Jason Aldean's Music Video Full of Protest Footage From Outside the US
Jason Aldean released a music video praising small-town communities in America.
Aldean featured clips of protests, but many of said demonstrations did not occur in America.
One clip featured is from a 2010 protest in Canada.
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Jason Aldean's newest music video, praising American small towns, features multiple clips of protests outside of the US, including Canada and Ukraine, TikTok sleuths discovered.
Aldean's "Try That In a Small Town," applauded by conservatives like former President Donald Trump, depicts images of people burning American flags and police confrontations with protesters during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
Aldean sings about protesters spitting at police and rails against perceived criminals that "carjack an old lady at a red light." He also references a gun his grandfather gave him and invites people to "try" the types of activities that he imagines would "fly in the city" in his small town to see how far they can "make it down the road."
However, Destinee Stark, a content creator and activist based in Ohio, pointed out that much of the footage in the video is from nowhere near the small-town America that Aldean fantasizes about defending.
In a series of TikToks posted Thursday, Stark uncovered multiple instances where stock footage is employed in the video. In one instance, a woman flipping off protesters is a clip from Germany being sold as stock footage. In another video, Stark identifies what she believed to be footage from a 2013 protest in Ukraine.
"So the consensus of Aldean's video is that he's protecting his small community from rioters and protesters protesting the police, you would think he would actually use footage actually from America," Stark said in a TikTok. "You know, it would be difficult to protect your small town in America from a festival taking place in Berlin, Germany."
Aldean claimed, "there isn't a single video clip that isn't real news footage" when responding to the backlash to his song in a statement on Twitter posted Tuesday.
Multiple outlets, including Rolling Stone, also uncovered that multiple clips featured in the video originated in Canada. One clip appears to be from the 2010 G20 protests in Toronto, Rolling Stone reported.
The pro-gun, ultra-nationalist anthem and accompanying video garnered criticism online after people pointed out that it was filmed at a courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, where a Black man named Henry Choate was lynched in 1927. Gun-control advocates and scholars of racial violence say the video contains promotions of violence, racist undertones, and references to sundown towns.
Aldean denied that his song was "pro-lynching" in his lengthy Tuesday statement, saying there wasn't "a single lyric in the song that references race." Instead, he said, the song is about "the feeling of a community that I had growing up."
Aldean grew up in Macon, Georgia, the state's third-largest city, with over 150,000 residents.
The music video was later pulled from being played on Country Music Television. The company has not made a public statement, and a spokesperson declined to comment to NPR.
Representatives for Aldean and director Shaun Silva, who has directed country music videos for stars like Carrie Underwood and Luke Bryan, did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Source: Insider
