In April, two University of Missouri professors, Judy Ancel and Don Giljum, were asked to resign in response to a right-wing smear campaign depicting them as liberal radicals and advocates of violence. Giljum, an adjunct professor who had worked for 27 years as business agent for the International Operating Engineers Union, was fired by the union one week before his retirement. The course being taught by the professors was the history of the American labor movement and the specific lesson attacked by the right-wingers was the historical causes of violence in confrontations between labor and management. The truth was that both professors had been very explicit in their condemnation of violence.
This is not an isolated incident. It has become common practice of the radical right-wing to concoct proof for some of their most far-fetched positions. In this case, the slander was directed at the labor movement and was timed to support an attempt in the state legislature to diminish the legal rights of labor, as has already been done in Wisconsin and Ohio. The people involved in concocting the Missouri video were the same people who slandered ACORN, leading to a weird bill about to be passed in Ohio making it difficult for poor people to vote. And remember the video of Shirley Sherrod, temporarily fired by Obama for sounding like a racist? That was made to support the comments of race-baiter Glenn Beck that black people hate America. NPR and Planned Parenthood have also been targeted by these undercover videos.
Here's the story from Missouri. In April, the website BigGovernment.com, run by right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart, posted footage of the labor relations class being taught by Ancel and Giljum. The courses were video-taped by the university so that the two professors could work together with students at the two campuses. On the Big Government video, the professors make a number of statements appearing to back the use of violence in the struggle for labor rights. Judy Ancel of the University of Missouri-Kansas City is presented saying: "Violence is a tactic, and it's to be used when it's appropriate." Don Giljum is quoted saying: "We've had a very violent history, with violent protests in certain instances, strategically played out, and for certain purposes that industrial sabotage doesn't have its place. I think it certainly does."
In fact, the video had been spliced and edited to twist their words. When you watch the videotaped class, you learn that Ancel was actually quoting another person. The following words by Giljum were edited out: "I'm not sure that, as a tactic today, the type of violence or reaction to the violence we had back then would be called for here. I think it would do more harm than good."
The truth has come out, at least enough for the two professors to have their jobs back. But that doesn't mean the right wing won't continue to repeat the same lies. The notion of a university world infested with left-wing activists and allied with an immensely powerful and devious labor world is very important to their ends.
Here are the names of the people involved in this slanderous operation. A student at the St. Louis campus, Philip Christofanelli, was the founder of an organization called Young Americans for Liberty and is affiliated with the Tea Party. It is believed that Christofanelli passed the video on to James O'Keefe, the maker of the undercover videos targeting ACORN, NPR and Planned Parenthood. The spliced and edited video was then posted on BigGovernment.com, the website of Andrew Breitbart, who is currently facing a lawsuit from Shirley Sherrod who he slandered and whose career he ruined.
On April 18, Breitbart had appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox News show, declaring, "We are going to take on education next, go after the teachers and the union organizers." It appears that Ancel and Giljum were the first targets of that attack.
Breitbart's website went so far as to provide contact information for Ancel and Giljum who received a flurry of threatening e-mails. Giljum received at least two death threats over the phone.
From Breitbart's website, the slander was passed on by Right-wing talk show host and co-founder of the the St. Louis Tea Party, Dana Loesch, who drew Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder into helping her exploit the situation. Here is what Kinder says on Loesch's radio program:
KINDER: What would be the reaction from the mainstream media, lame stream media, if we had a Tea Party leader out there-
LOESCH: Oh, right.
KINDER: -advocating violence-
LOESCH: Right.
KINDER: -and preaching violence to impressionable young minds? They sit around matter-of-factly- you can hear this on the two videos that are up on Big Government.com., you can see it-matter of factly discussing violent overthrow of the capitalist order or the existing order, the workers taking to the streets and committing violent acts of industrial sabotage. And the speaker, Don Giljum, is the business agent for the International Operating Engineers Union that works at Ameren UE. This is a matter of grave seriousness."
From the right-wing media, the slander was picked up and repeated by the St. Louis Post and a Columbia, Missouri paper.
Finally, the university is barraged with upset citizens, death threats are directed at the victims of the slander, who find their jobs threatened, and in the case of Giljum, he ends his job of 27 years at his labor union by being fired.
There are some bright spots. The university made a forceful defense of their professors and re-hired them. The students in the class responded very actively, defending their professors, denying the lies and also decrying the fact that they also were being slandered. Also, the slander does not seem to have hit any national media outlet.
For further details, you can click the links below:
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/5/18/andrew_breitbarts_electronic_brownshirts
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/17/getting_wise_to_breitbarts_lies_missouri
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