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Today’s blacklisted American: Student destroyed because mob accepted false slanders against her

Morgan Bettinger, calling police when her car was surrounded by protesters in 2020
Morgan Bettinger, calling police when her car
was surrounded by protesters in 2020. Click
for original video, from UVA’s media outlet,
which includes the accusation that she
threatened the protesters but includes no
evidence.

They’re coming for you next: The entire future of Morgan Bettinger has apparently been destroyed because a leftist activist spread a false lie about her through social media, and the student population and many of the faculty and administration at the University of Virginia (UVA) quickly accepted it without question.

Bettinger, a student at UVA, was accused of saying that a group of “Black Women Matter” demonstrators blocking traffic in a 2020 protest would “make good speed bumps.” The accusation came from lefty activist Zyahna Bryant, also a student at UVA, who quickly organized a campaign to get Bettinger expelled. Though Bettinger was not expelled, a student panel found her guilty, and sentenced her to “50 hours of community service with a social justice organization, three meetings with an assigned professor to teach her about ‘police community relations,’ an apology letter to Bryant, and the expulsion in abeyance.”

In other words, she was to go to a political reeducation camp and get indoctrinated properly.

The problem is that Bettinger never said any such thing, and that Bryant’s claims were lies. These facts were unequivocally determined by a more careful investigation by the university’s Office for Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights (EOCR), which found that Bettinger was innocent of Bryant’s charges of racism. Bryant had never recorded the actual comment, and hadn’t even heard it herself. Instead, Bryant had extrapolated her own interpretation from hearsay told to her by others.

What Bettinger actually said, which was also confirmed by numerous witnesses, had a completely opposite meaning, and was initiated when she started a conversation with the driver of a dump truck that was blocking the road and thus protecting the protesters from being hit by cars.

As Bettinger got out of her car, she claims that the driver of the dump truck initiated a conversation with her. “I had no interest in walking over to him to speak to him,” she says, “but out of being polite, when he spoke to me I answered.” According to Bettinger, the pair had a brief, casual conversation—a claim the driver later supported in a statement to Charlottesville police.

At some point during this conversation, Bettinger says, she told the driver something like “It’s a good thing that you are here, because otherwise these people would have been speed bumps.” While she says she doesn’t remember her exact words, she maintains that her comment was intended to thank the driver for protecting the protesters, many of whom were sitting in the middle of often-busy East High Street.

Zyahna Bryant heard a distorted third-party version of this conversation, and immediately rewrote it to change Bettinger’s intent. Instead of Bettinger wishing no harm on the protesters (the truth), she was now a white supremacist who wanted black protesters killed.

As is now normal behavior by college students, no one questioned Bryant’s interpretation of the facts, even though Bryant had no video of Bettinger saying this and actually wasn’t a witness to it. Bettinger was slandered, punished, and made a pariah at her school. Though she eventually did graduate, her career remains in limbo because of the black mark placed on her record due to the student conviction.

During the worst of the uproar, a Twitter mob gathered to threaten her, without ever reviewing any of the facts.

As the story spread online, comments kept rolling in, mostly on Twitter. “Absolutely insane. We need to see action from @UVA against hate speech,” wrote one student. “@UVA needs to expel Morgan Bettinger IMMEDIATELY. You all want an open racist attending your school???” one anonymous account tweeted.

Making matters worse, few people seemed to have even watched Bryant’s video. Comment after comment insisted that there was video proof that Bettinger had made the threats.

“what ‘allegation?!’ there is clear video photage [sic] of this girls [sic] racist and borderline violent behavior,” wrote one student. A few comments seemed like veiled threats. One anonymous person tweeted a photo of a canister of foam sealant with the caption “apply liberally to tailpipe.” [emphasis mine]

At one point Bettinger borrowed a friend’s car out of fear because her own car was now well known and she had found herself being followed by hostile individuals several times.

Since then Bettinger has sued [pdf] the University of Virginia to get her record cleared, but even a victory here will not really clear her name.

This story is simply another example of Obama’s legacy of hate, whereby the left is allowed to make any number of wild unproven accusations against their opponents, calling them “racists” and “bigots” and “white supremacists” without evidence, and those accusations are always accepted on face value, even though the actual evidence repeatedly shows the accusations were false slanders, time after time after time.

When will people recover their ability to question such accusations, and hold back their emotional response until all the facts are known? When will “innocent until proven guilty” return as the cultural law of the land?

Until this changes, we will continue descending into a new dark age, where critical thought is impossible and waiting for the facts is irrelevant because blind angry emotion must rule first.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

10 comments

  • Dave

    The mob is a dangerous thing, and a dangerous tool. If one has no scruples, it can be used effectively to get to the top of the pecking order. So, we might wonder, who is at the top of this order and do they have scruples?

    The more suspicious element of me wonders this: who’s pulling their strings? Would be interesting to see some “investigative journalism” on that rabble rousing world and who is connected to whom, and how they and perhaps others conduct themselves on this project of ruin. If only.

  • Edward

    Robert, Robert, Robert,
    Don’t you know that in Obama’s America we all have the right to prove our innocence? Nancy Pelosi is adamant that we have that right:
    https://news.yahoo.com/nancy-pelosi-roasted-over-trump-083229719.html

    The Grand Jury has acted upon the facts and the law,” Pelosi wrote. “No one is above the law, and everyone has the right to a trial to prove innocence. Hopefully, the former President will peacefully respect the system, which grants him that right.”

    This is how it is in our country, today. It is not American. It is not even British.

    It is French.

    J’accuse!

  • wayne

    Top 6: Best Handguns for Woman
    https://youtu.be/l3jEQyPH5EY
    11:47

  • wayne

    Robert Earl Keen
    A Bigger Piece of Sky (2004)
    “Blow You Away”
    https://youtu.be/X5c5TtQ2Mb8
    3:35

  • James Street

    Leftist mobs are armed. The government and mainstream media hide that fact but occasionally it is reported like this sentence buried in the middle of the article:

    “Fort Worth Police say many in the Antifa crowd were armed with either handguns or long guns.”
    https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2023/04/25/fort-worth-police-release-video-of-antifa-being-arrested-after-attacking-protesters-n2622396

  • Keith Pearson

    I agree with the sympathy for this young woman, and we should care about this regardless, buuuuut…if this didn’t result in a Red Pill suppository for her, then she can hang.

  • Keith Pearson: What makes you think Bettinger leaned left? Her father was a cop, and she posted frequently in support of the police, information all available in the links I provide.

  • David Eastman

    The reason article mentions that Bryant, the accuser, has gone on to fame, glory, and success as an activist. I’d think a very public defamation lawsuit, with appropriate public questions to the organizations that she works for on why they associate with a person so careless of facts in her accusations, and are they aware of the risk of litigation they face if she does so again, would be in order.

  • Gary H

    Perhaps the wrong place to post this, but it seems that suing, a favorite activity of the left, just might be in abundance leading up to the 2024 elections. Expect to see many conservatives defending themselves in court. Trump is just the most visible, but censorship by use of the legal system is just now ramping up. Tucker has lawyered up and I suspect for good reason. The MAGA folks will geared up to fight the exploits exhibited by the left in 2020, but the left is not limited by a moral center and will skew the election through all means possible and this time the legal and legislative efforts will be crucial.

    We are soon to find out how the left plans on cancelling Tucker Carlson. This story is just now unfolding.

  • Star Bird

    If these heathens insist on acting so uncivilzed we should just send them to live in the Amazon with only the clothes on their backs

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