot more clearly.
Now, follow me down the rabbit hole.
In spite of the media and political rhetoric, January 6, 2021, wasn’t an armed insurrection by any definition of the word. Anyone who repeats that claim is an unserious person not worthy of your time.
Why did prosecutors fight to withhold the Capitol surveillance video from being released to the public? Shouldn’t they have wanted all of you to see how evil these Trump ‘insurrectionists’ really were?
Maybe they want to hide those videos because they also show peaceful protestors being let into the Capitol and not rioting?
Why do they continue to ‘investigate’ members of Congress for helping the rioters when the real investigation already found that no member of Congress aided the rioters?
In spite of that investigation clearing all members of Congress, why is Pelosi still doing illegal searches of Congressmen’s offices?
Why doesn’t Pelosi want videos and emails from about January 6 from the Capitol and members of Congress released? Why does she say those records are not in the ‘public interest?‘
All of the big tech censorship, character assassination, and fake news stories used against conservatives were just a trial run. It may seem like a Hollywood plot but you’ve watched it unfold right before your eyes. The big tech and corporate media war against conservatives was then used to spread COVID lies and fear. Now it’s being used in the Ukraine/Russia conflict.
I know, you are sick and tired of everyone flippantly throwing around the word ‘Nazi.’ So am I. The frivolous use of the word as a catch-all slur for anyone liberals disagree with is annoying. However, real neo-Nazis do exist. A lot of them are in Ukraine.
Point of clarification since people are inevitably going to take this out of context.
Ukraine is not a Nazi country. Most of the country is very tolerant. In the east, however, there are Nazis. Not as many as Putin would have you believe, but they are there and they have committed war crimes against the people Putin is claiming to protect.
Interesting that the Russians are alleging the Ukrainians are Nazis and now the Western media is declaring Russian allies as Nazis. Zhoga is called a neo-Nazi in dozens of Western media outlets after he was killed. No one provides any actual evidence of this.
For the record, Zhoga has been accused of and appears to have admitted to war crimes. He’s no peach. But is he a neo-Nazi?
I can’t find anything about Zhoga or the Sparta Battalion (who DM refers to as a ‘mob’) being Nazis. I have found a LOT about them accusing Ukrainians of being Nazis and fighting against those Nazis murdering their people.
In fact, even in the Daily Mail’s article accusing Zhoga of being a neo-Nazi, they printed that the announcement of his death accused the Ukrainians of being Nazis.
Sparta fights for the DPR. Denis Pushilin is the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). He announced the death of Zhoga on his Telegram.
He was mortally wounded while ensuring the exit of civilians from this settlement. Scouts “Sparta” covered the evacuation of civilians, mostly women and children. The Nazis opened fire on them…
The Nazis in this announcement are the Ukrainian forces. The head of the DPR said Zhoga was killed protecting civilians from the Nazis who opened fire on the civilians.
The Daily Mail published that nearly halfway down their article after they accused Sparta of being neo-Nazis. Daily Mail either missed it, as did everyone else repeating the claim, or they are intentionally lying to you.
It gets worse …
Look at this screengrab from just a few minutes before I wrote this article.
That’s the Wikipedia page on the Sparta Battalion. There is no reference to them being neo-Nazis in the entire article. Zero results for ‘neo’ for ‘Nazi’ and for ‘white.’ No one has considered Sparta Battalion to be neo-Nazi before now when it suits the Western powers that be to push that narrative.
Now, look at this from the search results for that exact same Wikipedia article:
The search results for that Wikipedia page claim Sparta are neo-Nazis but the actual article doesn’t … yet.
Larry Sanger has warned that the website can no longer be trusted — insisting it is now just “propaganda” for the left-leaning “establishment.”
“If only one version of the facts is allowed then that gives a huge incentive to wealthy and powerful people to seize control of things like Wikipedia in order to shore up their power,” he said.
“There’s a global enforcement of a certain point of view on issues like COVID,” he insisted.
The Ukrainian AZOV Battalion is widely recognized as neo-Nazis. The US government attempted to ban any funding of them with Ukrainian aid packages. A ban that was removed for … reasons.
The Ukrainian AZOV Battalion and the DPR Sparta Battalion are enemies. Are the neo-Nazi groups fighting each other? Why does Sparta constantly refer to their enemies as Nazis in a derogatory way?
It seems that Sparta Battalion and their former leader Vladimir Zhoga are not actually neo-Nazis but are, in fact, in a war against actual neo-Nazi units.
Sidebar: The AZOV Battalion used to be a privately funded gang that was funded by rich oligarchs but was officially absorbed into the Ukrainian National Guard by former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko. Poroshenko praised AZOV as:
“These are our best warriors,” he said at an awards ceremony in 2014. “Our best volunteers.”
Remember that story? The mayor of Konotop appealed to the city and asked if they wanted to fight or surrender. They chose to fight. I even covered it on my show. A harrowing story of bravery, right? What I didn’t know is that the mayor being lionized by the West is a for-real neo-Nazi.
His name is Artem Semenikhin. He’s the mayor of Konotop in the North East of Ukraine.
According to reports, Semenikhin drives around in a car bearing the number 14/88, a numerological reference to the phrases “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” and “Heil Hitler”; replaced the picture of President Petro Poroshenko in his office with a portrait of Ukrainian national leader and Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera; and refused to fly the city’s official flag at the opening meeting of the city council because he objected to the star of David emblazoned on it. The flag also features a Muslim crescent and a cross.
Now, when I covered the story of Konotop’s ‘surrender or die’ predicament, I didn’t know who Semenikhin was. I could forgive PBS for the same except they tipped their hand.
You see, behind Semenikhin in the PBS story is a painting of Stepan Bandera. Bandera was a Ukrainian politician and Nazi sympathizer during WWII. PBS knew that and that’s why they blurred the painting out.
Here’s the picture blurred on the wall of Stepan Bandera:
When Russian troops came into the office of the mayor of Konotop, Ukraine, he escorted them out and made sure they drove away.
I suppose you could say PBS didn’t do this intentionally and it was just a standard blur filter that streamers use all the time, but I’d find that claim dubious, at best.
Just so we are clear … Western media seems to have falsely accused a pro-Russian commander and his whole unit of being neo-Nazis when they are actively engaged in hostilities with a confirmed neo-Nazi unit while PBS knowingly put neo-Nazi on their programming and hid a painting of a well-known Nazi ally hanging on his wall while they did it.
Good thing the West has banned all Russian media outlets so their narrative doesn’t get challenged like with so many fake Ukrainian stories exposed so far in the conflict.
