April 18, 2024

Idavox

The Media Outlet of One People's Project

Mile High BS: No, Antifa Did Not Kill a Right-Winger in Denver

If conservatives are going to lecture everyone about waiting until all the facts come out when one of their police officers kill a Black man, perhaps they should take their own advice first. Lee Keltner’s body was still warm as Andy Ngo, Dinesh D’Souza and others started reporting how antifa killed him at a rally, and they played themselves doing it.

DENVER, CO – It did not take long before right wing media outlets began posting story with blaring, sensationalist headlines like the Gateway Pundit’s “BREAKING: Shooting at Denver Protests — ANTIFA TERRORIST SHOOTS PATRIOT PROTESTER DEAD!” and the Post Millennial’s “BREAKING: Alleged Antifa Militant Shoots and Kills Conservative at Patriot Rally in Denver”. Just as quickly the incendiary tweets from conservatives also began flowing some calling for attacks on antifascists in the wake of the shooting that took place last night during a rally in town that saw verbal and physical exchanges by right wingers and a group associated with Black Lives Matter and antifa.

Eventually however, Post Millennial changed its headline to “Conservative shot and killed at ‘Patriot Rally’ in Denver”. That was after the Denver Police tweeted out that the person who fired the fatal shot was a security guard not affiliated with antifa.

Matthew Doloff, a security guard protecting a television news reporter, is in custody after he allegedly shot and killed a person who was participating in what was billed a “Patriot Rally” outside the Denver Art Museum that was met by antifascists with a counterprotest called “BLM-Antifa Soup Drive”. A video of the shooting shows a man wearing a Black Guns Matter shirt in an argument and small scuffle with Denver Hatter Lee Keltner and others with his group. Keltner walks away and off camera and seconds later is seen falling to the ground after being shot. A photo in the Denver Post shows the incident taking place with Keltner wearing an anti-Black Lives Matter shirt spraying an undetermined substance at the Doloff. Keltner, who died at the hospital an hour later, had been identified by friends on Twitter.

Those working in the media have increasingly been the targets of the right for abuse both verbal and physical. Rally organizer John “Tig” Tiegen, a former military member who was working with Blackwater Security at the American Embassy in Benghazi, Libya when it was attacked, and earlier this year staged anti-shutdown rallies in Colorado and currently has been active against the recent Black Lives Matter protests in the state, rails against media as threats regularly on his Twitter and Instagram accounts.

Ironically, conservative propagandist and Post Millennial Editor Andy Ngo, who has become famous for touting the story of how last year he was attacked by antifa during a Portland rally while in the capacity of a journalist – itself touted as an example of the danger journalists face, was among the first to promote the Denver shooting that involved someone protecting a journalist as instead one committed by antifa per a tweet promoting the Post Millennial story written by Ian Miles Cheong, a promoter of the debunked Gamergate conspiracy and long regarded as an alt-right troll. Many took notice of his tweet which has since been removed, but Ngo now has a tweet of how antifa cheered on Keltner’s death. Ngo himself has been accused in the past of colluding with violent neo-Fascist groups in Portland, particularly after a Portland Mercury investigation last year revealed association with Patriot Prayer who even provided a video of Ngo appearing to listen to its members plan a violent clash with antifascists at a cidery. Ngo omitted this video from his coverage and made no effort to stop the plans from being carried out.

Soon other propagandists like Tim Pool and Dinesh D’Souza posted the same take on their Twitter accounts, and despite the information from Denver Police that Doloff wasn’t associated with antifa or the protests, Cheong is still attempting to frame him as such, suggesting that he was a past activist in Occupy Denver.

The Denver shooting is the latest incident in protests across the country over the past five months where someone has died.