A black WaPo leftist admits "Hands Up" narrative was a fraud.

WaPo columnist regrets supporting ‘Hands up’ mantra

The “mantra of a movement” was a myth.

Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart penned a mea culpa expressing his regret that he ever supported the “Hands up, don’t shoot” rallying cry — admitting it was “wrong, built on a lie.”

His change of heart came after the Justice Department released a report that “corrected the record” on the shooting of Michael Brown by white cop Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo., last August.

“They have also forced me to deal with two uncomfortable truths: Brown never surrendered with his hands up, and Wilson was justified in shooting Brown,” Capehart writes in the March 16 column.

As the shooting roiled Ferguson, Capehart was one of a chorus of pundits who bought Dorian Johnson’s story that his friend had his hands up when he was shot.

But even though a different DOJ report outlines a history of abuse within the Ferguson Police Department against its mostly African-American citizens, Capehart now believes that Brown was “an inappropriate symbol” of racial strife in the St. Louis suburb.

“Through exhaustive interviews with witnesses, cross-checking their statements with previous statements to authorities and the media, ballistics, DNA evidence and results from three autopsies, the Justice Department was able to present a credible and troubling picture of what happened on Canfield Drive,” he said.

Their findings made him “ill,” Capehart added.

He was finally forced to recognize that evidence and eyewitness accounts didn’t point to the “hands up” narrative Johnson had spun to the media.

In the piece, Capehart points to three key pieces of evidence proving Brown was less innocent than believed.

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Michael BrownPhoto: Facebook

First, that the teen punched and grabbed Wilson in the car. Second, that he struggled to get control of the cop’s gun. And finally, that witnesses said Brown dropped his hands and charged at Wilson before he was fired upon.

“Yet this does not diminish the importance of the real issues unearthed in Ferguson by Brown’s death,” Capehart insists. “Nor does it discredit what has become the larger ‘Black Lives Matter.’”

He concludes by saying, “We must never allow ourselves to march under the banner of a false narrative.

“And when we discover that we have, we must acknowledge it, admit our error and keep on marching.”

After penning the column, Capehart was criticized by some readers who said he should have reached his conclusions sooner, and by others who accused him of pandering to whites.

“You know, with regard to the folks on the right who say that I’m late to the party here, you know what? They’re right, but I take my job as a journalist personally and especially on this particular story,” he told NPR.