Leftists Working Overtime to Frame the Narrative on George Floyd Riots
(Christopher Paslay) In 1989, District of Columbia Mayor Marion Barry, Jr. insisted that his city was basically crime-free except for all the murder. “Except for the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country,” he told a luncheon audience at the National Press Club.
On May 28, MSNBC reporter Ali Velshi said something just as mind-bogglingly absurd. As violent riots erupted in sections of Minneapolis over the death of George Floyd, Velshi insisted that the protests were basically peaceful.
“I wanna be clear on how I characterize this,” Velshi said, as buildings literally burned to the ground in the background of the broadcast. “This is mostly a protest. It is not, it is not, generally speaking, unruly.”
It’s interesting to watch Velshi struggle to find the words to shape the narrative he’s trying so desperately to tell: that the violence and upheaval unfolding around him aren’t really happening. That the burning buildings are somehow not indicative of what is really taking place on the ground. That the whole scene is really just a peaceful protest, so please don’t misinterpret the fires, the destruction and evacuation of Minneapolis’s 3rd police precinct, the vandalism of police vehicles, and the looting of the Target and arson of the AutoZone as “unruly.”
According to the Saint Paul Police Department, more than 170 businesses were damaged or looted that night, and there were dozens of fires.
Liberals are so obsessed with controlling the narrative on race, so immersed in their own self-serving propaganda, that they actually believe that society is going to accept their bald-faced lies over reality itself — over the television footage of the destruction, over the police reports documenting the property damage, over the cries from governors and mayors urging citizens to please stop the looting and rioting.
Vox recently published an article by Morgan State University professor Jason Johnson titled “What we’re missing when we condemn ‘violence’ at protests,” which attempted to discount reality and explain away what our own eyeballs are seeing when we view the footage of the George Floyd protests unfolding across the country. Johnson insisted that these seemingly violent events are simply the result of a sensational news media establishment. “In reality, these protests are usually not completely consumed with chaos,” he wrote. “Nighttime coverage will seldom show a full city map demonstrating that, two blocks over from a street that looks like a ‘city engulfed in flames,’ there’s a CVS still open for business.”
And who is responsible for these fires? The police, of course. “[M]uch of the property damage attributed to protesters is often the result of police action or inaction in the face of lawful public behavior,” Johnson stated, explaining that “police munitions often start fires at protests.”
Johnson also pointed out how the media fail to separate peaceful protesters from rioters, who really can’t help binging on stolen goods. Because the police “are so occupied harassing and corralling peaceful protesters and the streets are filled with smoke, it’s pretty easy to break into a Verizon store, a beauty shop, or a grocery store and take what you want.”
The authentic protester, on the other hand, has a legitimate reason to destroy property. “For protesters who are angry about violent, unaccountable police in Minneapolis, overtaking and burning down the Third Police Precinct is a specific act of revolt,” Johnson stated. “This is a fundamentally different action than using the chaos from two blocks over to raid a liquor store.”
Johnson concluded his Vox article by forwarding the latest dose of racial grievance propaganda, which is the notion that police have been responding to black protesters with an unwarranted use of force while dealing ever-so-kindly with armed white protesters speaking out against the lockdowns.
CNN peddled this same nonsense with a recent article headlined “The protest pictures alone tell the story of America’s racial hierarchy,” which used selectively edited pictures to suggest that callous white cops were needlessly throwing tear gas at innocent black teens for protesting peacefully, while dangerous white protesters were left alone by police at the Michigan State Capitol, despite the fact they were putting everyone in danger by carrying long guns and refusing to social distance and wear masks.
This narrative is a lie — and the captions under the CNN pictures revealed the truth for anyone who wanted to look past the misleading headline to the fine print. Cops were throwing tear gas not at innocent black teens peacefully protesting the death of George Floyd on a quiet Minneapolis street, but because rioters had first vandalized, and then burned down, the Third Police Precinct. Likewise, police stood down at the Michigan Capitol not because the protesters were white or conservative, but because they weren’t breaking any laws. In fact, the contrast between the George Floyd protests erupting in big cities across America and those protests against the lockdowns happening at state capitols couldn’t be more stark.
The George Floyd protests have been marred by outrageous acts of violence and destruction — so much so that governors have declared states of emergency and have called in the National Guard. All manner of businesses have been looted, vandalized, and set ablaze. As reported in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, “Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms had a blunt message to protesters who turned the streets of downtown Atlanta into scenes of violence and destruction late Friday: “Go home.'”
In New York, according to Fox5, “[m]ore than 200 people were arrested, including one person who faces attempted murder charges for throwing a lighted Molotov cocktail into a marked police vehicle that four officers were inside. Many NYPD officers were injured in different incidents during the protests.”
And the lockdown protests at the various state capitols? Besides a few rogue militants legally carrying weapons (who broke no laws and started no trouble), the biggest transgression these people committed was not wearing masks and properly social distancing, which prompted Democratic congressional candidate Ryan Farrar to respond by wishing the protesters would die of COVID-19. There was no documented violence at these protests, or property damage, or attempted murder. No looting of department stores, vandalizing of police stations, or throwing of bottles and trashcans at police, which unfortunately cannot be said of the George Floyd protests breaking out across America. Perhaps this is why police didn’t don riot gear and launch tear gas?
Not that liberal journalists care about truth or accuracy of information. Leftist media outlets, like CNN and MSNBC, care only about forwarding a political narrative of racial grievance and unrest, and will do so even if it involves Soviet-style propaganda and the telling of bald-faced lies.
MSNBC host Joy Reid is a bald-faced liar, and she recently proceeded to tell a bald-faced lie on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes:
And it’s the same thing with these armed white men who can get armed up and walk into a state capitol and that’s okay. And the police are benign. They don’t even act afraid. But let black people show up and protest the death of an innocent black man and suddenly, you know what, we need tear gas. We’ve got to go full force.
Yep. That’s it exactly, Joy. The tear gas wasn’t for the rioters vandalizing police stations and burning down buildings, but for the black teens peacefully protesting. Uh-huh. And Washington, D.C. is the safest city in America.
