Some commentary on the riots in the US. People seem to be frightened to call these people out because they might be accused of racism. It is not racist to resist nihilistic madmen.

My understanding of what took place is that that this chap Floyd commits some crime, gets arrested, resists arrest, is held down in a dangerously illegal way and dies. Autopsy says there were other factors in his death but still, we can all accept that in some important sense the cop well-exceeded permissible limits. So he should be suspended, prosecuted and if convicted jailed. No element in this story seems about the fact that George Floyd was black and the police were white. And then there are riots and looting, and the most interesting part of the scenes of looting is that not one of the looters appeared to be even slightly in fear of their lives, or even in fear of being arrested. What’s the plan going forward? To forbid a black person to be arrested by the police? To allow mobs to burn your cities down? What principle of justice follows from any of this that should now be introduced that wasn’t there before?

The first of these excerpts is from The Other McCain.

 

Rioting across the nation leaves
cities reeling as hundreds arrested,
National Guard called in,
businesses damaged and at least 3 dead

pretext (noun) — a reason given in justification of a course of action that is not the real reason.

Watching city after city go up in flames — stores looted, innocent people attacked, arsonists and criminals running wild — I had difficulty thinking: “What do I want to write about this?”

The first and most obvious thing is that this spree of criminal actity had nothing at all to do with what happened to George Floyd. People ransacking stores in Los Angeles, brutalizing people in Dallas and setting fire to City Hall in Nashville were not “protesting” against a violation of civil rights. The businesses and institutions targeted by these criminals had nothing to do with what police officers did in Minneapolis.

“Let’s loot a liquor store, because social justice!”

George Floyd’s death was not a reason for these riots, it was a pretext.

Hateful people do not need a reason to hate. Destructive people do not need a reason to destroy. They just need a pretext. Some people in the media want us to believe that rioters are like werewolves; they are normal, law-abiding citizens until the full moon rises — or there is a “racial incident” — and then they magically transform into monsters.

The second is from Culture Watch.

Most folk are aware of the tragic death of George Floyd that happened nearly a week ago in Minnesota. The 46yo African-American man was arrested by police but died soon afterwards while in custody. Since then rioting in American cities has been taking place.

It is hoped that all the facts and details of his death will fully come out in a court of law, and justice will prevail – for everyone involved. So that aspect of the case I will not comment on here. But I can discuss the rioting that has ensued – first in Minneapolis and now in numerous other American cities.

It is one thing to have a peaceful protest over perceived injustice, possible racism, or what might be police overreaction. But rioting, looting, arson attacks, and assaults on police and innocent bystanders is NOT the appropriate response. That is domestic terrorism, not protesting. Michael Brendan Dougherty puts it this way:

We must distinguish rioting and looting from protesting. People do not loot seeking justice for George Floyd, they loot for the loot. People don’t commit arson to make a political statement. What does burning an AutoZone even communicate if it could be translated into politics? People don’t assault those citizens standing in the way of looting and arson as a cry for help or to draw attention to social problems, they do so because looting and arson offer satisfactions to a reprobate will. www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/anger-is-justified-riots-never-are/

And as is also so often the case, we have the usual rent-a-crowd activists involved. Militants from interstate are happy to show up and foment trouble and violence. As US Attorney General Bill Barr said:

Groups of outside radicals and agitators are exploiting the situation to pursue their own separate and violent agenda. In many places, it appears the violence is planned, organized, and driven by anarchistic and far-left extremists, using Antifa-like tactics, many of whom travel from out of state to promote the violence. We must have law and order on our streets and in our communities, and it is the responsibility of the local and state leadership, in the first instance, to halt this violence. www.theblaze.com/news/ag-barr-riots-far-left-antifa

Or as Dominic Green puts it:

There is no right to burn down your neighborhood, but it’s always an option. Freedom means choice, and real freedom must include the choice of self-destruction — but not destroying someone else’s neighborhood. Especially not when the neighborhood is mostly black and poor. That is what the privileged whites of antifa are doing by instigating disorder and destruction in Minneapolis’s 3rd precinct and elsewhere. ‘Every single person we arrested last night, I’m told, was from out of state,’ says Melvin Carter, Mayor of St Paul. Cost-free kicks at black people’s expense: the height of white privilege. spectator.us/antifa-white-privilege-race-minneapolis/

Indeed, as is so often the case in these sorts of situations, the radical left, including groups like Antifa, are more than happy to exploit these incidents for their own ends. And their ends usually entail the same old thing: the dismantling of America. So much of the rioting is based on the same old motivations: hatred of America, hatred of Trump, hatred of police, hatred of whites, and so on.