Author Topic: Stop pretending the BLM protests were peaceful  (Read 371 times)

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Offline Ptarmigan

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Stop pretending the BLM protests were peaceful
« on: July 18, 2020, 10:43:51 AM »
Stop pretending the BLM protests were peaceful
https://unherd.com/2020/07/the-ugly-truth-about-the-blm-protests/

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Having spent the past month traveling around the United States — from major cities to the countryside — the scale of the ‘movement’ which erupted in late May after the death of George Floyd is almost incomprehensible. According to the New York Times, which relays their finding with obvious excitement, the ‘movement’ (its precise contours seldom defined) “may be the largest” in U.S. history.

That is certainly plausible. In which case, it would presumably be important to document how ordinary Americans, especially those most directly affected, perceive the “movement” in question.

Scan almost any of the popular media coverage over the past six weeks and you’ll find that journalists have been steadfast in their depiction of “protesters” as unassailably “peaceful.” While the vast majority of those who attended a state-backed demonstration or some other event spurred by the ‘movement’ are unlikely to have committed any acts of physical destruction, the term “peaceful protest” doesn’t seem to quite capture the impact of a society-wide upheaval that included, as a key component, mass riots — the magnitude of which have not been seen in the U.S. since at least the 1960s.

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.

The riots have done a lot of damage. Riots have lasting economic impact.

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In Milwaukee, a man described being chased down by rioters after getting off the bus on his way home from work. He saw no difference between protesters and rioters; the flippant idea that these groups can be so neatly disentangled is wrong.

This view is just as likely to be espoused by black people and other minorities as anyone else (the Milwaukee man was black), which renders the media’s strident insistence to depict the ‘movement’ as entirely peaceful incongruous with the perceptions of working-class Americans (of all races). So many of them experienced what transpired more as a painful tragedy than any kind of wondrous harmony.

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’.

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.
« Last Edit: July 18, 2020, 10:46:27 AM by Ptarmigan »
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Offline Ptarmigan

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Re: Stop pretending the BLM protests were peaceful
« Reply #1 on: July 18, 2020, 10:44:41 AM »
Economically, riots endure
https://www.marketplace.org/2020/06/01/riots-lasting-economic-impact/

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Many American cities experienced some form of violent upheaval over the weekend. In Minnesota’s Twin Cities, at least 270 businesses were vandalized, looted or damaged. Miami, Eugene, Oregon, Los Angeles and Santa Monica, California, all suffered instances of looting and destruction. Communities take a long time to heal from these kinds of events.

Anthony’s Pipe & Cigar Lounge is on West Lake Street in Minneapolis. Tom Harlan runs it, and he’s been doing business there for 35 years.

“They broke all my cabinets. Everything was shattered. They broke my humidor. They broke into the office, broke my safe [and] blew up one of my security cameras,” Harlan said. “They even took the plywood off the barbershop across the street and broke the glass and went in there.”

Riots have a detrimental affect on the economy.

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History might agree.

Victor Matheson, professor of economics at College of the Holy Cross, looked back at the Rodney King riots, which happened in L.A. in 1992.

“Economic activity in the areas affected didn’t return for at least 10 years,” Matheson said. At least not to previous levels. He said those riots cost almost $5 billion in economic activity measured in lost sales over 10 years. “If people don’t feel safe where their businesses are, then they don’t feel a need to rebuild.”

Matheson and his colleague at Holy Cross, Rob Baumann, compared the economic recovery from the L.A. riots with the recovery from Hurricane Andrew in Miami, which happened the same year. Miami, Matheson said, “recovered a heck of a lot faster.”
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
-Napoleon Bonaparte

Allow enemies their space to hate; they will destroy themselves in the process.
-Lisa Du