NJO: The following post was originally blogged at insurgentvisuals.blogspot.com on August 22, 2008.
(James sent me a note he wrote to a friend. I was so touched by its words that I felt compelled to post it here. It captures so much of what I've felt and thought lately, that I was shocked to read it from him. His words inflate, they command, they inspire, they move. I hope you feel the same way. As usual, I did this without permission, so I tried to remove things that would identify the intended recipient. -Ben)
Hey,
How are you doing? I got your message about the LGBT and the Lavender at <your college="">. Can you tell me me about that? I've specialized in dealing with these types of issues on college campuses. Recently I've asked God to use me in whatever capacity He sees fit, and I've been reading through the Bible, especially proverbs, as well as many other books about career choices and decisions.</your>
One thing that struck me in your email below was what you said :
"I fault people for focusing on this so much that it puts other issues (usually of greater importance) on the backburner. Politicians love the issue of abortion as it causes a deadlock. I believe this to be deception on the part of satan for his other agendas. This is just my opinion on the matter."
<friend>, Politicians may love the issue of abortion for their own selfish reasons, but abortion is THE priority of our time. As you know, If we can not all agree on the sanctity of innocent life, then there is nothing worth agreeing about. If it isn't wrong to kill innocent babies, then what could possibly be wrong. As my friend Dave pointed out to me last night, this is a holy war; a war between all the religions of the world and none. Between the sacredness of life, and the systematic destruction of life. If Satan is doing anything, he is preventing the Good people of the world from taking action to support the least of his fellow man. Many Christians I have met have shied away from this issue because it is a difficult, uncomfortable issue, but to me this is the issue of our time; and I believe Christ looks to our action on this abortion issue, and our courage in confronting it, yes, even at the sacrifice of other issues, at the sacrifice of our jobs, of our lives.</friend>
Keep in the mind the passage in Matthew:::
"For I was hungry and gave you Me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink. I was a stranger and you did not welcome Me, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me." Then they will answer, "Lord, When did we see Thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to Thee?" Then He will answer them, "Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of my brethren, you did it not to me."
Christ's words here in Matthew are radical— more radical than anything written in all the political books I've ever read. And they are more loving, infinitely more loving than the secular or perverted love presented to me by the masses – that says philanthropy or love of our fellow man is a thing to be distinguished from Christ. We must "Give." "Do." "Clothe." "Welcome." "Visit" for the Christ present in the least of our brethren neighbors. This will take more than chastity, it will take charity; it will take more than temperance, it will take action, practice, proactive struggle and the sacrifice of fame and status. It will take immediacy and prioritization. It will require us to make essential distinctions about what is important. In some cases loving will entail forfeiture of our life, liberty, or property for people that have none of the above. We must come to know and love God in all people and things, but especially in "the least of our brethren." Not just to those we have wronged, or to whom we were unkind, but on behalf of people we have neglected through lack of action; People we see and ignore; the miserable, the sorrowful, the defenseless, the diseased; the helpless, the physically weak, the spiritually devoid. We are tempted to call them rich or say they are undeserving of our love. But this doesn't change the fact we see they are poor. We know Christ has already given us this power to determine what is essential. When we neglect or ignore these starving, these sick, these naked, these imprisoned, we neglect or ignore Christ himself. Christ stands amongst his voiceless children in the Kingdom of heaven asking when we arrive "how much do you love me?" He will look to our faith. He will look to how we demonstrate that faith. Wherever there is suffering in humanity, Christ is calling. He is asking us to show Him how much we are willing to love. He is asking us to demonstrate our love by curing the people made in his image; after all, all of this is made in God's image. He tells us our eternity is at stake. Thus we must act, and we must act now because our judgment could come later today, and many of us will be left immediately begging for mercy and more time – to do the things that must be done.
I can imagine an infinite number of callings in which you all can practice your love for humanity. Perhaps philanthropy, perhaps missionary, civil rights, teaching, innovation, etc. Maybe all of the above. We (Myself and anyone else who comes forward) have found out calling, so God help us
But for me, applied love has seemed to be a resistance; I find myself wanting to show my love by being in radical opposition to the powerful institutions of today. First it was colleges which perverted truth. Then courts which have perverted law. And most recently a Planned Parenthood organization which has convinced arguably the most powerless black American class of human beings that killing their children will help that class' cause. God has opened my eyes to a holocaust; colleges that sponsor it, newspapers and magazines that willingly ignore proof of it , court justices making up laws to uphold it. And yet as I read Matthew, and thought about "what's wrong with the world" and asked earnestly what Christ meant, tears streamed down from my eyes because powerful forces within me reinforced what I already knew to be true. . Our world doubts its own capacity for love, distorts love, the most awful perversion. As evidence by calling a ban on killing "authoritarianism," – as evidenced by, for example, a pastor emailing the Advocate stating we are acting immorally in our investigation. The pastor, and millions of Christians who agree with him, might want to reread the book of Matthew, Christ's request, and what love means to them, in the deepest of places. Thousands of a deaths a day, and he chooses to attack us.
We, in our specific calling, refuse to apologize.
We, in our specific calling, make it our responsibility to change their spiritual leanings before judgment day. Abortion, birth control, premature legislation and a deceptive media have created a paradigm where most are convinced Planned Parenthood seeks to foster a supportive environment for black people when it destroys black children for the sake of a "better environment." In the womb, lay the strangers Christ spoke of, Margaret Sangers' "unwanted," "unloved," who will grow up "POOR" and therefore must be eliminated, for the sake of a better society and a better world. It was once possible, then it became inevitable. Now the question is how many lives can we save.
We, in our specific calling, have also learned that civil discourse accomplishes nothing; logic is no weapon against them, with discourse there is no freeing, no results, no clothing, no visiting, there is only killing. We can not "forgive" the perversion of love, the perversion of meaning, when we are all be subject to judgment and considered the purveyors of death. This truth will not disappear simply by Christians refusing to confront and stop injustice, or hide from it.
Nor will we allow someone who isn't Christian to prevent us from speaking to a non-Christian from our hearts. We may talk past them, but it is precisely when we do share the truth and talk past them, standing our ground we are on the path to helping our brethren, and setting others free. We will talk using our language until the death, so at least we can go to Christ, knowing we did not back down.
We, in our specific calling, can only get access to the abortionists' chambers and record the remark that will further harm their organization by deceiving them about my purpose, my age, her age, my intent.
We, in our specific calling, can only infiltrate the newsprint propaganda through alternative video. A thousand Christians trumpet how immoral or illwilled or inartistic or unstylized the video is. Some of the Christians praise the video style at length, and the media spotlights earned for its own sake, only to move onto another story, another day, another topic that is more stylized. A handful tally the 200,000 people and counting learning for the first time that Planned Parenthood was founded on Eugenics purposes. And of those how many see this the core motive and twisted ideology that abortion is even based on?
A pro-life Christian friend of mine, in our specific calling, will drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes, while lying and pretending to be pregnant. Potentially, this psychological trick will permit us to make a Youtube video admist A group of Christians fresh from their bible study lessons on truth, eternity, and faith, will lament that we violated a campus policy of drinking
The question is not whether "the ends justify the means" The question is Saving lives (and thus God's image) justifies deceiving the very evil that is destroying those lives (and God's image).
Christ gives us the answer. And in the pit of my soul I must take a leap of faith and love my brethren.
- James
NJO: The above post was originally blogged at insurgentvisuals.blogspot.com on August 22, 2008. If you follow that link, you'll see that there are three names listed as contributors to that defunct blogspot: James O'Keefe, Bruce Bronson and ".", with the posts made by ".", as can be further attested in this article at Crooks and Liars. Here the person posting identifies himself as "Ben". The note from "James" that he presents is filled with telltale signs of sloppy editing, e.g. incomplete sentences, lack of correct punctuation etc. As Ben says, he "tried to remove things that would identify the intended recipient".
Okay, firstly... why do I think Insurgent Visuals James O'Keefe and Feathers of Steel James O'Keefe are the same person?
A number of reasons.
One, Insurgent Visuals James is ardently anti- a woman's right to choose abortion and so is Feathers of Steel James.
Two, Insurgent Visuals James talks about his "radical opposition to the powerful institutions of today", which he lists chronologically as colleges, courts, and then Planned Parenthood. This is consistent with Feathers of Steel James' trajectory through college to law school, and then while at law school, helping to form the anti-Planned Parenthood organization Live Action.
Three, Insurgent Visuals James is party to something called "the Advocate". Feathers of Steel James' history with Live Action and its publication The Advocate is well documented; also, the date of the post is concurrent with this chapter of his life.
Four, Insurgent Visuals James talks about making videos with the goal of harming organizations that provide abortions, just like what Feathers of Steel James has a history of doing.
Five, Insurgent Visuals James is happy enough to tell lies in furtherance of his goals and so is Feathers of Steel James.
Next, I think there's good reason to believe that the two other guys involved in this short-lived blog, identified as "Ben" and "Bruce Bronson", are James O'Keefe's associates Benjamin R. Wetmore and Jonathon Christian Burns respectively. Ben Wetmore was a staffer and field rep for Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute circa 2002 to 2006. James (who attended some Leadership Institute courses in 2005 and was one of its field reps in 2007) would later refer to him as "a mentor of mine; a genius". Another reason to think "Ben" is Ben Wetmore is his fannish mention of artists John "Borf" Tsombikos and Banksy in another post on the Insurgent Visuals blog. This photo from Ben Wetmore's Picasa Web Albums account, in an album titled "My Place", has these two listed on a note as "Artists I like":
Jonathon Burns (a.k.a. John Burns) attended some Leadership Institute courses circa 2004 and would later be a founding member of the St Louis Tea Party. According to this blog post by Wetmore (mirrored here), his friend Jon Christian Burns is "soaked in the moral clarity of numerous Mr. Bruce Willis and Mr. Charles Bronson movies". This, along with Burns' resemblance to the grinning stencilized visage in the Insurgent Visuals logo and the Leadership Institute background he shares with Wetmore and O'Keefe, is what leads me to think that "Bruce Bronson" is he.
Both have collaborated with James O'Keefe on several projects; I've made use of tags on this blog to denote exactly which ones. Two examples of projects that involved all three of them are the CNN Caper (2010) and the Bailout Prize Patrol video (2009).
Now, all this fuss I'm making about the fascinating matter of who exactly was involved in making this one half-assed little blog in 2008 does actually have a conclusion that it's warming up to, so bear with me. See, some time later, in 2011, a journalistic group calling itself Insurgent Visuals would get its name mentioned in the Missouri press as the mysterious (ie. sketchy, fake, not a real journalistic group at all) purveyor and promoter of a series of videos culled from 30 hours of lecture footage from the University of Missouri St Louis downloaded by student Phil Christofanelli, as part of an Andrew Breitbart-backed smear campaign against the lecturers of a Labor Studies course. This incarnation of Insurgent Visuals had a short-lived website at insurgentvisuals.com (plus a new and similarly short-lived Blogger account, and a Facebook account, a YouTube account, a Vimeo account, and a Twitter), which listed staffers by the names of "Jim O." and "Bruce B.", featured some mock-Soviet-style graphics similar to what Ben Wetmore has a history of creating and posting on his websites, and which was registered, according to Whois Lookup, on April 26, 2011 by one Jonathon Burns. Furthermore, Jon Burns is from St Louis and James O'Keefe had spent some time in St Louis in late 2009, being involved in some Tea Party events along with Burns. So could it have been one or more of these three guys behind the 2011 smear? I would call that a distinct possibility.
(Updated 30th September 2015 to include the fake HTML tags
