Time to un-tell the Trayvon lies

On Monday. Sept. 16, I attended the preview of Joel Gilbert's new documentary, "The Trayvon Hoax," at the National Press Club in Washington.

Having written a book on the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin – "If I Had a Son" – I have been following Gilbert's progress with interest. In fact, I introduced Gilbert to George Zimmerman, the man who shot Martin.

Gilbert's presentation should have been news. In the course of his research, he uncovered the most spectacular legal fraud in memory. Not surprisingly, however, the mainstream media chose not to show up for the press conference and screening.

If the media were embarrassed, they had every right to be. An independent filmmaker, Gilbert did the work the major media should have done six years ago. Instead, they drowned the case in relentlessly fake news.

You remember the story line: little black boy in a hoodie carrying Skittles and iced tea back to his little brother shot by racist white vigilante for daring to be black and wearing a hoodie in a white neighborhood.

Other than the Skittles, every detail was false, including the iced tea, and even the Skittles deserve an asterisk.

The rage that this thoroughly bogus story stoked led to the creation of Black Lives Matter, the explosion in Ferguson, and the spread of the "Ferguson effect," a crime wave that has devastated black America.

In addition, the Trayvon hoax proved to be the foundational hoax for the race hoaxes that followed, from "hands up, don't shoot" to Jussie Smollett's imaginary MAGA lynch mob.

The political class and the media continue to exploit this fraud. On the occasion of his Trayvon's most recent birthday, for instance, presidential candidate Kamala Harris tweeted the following:

"It's been seven years since we unjustly lost Trayvon Martin. His tragic death was not just a moment in history – it sparked a movement and his legacy continues to live through our fight for justice. We must be better than this."

These are empty words based on a series of lies, lies that continue to live because the media let them.

Gilbert's film is newsworthy. In the course of his research, he made a stunning discovery, namely that the state's star witness, the young woman whose testimony enabled the state to arrest and try Zimmerman, was a total fraud.

The witness, Rachel Jeantel, was not on the phone with Trayvon in the minutes leading up to his death. In fact, she barely knew him. If the state prosecutors did not know she was a fraud, it was only because they did not want to know.

More provocatively still, Gilbert found the real girl. Using voice, handwriting and even DNA analysis, Gilbert proves his case beyond argument.

Independent journalists like Gilbert are showing us that we of the American samizdat have the power to un-tell the lethal story the media told.

In Russian samizdat means "self-publishing." During the Soviet era, samizdat referred to the clandestine copying and distribution of literature banned by the state.

I use samizdat as shorthand for the alternative conservative media of blogs, public forums, online publications, independent books and films and talk radio.

The Internet gave the samizdat unprecedented reportorial power, and the social media, Facebook and Twitter most prominently, have given us an ability to distribute our message in ways Soviet dissidents could not have imagined.

Thanks to social media, everyone reading this article can be his or her own aggregator and publisher of news. For citizens of the Soviet Union, cynicism was an understandable response to oppression.

For us, it is not. We still have the power to rewrite history, and Gilbert has proven as much.

"The Trayvon Hoax," book and documentary, are available on Amazon, and the film can be streamed through vimeo.