While some people debate the merits of the current healthcare legislation in Congress, or attempt to expose corruption in our government, Max Blumenthal instead engages in character assassination using the most questionable sources.

Recently, as has been well-documented on BigJournalism, Blumenthal branded James O’Keefe a racist for attending a debate at which Jared Taylor spoke. He did this despite the fact that O’Keefe sided with Taylor’s opposition, a black conservative named Kevin Martin.

The video below summarizes Blumenthal’s Alinsky tactics and highlights clips from the most recent CPAC where he continues his viciousness. As Andrew Breitbart wondered, what does Blumenthal really stand for, if it isn’t for destroying people’s lives?

Chuck Johnson is at it again. He must be out on a weekend pass. I feel compelled to answer the Little Green Monster after I saw him go after James O’Keefe with that same tired wet noodle of a charge he has leveled at so many, calling him a white nationalist. Johnson claimed in an LGF post that “ACORN sting filmmaker James O’Keefe was photographed attending a 2006 white nationalist conference titled ‘Race and Conservatism.’”

Sounds terrible, right? Sure, until you get the facts that Johnson doesn’t tell you. When it became clear that it wasn’t a “white nationalist conference,” Johnson tried to slither out of responsibility for his words by saying in a new post: “It’s very clear that I attributed the ‘white nationalist conference’ claim to One People’s Project; that’s what the words ‘according to’ mean.”

Busted! As if it weren’t obvious that in his original post, he was approving of and endorsing what One People’s Project said. But this is typical of Johnson’s weaselly hit-and-run smear tactics.

Meanwhile, Larry O’Connor at Big Journalism uncovered the truth about O’Keefe’s supposed participation in this conference: (more…)

You know you’re having a bad day, Joan Walsh, when it’s just you and Max Blumenthal alone in a foxhole while you’re being overwhelmed by the truth. Because David Weigel, one of your sources for Blumenthal’s story and Max’s own blog posts that James O’Keefe once helped organize a “racist conference,”  has now “clarified” his remarks and guess what?  Your story just fell apart.  Read it and weep:

Clarification — and Mea Culpa — on James O’Keefe and ‘Race and Conservatism’

On Wednesday, I wrote a post reacting to Max Blumenthal’s story “James O’Keefe’s Race Problem” and was too quick with a description of the August 30, 2006 Robert Taft Club event on “race and conservatism.” Specifically, I wrote this:

“A zoomed-in headshot of James O’Keefe (after the jump), then working for the Leadership Institute, survived, although it cropped out the table he was sitting at, covered in controversial literature.”

In a later post, I walked this back: While I’d been at the event, it was Isis, a photographer/investigator for the One People’s Project, who told me that her photo was actually a picture of O’Keefe at a table of controversial literature. But several e-mailers and commenters have pointed out that my first post appeared to endorse Blumenthal’s whole story. I want to quickly walk through that story and point out the parts that, based on my experience at the event and interviews with Isis and event organizer Marcus Epstein, were not true.

There follows five points of material error in Blumenthal’s story and in the original post at the “anti-racist” website, One People’ s Project (whose site is adorned with the old Soviet Union colors of red and gold, and features a Soviet-style logo).   Among the revelations: (more…)

For Release: February 4, 2010
Contact: David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or (703) 568-4727 or dalmasi@nationalcenter.org or Judy Kent at (703) 759-7476 or jkent@nationalcenter.org

Washington, DC – Kevin Martin of the black leadership group Project 21 and Amy Ridenour of the National Center for Public Policy Research are questioning the accuracy of an article in the left-wing online magazine Salon which implies that independent filmmaker James O’Keefe is a racist.

The article, “James O’Keefe’s Race Problem,” by Max Blumenthal, cites O’Keefe’s attendance at a “Race and Conservatism” panel in 2006 as evidence that, as Blumenthal put it, O’Keefe’s “short but storied career has been defined by a series of political stunts shot through with racial resentment.”

Black conservative Kevin Martin, one of several panelists at the event, disagrees. In fact, Martin says, O’Keefe approached him after the event and expressed support for Martin’s positions, which are certainly not racist:

As a panelist at the Robert Taft Club ‘Race and Conservatism’ event in 2006, I had the chance to personally meet James O’Keefe after the event ended. He voiced personal support for me and my positions. He also repudiated the radical elements in the room that night.

(more…)

In Max Blumenthal’s article “James O’Keefe’s race problem” for Salon.com of February 3, 2010, Mr. Blumenthal makes a number of unverifiable and provably false claims regarding James O’Keefe’s attendance at a 2006 conference called “Race and Conservatism.”  Below are the list of quotes containing misinformation and an explanation of why they need to be addressed by the editors of your publication.

From left: Marcus Epstein, Jared Taylor, Kevin Martin, and John Derbyshire at what Max Blumenthal dubbed “a white-nationalist confab”

We kindly request corrections to all:

According to One People’s Project founder Daryle Jenkins, O’Keefe was manning the literature table at the gathering that brought together anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism.

As noted in this post here by Larry O’Connor, we contacted Mr. Jenkins, who identified David Weigel as his source for the claim that Mr. O’Keefe was manning the table.  Mr. Weigel has denied that Mr. O’Keefe manned the table and has no knowledge to suggest Mr. O’Keefe was involved in the orchestration of the event at any level. In an interview with BigJournalism.com, Mr. O’Keefe denied having planned the event.

(more…)