A torched police precinct, ransacked chain stores and small businesses, burning vehicles and tear gas – George Floyd protests will hardly go down in history as pacifist.
‘Cathartic Ritual’
Violence erupted in Minneapolis and elsewhere in the United States in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s death last Monday, but de-escalated this week, partly due to a strong response from federal and state law enforcement.
“At the beginning, there were some cars lit on fire here,” says California-based author and philosopher Jordan Shapiro. “But it’s important to remember that while that kind of destruction is bad, it also represents a kind of cathartic ritual, which is why we see the same behaviours at positive events, like when our sports teams have championship parades.
“There has also been some looting, but my sense is that this is done by bad folks who are using the chaos as an opportunity to steal, not by protesters.”
The US intelligence community also estimates that most of the violence at George Floyd protests has been driven by opportunists, according to internal documents seen by Reuters. There’s little evidence to suggest, despite claims from authorities, that extremists either from the right or from the left were to blame for it.
An obscured message
Footage of people breaking windows, storming into stores and setting buildings on fire has done a disservice to the black-led protest movement, although the vandals were not exclusively black.
A recent Morning Consult poll found that 95 percent of respondents have heard about looting (64 percent have heard a lot), and 73 percent think it is very important to protect private property.
Princeton political scientist Omar Wasow, who specialises in civil rights protests, says there’s evidence to suggest that protesters can earn the most sympathy when they act peacefully but encounter a violent police response.
At the same time, violence perpetrated by protesters, or those who blend in with them regardless of their attitude to the protest, is likely to lead to bad news coverage and overshadow their agenda.
One of the most vivid examples is an elderly black store owner whose business in Bronx was trashed and looted. “You told me Black Lives Matter. You lied,” she exclaimed while pointing to the rubble of what was once her store.
THEY DONT CARE ABOUT PEOPLE
— Terrence K. Williams (@w_terrence) June 2, 2020
This woman wants to know how can they say #BlackLivesMatter while ruining her black life & business.
She said “ You told me Black Lives Matter, you lied, you wanted to loot the store, you needed money, Get a Job, stop stealing”
*RT SHARE HER MESSAGE pic.twitter.com/pHKKSQmRgv
Many conservatives, like political analyst Paul Taylor, say that do not stand with the protesters as a result.
Taylor claims that Black Lives Matter, the decentralised campaign leading some of the demonstrations, is “the primary group fuelling the riots, competing with the peaceful protesters who want social change as well as have pent up frustrations and energy” from months-long self-isolation.
“I have a hard time respecting the protests due to the lack of true and correct information setting off emotional responses due to fake news channels driving their narratives and not facts,” he adds.
Everyone makes mistakes?
On the other side of the fence, Shapiro argues that “anytime you have so much tension building, some people are bound to lose their cool and make mistakes. During these protests, we’ve seen mistakes from all sides. Some people think vandalism helps, the majority don’t. Some people think professional agitation is useful, the majority don’t.”
He points out that what has been happening during the demonstrations, which sometimes turned into riots, its a “very raw, very human situation… but the actions of a few protesters, are not necessarily representative of the many.”
Some are concerned that authorities overstep their power in some cases, with news of police cars mowing down protesters and officers brutalising reporters, provoking a public backlash.
“Violence going on in the US for the last 10 days is mainly by police and what I believe are agents of the state, wanting peaceful demonstrators blamed as a pretext for possible martial law,” says independent journalist Stephen Lendman.
“The US already is a police state. Martial law would make it official, especially if Trump sends combat troops to US cities,” he says, referring to the president’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act. “What’s going on here feels like a Hollywood horror film but it’s real.”
