Black Lives Matter: The Fake Outrage
Tags: BlackLivesMatter, War, Blm, Trump, Violence

By Jt Dowd

Along with Covid-19, the Black Lives Matter movement dominated the news cycle throughout the summer, most news outlets reporting specifically on the riots that ensued. Not because peaceful protests were shrouded by an overwhelming surge of riots, but because violence makes for good television. The right-wing and neoliberal news outlets want clicks, not the truth. They want to manufacture a narrative that, at best, makes left-wing activism seem scary instead of defiant. And I don’t blame people for seeing the movement as a violent insurgency. If I spent my day in the Fox News echo chamber 24/7 I would surely be punching down, because that is exactly what they want. And it worked, if you’ve been in right-wing media circles or have an Instagram account, you’ve probably seen videos of “violent protesters” (which is an oxymoron) destroying small businesses or throwing water bottles at police officers, saying things like: “I don’t like that your colleagues murdered someone and got away with it”. These violent Antifa terrorists sure do sound terrifying right? They’re probably ready to knock down your door right now! But let’s pause for a moment and think about how often this happens. Is BLM a front for extremism and violence? Or is the right just a front for obsequious contrarians?

In their report: Countering Violent Extremism — Actions Needed to Define Strategy and Assess Progress of Federal Effort, the United States Accountability Office States that “Since September 12, 2001, the number of fatalities caused by domestic violent extremists has ranged from 1 to 49 in a given year. As shown in figure 2, fatalities resulting from attacks by far right-wing violent extremists have exceeded those caused by radical Islamist violent extremists in 10 of the 15 years, and were the same in 3 of the years since September 12, 2001. Of the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001, far right-wing violent extremist groups were responsible for 62 (73 percent) while radical Islamist violent extremists were responsible for 23 (27 percent).”

“Each circle or octagon represents a single attack with the size measuring the number of fatalities. The ECDB isa database that includes information on publicly known violent crimes committed in the United States by radical Islamist violent extremists, the violent far right, and far left violent extremists from 1990 through 2015” — GAO (April 2017)

Now, there are a lot of things we can conclude from this piece of data. If you were a boring liberal you’d take this and blow it way out of proportion, claiming that right-wingers are the real terrorists. And technically if we’re going by sheer numbers you would be correct, the right does partake in violent extremism more often, regardless of what Ben Shapiro has to say about it. But I am not going to extrapolate that to all members of the right. Nor should I because that would be an unfair generalization. What we can conclude from this data piece however, is that the right demonstrated a lack of character over the summer. They failed to acknowledge the violence on their side and left them in no position to criticize the left. If you’re going to ignore extremism in your party, then you cannot pretend to care about violence. No, what you care about is masqueraded decorum. Not to say the left isn’t violent (of course they are, even Mormons can be violent) but in definitive reality, the Black Lives Matter movement has produced a disproportionate amount of non-violent protests, and reactionaries fail to acknowledge this obvious fact.

All movements have violent members, Including the civil rights movement of the 1960s which surprisingly did have its moments of violence, and both have been criticized by nearly half the country for that very nature of unrest. One of the most jarring moments of the civil rights movement came after King’s Birmingham jail letter. Movement organizers called upon and assembled black children to march through the streets to confront the police, to which they were met with a barrage of german shepherds and baton-wielding policemen, resulting in the arrest of at least one hundred children. This may come as a surprise but this was King’s strategy all along, not so peaceful, right? The books we’ve read about him in school may deem him as an unadulterated bringer of peace, but that is a cover-up to set some kind of fake example for the lower class. We hid this side of King not to embellish him, but to hide the idea that unrest is exactly what this country needs. But of course, no sane individual would ever criticize the civil rights movement today, most people see it as a universal good. So what’s the difference? The ACLED and The US Crisis monitor — a joint project between the ACLED and the Bridging Divides initiative collected real-time data on the Black Lives Matter movement. Between 26 May, the day after Floyd’s death, and the 22nd of August, the ACLED recorded over 10,600 demonstrations linked to the BLM movement across the country. Over 10,100 of these involved peaceful protests. It is an undisputed fact that the overwhelming majority of these protests — 93% to be exact — were peaceful. (you can also read an extended report which overviews the protests in more detail here) Yet despite all the evidence and data pointing in that direction, one poll found that 42% of Americans believed that most protesters associated with the BLM movement were trying to incite violence or destroy property.

This blatant mischaracterization of the movement can be blamed on mainstream media, specifically Fox News, which had such a hard time finding new examples of rioting during the summer that they had to use prior B-roll footage from protests weeks before their report. One instance caught Fox News publishing a photoshopped image featuring a man carrying a rifle in front of a smashed retail storefront:

The image combines scenes from June 10th from Capitol Hill and two May 30 images from downtown by Karen Ducey. This is a real image from Fox News. They used this. To report stuff.

The photo was spliced together from different days, ranging from June 10th to May 30th (Thanks Getty Images). Another altered image showed a sign which appeared to say “you are now entering Free Cap Hill”:

ORIGINAL IMAGE [June 10th] this image shows a sign on a barrier at the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ). It was one of several digitally manipulated images published by Fox News. (Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)

Fox News never announced that the images had been altered when they reported on them and had them removed days later, before issuing a much-needed apology. But why would they need to use photoshop if CHAZ, Antifa, and BLM had supposedly laid waste to the city? These protests were happening everyday according to them so why fabricate images when you could just walk out your front door and see it. The answer is Fox News was just using anecdotal evidence and extrapolating that to the entire demonstration like any good news outlet would.

But the network’s mistakes and misleading coverage became a political flashpoint for conservatives nationally and a target of Trump’s Twitter account (which should be taken away from him immediately before his diaper gets full). He branded Antifa as a “terrorist organization”, and despite them having never killed anybody, not having a leader, and not even being an actual organization, Trump still threatened to deploy the US military to stop them, Invoking the Insurrection act, which was used to quash slave rebellions. Fun!

And the almighty Ted Cruz stepped up to the plate and introduced a GOP-sponsored bill that used “terrorism” and “left-wing activism” interchangeably. Here’s an idea: How about instead of punching down and sledging people who have no power, we actually punch upwards first and focus on the horrendous ventures of people who can actually change things. If you find yourself being mad at the poor, chances are you’ve never been poor. if you really want to discuss “looting” how about we shift our attention towards the fact that the Federal reserve lent a trillion dollars a day to large banks while millions of Americans slipped into poverty. Or how about the fact that Boeing received 17 billion dollars in federal bailout money and still laid off thousands of workers. Hey, maybe put those people in prison before you start beating someone for jaywalking.

I think the evidence speaks for itself; Black Lives Matter, whether you agree with the message or not, initiated protests that were rather innocuous but seen by many as out of control and barbaric. And I’m not surprised either, I sympathize with people who only listen to Ben Shapiro and watch Tucker Carlson. But we need to pull our heads out of the sand. It’s so easy to paint a caricature of a political group you don’t like as an “insurgency” or a “violent uprising” because they’re speaking truth to a power that you feel deferential towards. Every political movement has had violent members — every human has had violent thoughts, but don’t take those small examples of malice and reduce every good intention into nothing because someone made the wrong choice. If you don’t support BLM because it’s “violent”, then don’t support anything and climb back into your TV.