Actor Jesse Williams says the NFL’s pregame national anthem is a ‘scam’ convincing Americans to join the military and ‘fly overseas and kill people’
Jesse Williams commented on NFL players kneeling during the national anthem
Williams said that football players started participating in the pregame national anthem in 2009 as a Defense Department military recruitment strategy
He said their participation was used to ‘get more people to fight wars to die’
NFL players did not typically stand for the pregame national anthem until 2009
Before then, players were usually in the locker room until after the performance
By KELLY MCLAUGHLIN
DAILYMAIL.COM
25 September 2017
Actor Jesse Williams has claimed that the NFL’s pregame national anthem ceremony is a government ‘scam’ designed to convince ‘boys and girls to fly overseas and kill people’.
Williams made his comments while speaking to MSNBC about football players kneeling during the pregame Star Spangled Banner performance to protest race inequality in the United States.
Williams, best known for his role on Grey’s Anatomy, said that NFL players started participating in the pregame national anthem in 2009 as a Defense Department military recruitment strategy.
‘[Saying] we need to stand and pledge for the allegiance and this anthem thing is a scam,’ Williams told host Thomas Roberts. ‘This is not a part of football.
‘[The pregame national anthem] was invented in 2009 from the government [by] paying the NFL to market military recruitment – to get more people to fight wars to die.
‘This is not – nothing to do with the NFL or the American pastime or tradition. This is to get boys and girls to go fly overseas and go kill people…
‘They’re marketing and pumping millions of dollars into the NFL to get us to put on a pageant in front of the NFL football games to get you to go off and fight.’
Williams was referencing a tactic called ‘paid patriotism’, which saw the National Guard and Defense Department spending taxpayer money on NFL promotions.
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