Stop Trusting Viral Videos

In a short, viral video shared widely since Friday, Catholic high-school students visiting Washington, D.C., from Kentucky for the March for Life appeared to confront, and mock, American Indians who had participated in the Indigenous Peoples March, taking place the same day.

By Saturday, the video had been condensed into a single image: One of the students, wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, smiles before an Omaha tribal elder, a confrontation viewers took as an act of aggression by a group of white youths against an indigenous community—and by extension, people of color more broadly. Online, reaction was swift and certain, with legislators, news outlets, and ordinary people denouncing the students and their actions as brazenly racist.

But as the weekend wore on, a cast doubt on the clarity the original had appeared to offer. This one was shot by members of a Black Hebrew Israelite protest group that had also gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, where the incident took place. Over the hour-and-45-minute run time, members of the group mock and deride passersby of all stripes. According to a issued by Nick Sandmann, the Covington Catholic High School junior seen apparently intimidating the tribal elder in the original video, the students were also victims of harassment by the broader protest, and they had tried to defuse the situation by singing over the Black Hebrew Israelites. According to the statement, the