Were Alton Sterling and Philando Castile really innocent victims of racist cops?

In order to reinforce the false narrative that blacks are systematically discriminated against in America, the Left and its accomplices in the mainstream media spent much of last week lying over and over again about two black men shot to death by police officers.

Like a burnt out Hollywood screenwriter, the Left keeps recycling the same old stock characters. Black men are tragic heroes. White people and police are racist agents of an evil system. The facts are never allowed to intrude on these fantasies.

Michael Brown of Ferguson, Mo., was supposedly a gentle giant. Trayvon Martin of Sanford, Fla., was said to look like the son President Obama never had. “When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids,” Obama said after Martin’s death in 2012. Later we learned these were politically motivated lies generated by leftist lynch mobs.

This evidence has become available after the horrific Black Lives Matter-inspired massacre of police officers in Dallas during a Black Lives Matter demonstration. With five policemen dead, it was the deadliest attack on U.S. law enforcement since Sept. 11, 2001.

FrontPage reported Friday on the media’s beatification of Alton Sterling, who died in Baton Rouge, La., and Philando Castile, who died near St. Paul, Minn. But new information has emerged through enhanced scrutiny of independently shot crime scene videos showing Castile in extremis after being shot and the physical altercation between Sterling and police.

The new information makes it clear that Sterling, a career criminal well known to Baton Rouge police, was trying to wrest a gun away from a cop. While cops were wrangling him, Sterling indicated he intended to harm the officers. The cops responded appropriately, shooting him to death.

With Castile, it now appears he may have had a gun at his side or on his lap. In addition, the lawyer for the officer involved, Jeronimo Yanez, reportedly said his client ordered Castile to stay motionless but the man refused to comply. In other words, Yanez responded to the presence of the gun and moves by Castile, not to Castile’s race.

Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond “Lavish” Reynolds, had said Castile was trying to retrieve his wallet after informing police that he was in possession of a concealed weapon and a permit allowing him to carry it. “He let the officer know that he had a firearm, and he was reaching for his wallet and the officer just shot him in his arm,” Reynolds said. She told Yanez, “You told him to get his ID, sir – his driver’s license.”

An audio recording of police communications purports to depict officers saying they were about to pull over Castile because he matched the description of a robbery suspect. Still video frames of a robbery in Minnesota have also surfaced that show a man who at least somewhat resembles Castile. At time of writing neither piece of evidence appeared to have been authenticated. A squad car video of the incident also exists, according to investigators, but it does not appear to have been made public.

Castile, who had a long history of driving infractions but no felony convictions, did in fact possess a permit to carry a gun, the Star Tribune reported Saturday, citing a confidential source. Under state law, the names of such permit holders are not made public but the source said Castile was issued the permit when he lived in Robbinsdale, Minn.

There are still many unanswered questions about the slaying of Castile, but the new information seems unhelpful to those arguing his shooting was unjustified.

A slow-motion version of one video of the Sterling incident, which took place in the parking lot of a food store, appears to exonerate the officers involved who responded to a 9-1-1 call about a man menacing another with a gun.

According to the slow-mo analysis, while the cops were on the ground leaning over Sterling one shouts “he’s got a gun” before they draw their firearms. An officer cautions Sterling shouting, “hey bro, you fu–ing move, I swear to God.”

Sterling seems to reply, “thanks for the free gun,” a clear indication he had taken or was trying to take an officer’s gun, and shots ring out. Someone shouts “you’re dead” and more shots ring out. The camera cuts away then returns to show Sterling lying on his back with blood pooled over his chest.

Unless this version of the video was dishonestly manipulated or inaccurately interpreted (which does not appear to be the case), that would seem to close the book on the Alton Sterling case. We’ll have to see if any more evidence surfaces.

FrontPage readers are painfully aware that the Left cannot advance its agenda without lying.

The Left reveres thugs. It jumped on the bandwagon promoting the lie that Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin were innocent angels unjustly cut down by white executioners. The truth, as we now know, is that both young black men were killed in self-defense by the white men they intended to harm.

We now know that “hands up, don’t shoot,” the mantra of angry mobs and left-wing talking heads, was a complete hoax. Brown was a thug killed by a white police officer and trying to grab the cop’s gun. He did not get gunned down while trying to surrender, as the Left claims.

We now know that Martin, who was suspected to have been a burglar, wanted to hurt Neighborhood Watch volunteer George Zimmerman because he believed his friend when she told him Zimmerman might be a homosexual stalking the area.

The Left creates alternate realities in order to justify or rationalize past events and to move its agenda forward.

The Left lied when it claimed the recent Orlando and Dallas massacres were about the arguably easy availability of guns. The Left lied when it claimed former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.) was shot because Sarah Palin put her congressional district on a “target list,” ignoring the fact that military metaphors have long been a bipartisan part of America’s political culture.

The Left lied when it claimed during the Obamacare debate that there were tens of millions of uninsured Americans and that an angry anti-Obamacare mob hurled racist epithets at black Democrat lawmakers on their way to the U.S. Capitol.

The Left lied when it claimed Bill Clinton was impeached because Republicans were sexual prudes. The Left lied when it claimed Matthew Shepard was murdered because he was gay – in fact, his connection to the drug underworld was the central factor in his killing. The Left lied when it claimed Ronald Reagan hated and discriminated against gays, an absurd claim to make about a former six-term president of the Screen Actors Guild whose livelihood was dependent on getting along with the many powerful gays of Hollywood.

The Left lied when it claimed Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was a racist conservative when in fact he was an agnostic animal rights enthusiast and anti-bullying activist enraged at the Janet Reno-orchestrated massacre of mostly non-white members of the Branch Davidian church of Waco, Texas.

This is not an exhaustive list of leftist lies.

Meanwhile, information has surfaced about the identity of the allegedly lone sniper in Dallas who late last week gunned down a reported 12 police officers, killing five of them. The massacre apparently inspired copycat attacks on police across the nation.

The Dallas shooter was identified as 25-year-old Micah Xavier Johnson of Mesquite, Texas, a black man who served in the U.S. Army Reserve and did a tour in Afghanistan. Bomb-making materials and an arsenal of weapons and ammunition were found at the man’s home.

Johnson is said to have told police he was not part of any group which is essentially worthless as evidence with respect to the the Black Lives Matter movement. The movement is fairly amorphous and decentralized. Anyone can claim to be or not be a member of the movement.

Johnson, who has been found in a photo posing in a dashiki with a raised arm Black Power salute, said he was upset at the recent deaths of black men at the hands of police.

Dallas police chief David Brown said Johnson told police he “wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”

Johnson had been a member of the Houston chapter of the New Black Panther Party for six months some years ago, Breitbart Texas reports, citing KPRC NBC2. The source of the membership information was a man called Quanell X who said Johnson left the organization because he would not respect the chain of command. Breitbart posted a photo of what it claimed was Johnson at a New Black Panther armed march.

Of course former Justice Department civil rights division lawyer J. Christian Adams warned the Obama administration years ago about the real danger posed by the New Black Panther Party and was ignored.

The episode in Dallas came to an explosive ending early Friday. In a wonderful law enforcement innovation, Dallas police used a robot to deliver a bomb that blew Johnson to bits.

Something called the Black Power Political Organization reportedly claimed responsibility for the Dallas massacre. On its now-offline Facebook page it stated, “More Will Be Assassinated In The Coming Days! Do You Like The Work Of Our Assassins? Get Your Own Sniper.”

Whether BPPO is a real group isn’t yet clear. It doesn’t appear to have been incorporated anywhere. Its Facebook page has been taken down. The page referenced various black power groups such as the New Black Panther Party and the Huey P. Newton Gun Club. Something called the Black People Protection Agency, also allegedly known as Black Knights, was referred to on BPPO’s Facebook page. BPPA’s status is similarly murky.

BPPO’s page did list contact information in the form of a telephone number with an 876 area code, which corresponds to the Caribbean nation of Jamaica. That number also appears on a funding page for something called the Black Men Entrepreneurship Foundation. At time of writing BMEF had an active Facebook page. That organization’s status is also unclear.

The Left is desperate to protect Black Lives Matter, which has been officially endorsed by the Democratic National Committee. Prominent left-wingers are publicly scratching their heads wondering what possibly could have motivated the Dallas attack even though Micah X. Johnson spelled out his anti-white, anti-cop animus in an abundantly clear fashion to police.

During a press conference in Poland, a befuddled President Obama pretended to struggle to understand why the Dallas shooter did what he did. “I think it is very hard to untangle the motives of this shooter. I’ll leave that to psychologists and people who study these kinds of incidents.”

“I think the danger is that we somehow suggest the act of a troubled individual speaks to some larger political statement across the country,” Obama said.

Democrat presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton blamed white people. “White Americans need to do a better job of listening when African Americans talk about the seen and unseen barriers you face every day,” she tweeted Friday.

Later the same day Clinton continued her delusional rant in a CNN interview.

“I will call for white people, like myself, to put ourselves in the shoes of those African-American families who fear every time their children go somewhere, who have to have ‘The Talk,’ about how to really protect themselves [from police], when they’re the ones who should be expecting protection from encounters with police.”

“I’m going to be talking to white people. We’re the ones who have to start listening to the legitimate cries coming from our African-American fellow citizens.”

Listening to Black Lives Matters supporters who want to kill white people and police is exactly the kind of useless, possibly counterproductive remedy Hillary Clinton would propose.

But pandering is a principal focus of the Left nowadays, the real-world consequences be damned.