People Are Blaming the Chicago Kidnapping on Black Lives Matter With Zero Evidence

By Tasneem Nashrulla, BuzzFeed

06 January 17

 

The Chicago police said they could not confirm if the video was tied to any organization.

our people were taken into custody Wednesday in Chicago after a Facebook Live video taken by a black woman appeared to show a white man being tied up, assaulted, and threatened as one of the assailants yelled, “Fuck Donald Trump, fuck white people.”

Police charged the four suspects with aggravated kidnapping and committing a hate crime, among other charges on Thursday. They were identified as Jordan Hall, 18; Tesfaye Cooper, 18; Brittany Covington, 28; and Tanishia Covington, 24, WGNTV.com reported.

Police said that the victim — who was reported missing — had “mental health challenges” and that he knew one of the alleged attackers from school.

After video of the attack spread on social media, many people — including several prominent members of the alt-right movement — began blaming Black Lives Matter for the attack, leading to the hashtag #BLMKidnapping trending on Twitter on Thursday.

Mike Cernovich, a vocal alt-right member, wrote an article referring to the four suspects as “Black Lives Matter supporters,” without offering any evidence of their affiliation with the movement.

The article was published before police had identified or charged any of the suspects.

Cernovich also popularized the use of the #BLMKidnapping hashtag on Wednesday night.

He did not respond to a request for comment.

Conservative radio host Glenn Beck also accused BLM “for the beating of a disabled trump supporter” in a tweet to his over 1 million followers.

He did not respond to a request for comment.

The Chicago Police Department told BuzzFeed News Thursday that they could not confirm if the kidnapping video was tied to any organization.

“This continues to be an ongoing investigation,” a spokesperson said. “We are examining all aspects of the incident, and cannot confirm the video is tied to any organization at this time.”

Despite the present lack of evidence tying the four unidentified suspects to the Black Lives Matter movement, white nationalists such as Richard Spencer continued to use the #BLMKidnapping hashtag.

Other popular conservatives also contributed to the hashtag.

One user, who claimed to be a spokeswoman for “Black Americans For Trump” called Black Lives Matter “the new KKK.”

Others criticized the “Democrat response” to the incident, falsely claiming that the “rash of #TrumpHateCrimes have all been hoaxes.”

Black Lives Matter activists and supporters used the hashtag in an effort to counter claims that the four suspects were part of the movement.

And Black Lives Matter Chicago issued a statement on its Facebook page — shared by the main Black Lives Matter account — saying it “is absolutely perplexing and twisted that people are associating this atrocity with this organization and movement.”

Several BLM supporters condemned the attack and urged people not to affiliate it with the movement.

And BLM activist DeRay McKesson said that “the actions being branded by the far-right as the ‘BLM Kidnapping’ have nothing to do w/ the movement.”

A tweet that appeared to be from McKesson’s account, saying, “I didn’t see anything wrong with the Chicago Facebook video” was widely shared by a troll account, before McKesson said the tweet was “not real” and “obviously photoshopped.”

Others called the hashtag a “white supremacist tactic to implicate and punish ALL Black people.”

Some called the attack a hate crime, but said it was not because of BLM.