The Native American man with the drum who – now so infamously – approached a group of high schoolers from Covington, Ky., on Friday has been widely identified as a Vietnam veteran. But he isn’t one.
The man is called Nathan Phillips, and he identifies with the American Indian Movement, an extremist separatist organization tied to at least one murder. He was singing their song when he approached the kids. He told the Washington Post that he was ‘blocked’ by the students, though later video evidence suggests that that was an exaggeration, to put it mildly. Phillips remains adamant that the boys should be punished for what they did to him, and has refused to meet with them. But he might be a bit concerned that the media spotlight has stopped shining on the students he clashed with on Friday, and some journalists are now starting to ask questions about him.
It’s easy to see why the media seized on the ‘veteran’ detail, since it neatly captured the preferred narrative: ghastly young white Trump fans harassing noble minority war hero.
HuffPost made the claim in a headline, CNN used it in a chyron, though what he actually said was, ‘I’m a Vietnam times veteran. I know that mentality, of “there’s enough of us, we can do this,”’ referring to the schoolboys wanting to do violence to him. Phillips was perhaps making a comparison between the putatively savage abuse of these Catholic schoolboys and the My Lai massacre or something.
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