"Peaceful" Protests
Michael Tracey writes at UnHerd that we should stop pretending the BLM protests were peaceful. He asks whether journalists are "deliberately ignoring the effects of these devastating riots?"
From large metro areas like Chicago and Minneapolis/St. Paul, to small and mid-sized cities like Fort Wayne, Indiana and Green Bay, Wisconsin, the number of boarded up, damaged or destroyed buildings I have personally observed -- commercial, civic, and residential -- is staggering. Keeping exact count is impossible. One might think that a major media organisation such as the New York Times would use some of their galactic journalistic resources to tally up the wreckage for posterity. But roughly six weeks later, and such a tally is still nowhere to be found.A standard retort one often hears is that "the riots" must not be conflated with "the protests," which is technically accurate in certain contexts. But the distinction is not as obvious as the media like to make out. In many locations, police and fire services were diverted to accommodate these massive protests, which in turn created a vacuum that enabled the outbreak of riotous activity. As one resident of Minneapolis explained to me, emergency services told him that they would simply be unavailable during the weekend of 29-31 May, while other locals recounted with amazement that police were totally absent as their neighbourhoods burned.
...Indeed, the resulting destruction may have set their majority-minority neighbourhoods back economically for months or years, if not longer. Most had already been struggling due to the pandemic, with the riots interrupting fragile reopening plans. To exclude the perspectives of these people from popular media narratives amounts to a kind of purposefully obfuscatory, moralising snobbery. Talk about 'erasure'.
...Flora Westbrooks of Minneapolis, whose hair salon was burned down, was likewise convinced that the perpetrators could not have possibly been familiar with the neighbourhood given her longstanding community ties there. The theory might be a tad over-simplistic, but it does seem at least partially accurate. A (white) rioter I interviewed, who was present when the Third Police Precinct building in Minneapolis burned, remarked to me that he found himself in jail alongside people who came from as far as Missouri, Florida, Colorado, California and other distant states. He said they ventured to Minnesota out of a mixture of thrill-seeking and inchoate political grievance.
...So why, exactly, has the scope of these riots been so assiduously downplayed, and the opinions of those who experienced them first-hand been largely ignored? A number of potential explanations ring true. For one, media elites desperately do not want to undermine the moral legitimacy of a 'movement' that they have cast as presumptively righteous. And highlighting that urban minority populations are generally less enthusiastic about a movement whose mantra is "Black Lives Matter" would be embarrassing for obvious reasons.
There's also the barely-hidden fear that properly depicting the after-effects of these riots would somehow "help Trump" during an election year. Even if it could be established as true that reporting on a historically significant event would "help" the incumbent president, refraining from such reportage on that ground would obviously be wildly improper from a journalistic perspective.
We've entered a post-truth era, where ideology triumphs over facts or the standard journalistic mission to report the facts (rather than ignoring or skewing them).
“We've entered a post-truth era, where ideology triumphs over facts or the standard journalistic mission to report the facts (rather than ignoring or skewing them)”
They do it because it achieves their ends. You are either wasting your vote third party or voting for Biden, correct?
It worked in 2008, worked in 2012, almost worked in 2016. Now they have doubled down in 2020.
Isab at July 17, 2020 5:16 AM
It's been pretty well established that the protests and rioting are coordinated, and likely with the involvement of local governments, or at least key officials.
You don't have 'spontaneous' rioting in 30+ cities (incl. international) simultaneously involving two distinct organizational networks employing joint tactics and messaging consistently in all of those locations. And Progressive politicians don't just happen to have drafted enabling policies concerning police and emergency services, arrests, incarcerations, pardons etc. beforehand for no reason. Nor do they have legislative actions ready that just happen to match those on the agenda of the spontaneous protesters.
This is why the media has been so anxious to squash any criticism or even skepticism about what's happening. It's obviously being orchestrated.
BTW the rioting and 'protests' are still going on, they're just not receiving coverage. But now they've moved onto burning churches and religious statuary, just like Sean King told them to.
Martin at July 17, 2020 6:55 AM
Now is the time for all of us living in cities to ask hard questions of every candidate for mayor, city council, and police chief/sheriff about exactly how they intend to prevent this from happening again. Anyone who doesn't intend to crack down hard (and any incumbent who isn't doing exactly that now) needs to go away as a danger to the public.
And if the right kind of majority isn't elected? Time to move to rural America.
Because our lives and our homes will always matter more than thugs' lives.
jdgalt at July 17, 2020 7:44 AM
He asks whether journalists are "deliberately ignoring the effects of these devastating riots?"
Ha ha ha! You don't remember the reporter standing in front of a burning building talking about how peaceful the protests are? Of course they are intentionally ignoring the violence.
Ben at July 17, 2020 7:46 AM
It's impossible to get to the truth when narrative, not facts, drive the inquiry.
"The Western world, at least since the Enlightenment, was built on evidence-based argument. But in the last quarter of the twentieth century, Enlightenment ideals were undermined by postmodernism, with its shift to “narrative” as the source of meaning — an invitation to fraud." ~ Fred Siegel
Conan the Grammarian at July 17, 2020 8:39 AM
You might think that local politicians would be reluctant to let rioters burn down the homes and businesses of the electorate but here we are.
This inchoherent rage is very dangerous. The rioters mostly do not have a real political agenda, they just want to destroy. For the Left to ally themselves with people who just want to destroy is very crazy. How do we know that is what they want? They are tearing down statues of abolitionists and elk and Mary, burning black businesses and their own community center and low-income housing. They are attacking Target that provides jobs and low-cost goods. Does that sound like an agenda?
cc at July 17, 2020 9:04 AM
To ask is to answer. Martin brings up a good point of at least some coordination with government executives.
Remember when we couldn't congregate in groups larger than 10 OR ELSE? suddenly, protests were exempt from that. And at least in NYC, they're back to OR ELSE portion of gatherings.
I suspect Bill deCommie would send in the NYPD to bust heads if Hasidic Jews "protested" all the way to their synagogues.
We see Wheeler in Portland and the Oregon Governor complaining about Federal cops busting people. Query for both of those worthies: what is your primary job? and why are you looking the other way?
I R A Darth Aggie at July 17, 2020 9:10 AM
>> You might think that local politicians would be reluctant to let rioters burn down the homes and businesses of the electorate
I have the suspicion we're seeing a sort of 'block busting' - they're deliberately trying to scare away middle class families and individuals. Community activists in Minneapolis and New York have wondered the same online. That would reduce property costs in 'gentrified' areas as well as the fiscal burden on schools, services etc..
Martin at July 17, 2020 9:18 AM
CC asks: "How do we know that is what they want? They are tearing down statues of abolitionists and elk and Mary, burning black businesses and their own community center and low-income housing. They are attacking Target that provides jobs and low-cost goods. Does that sound like an agenda?"
It is exactly their agenda. Their agenda is to sow confusion and terror. Their agenda is to foment as much social unrest and enmity between citizens as possible. Their agenda is to cause everyday Americans to think that this movement is huge and to think that everything they rely on is precarious. It's classic political terrorism and revolutionary action.
RigelDog at July 17, 2020 10:24 AM
An objective of early twentieth century anarchist violence was to stir up as much fear and confusion as possible - to cause people to lose faith in the existing order's ability to maintain order and overthrow it.
Those early anarchists believed they'd be able to implement a self-constituted and self-regulated social order on the smoldering wreckage of the old order.
A similar delusion seems to be at work here.
Conan the Grammarian at July 17, 2020 11:33 AM
Well, there are a number of layers to this. What the leaders want and what the foot-soldiers want are not necessarily the same. Not to mention middle management. These are not truly unified organizations with one purpose. And that is intentional. If you don't know who the leaders are you can't hold them accountable.
Ben at July 17, 2020 12:41 PM
>> What the leaders want and what the foot-soldiers want are not necessarily the same.
I think you're probably right. But the they've got to wonder why the powers that be are bending over backwards to support them.
Martin at July 17, 2020 4:12 PM
The important thing to remember is that since it's on TV and Twitter it's all true.
On the other hand she wore a glove.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 17, 2020 4:54 PM
Many of the foot-soldiers aren't the thoughtful types. They are tearing down statues of abolitionists and black war heroes in the name of fighting white supremacist. Considering the big picture isn't something they are interested in. If it was you wouldn't have white guys in masks burning down black owned businesses in the name of fighting white supremacism. So the powers that be blatantly helping them doesn't even register. There is enough cognitive dissonance in just their own actions to drown out anything else.
Ben at July 17, 2020 8:24 PM
Leave a comment