I am aghast at the way the MSM has been covering this.

I long await the day when these journalists and commentators themselves will ‘take the knee’ before us all -blacks, whites, and those of all colours -and acknowledge and atone for all the race baiting, grievance serving, tension escalating, liberal sanctimony they have foisted on the world from their solipsistic, uncomplicated, self righteous echo chambers.

I look forward also to the day when they acknowledge they have contributed nothing to making anything in all this any better for anyone whilst parading around on their handsome high horse of self regarding liberal idealism.

Those of us who insist still on due process, proper justice, thoughtful intervention, meaningful discussion are being abhorrently served at the moment by this bunch.

This abject self-abasement and stupidity by whites that we are seeing everywhere, internalizing self-hatred, will only fuel more grievance-mongering and racial-grifters looking to shakedown the “system” (the new ones make Jesse Jackson’s and Al Sharpton’s old shtick look tame). Even saying “All Lives Matter” is now deemed “racist”, because it doesn’t privilege the special claims being made by some blacks.

Look at how corporations and governments are already falling all-over themselves to show their”solidarity” donating money to BLM and other agitprop groups, etc. (I have quite the boycott list now). And already for years all one hears from all quarters in academia and corporate America are endless paeans to “diversity and inclusion” repeated like a mantra and identity politics made the focus of every single policy and issue. Apparently the “system” is so racist that it can’t get enough of the deification of all things black.

And everywhere we see utter unwillingness to look rationally at the claims being made by BLM and others (facts about black crime and crime rates, especially black-on-black crime, about police violence killing more whites each year than blacks, etc., etc.). Facts don’t matter to the Cathedral’s purveyors of the Narrative of America as nothing but a racist cesspit, where white cops allegedly go around all day looking for blacks to kill, and things are apparently as bad for blacks as in the days of slavery.

I’ve had it. I don’t even care anymore. Good riddance America. As the weak and timid responses of alleged leaders to riots and looting, and these abject white self-abasement videos making the rounds show, you aren’t even worth saving any longer. I just want to get out before it’s too late.

“Overcorrection” is no kind of correction. Doing injustice to a new group in no way corrects the wrongs done to individual members of another group. You cannot do better than be absolutely fair.

As always Douglas Murray has written a thoughtful article that explores the painful truth behind the “woke” outrage. I would like to add a few points:

1. The police man (and I bet I get no criticism from the protesters for using “man” not “person”!) concerned appears to be an equal opportunity thug. Mr Floyd is not the first person to die in his custody but the first one was white and there was no action taken
2. In 2019 there where 38 police officers shot and killed in the USA. There were 47 shot and killed in 2018. That leaves police officers fearful but it also means those who apply are not necessarily the type of people you want in the police. Those applying are more likely to enjoy confrontation rather than try and defuse it!
3. There are considerably more white people killed by police in USA than black.

George Floyd’s murder was an unquestionably horrific and clear cut case of police wrongdoing. The social issues that have been brought up as a result of it are however far from clear cut and simple issues. As a result, the public debate has so unequivocally shifted towards a binary, simplistic one-way race issue, that it is very hard to have a sensible rational discussion on the multiple underlying issues in play.

Douglas makes the point also – personally I have seen numerous otherwise sensible people in my own circles force the “right” way of thinking onto others and trying to shame any even mildly differing viewpoints.

Forcing concepts of ‘white privilege’ down the throats of everyone is not helpful for a variety of reasons. For one, treating any race as one amorphous coherent blob is idiotic. Secondly not everyone in the absurdly broad demographic ‘white’ are privileged. Telling people repeatedly to put up and shut up and check themselves is akin to going to a voting booth and picking Trump or Brexit for them. Wider than that, people of all backgrounds and creeds don’t like being told what to think and do. Thirdly, the vast majority of people are not racist idiots and conduct their lives in a generally normal fashion, treating people they meet on merit. They are also capable of recognising the differences between the US and UK, and that forcing a social and racial viewpoint that might make a modicum of sense across the Atlantic upon us is just baffling for the silent majority.

Another now overlooked aspect of the whole debacle is the US’s attitude to firearms. Ignoring, if possible for one moment, how long George Floyd was held down; how the hell is it normal for a police officer to have to restrain someone in such a manner? It’s because being a police officer in the US is dangerous, all due to citizens continued desire for the right to have weapons. Police have to treat every potential suspect as a mortal threat. Just to be 100% clear – shouldn’t need saying – this is not condoning of the actions in the George Floyd case whatsoever – but the question needs to be asked about how it became normalised for police to behave like sociopaths in the first place, and what pre-conditions led to a person going a fair few steps even further along that road.

I understand the reasoning behind firearm laws in US – at heart is the desire for freedom from oppression and the freedom to protect yourself from others (even the government if required). But from the outside it’s clear as day what that causes. The police and the population in the US are in a de facto arms race with each other. Regular bog-standard police in the US these days are kitted out in kit that looks like a Special Forces soldier’s Christmas wishlist. To most outsiders this is madness – and certainly not worth the social cost.

I don’t get on my knees for anyone or anything.
This is my “f… you ” moment.

This black guy was murdered by a white cop, after he held up a store and threatened to shoot the black pregnant lady who was tending the store in the stomach if she didn’t give him the money in the till.

What has it got to do with us? When was the last time a white cop in the UK murdered a black guy?
If people want to protest about race and racism and human rights, look at India, Brazil…or is this one of those #metoo moments where only the trendy right-on PC victims are recognised, irrespective of their criminality, but all the poor unrecognised victims can…eat cake?

Politicians in our free, democratic society are supposed to be, used to be, filters and moderators of extremes in society so all couid speak freely but their words, behaviour were fringe, not approved, not the norm.

The general public understood it was not accepted nor expected behaviour, and they could criticise it, reject it.

Now the political class are the instigators, or endorsers of a coalition of extremes, they encourage them, embrace them for political advantage and make them mainstream. Now the general population feels it had better keep quiet, just go along with it.

Douglas you say “no sane person would publicly declare ‘we must go backwards into that dark past'”….but that is precisely where BLM is rooted, in that dark anguished past. Until black people can unshackle themselves from their bonds of rage toward their white ‘oppressors’, they cannot move forward into that ‘bright future’. The longer they continue to keep that pain alive and kicking, the longer will that pain deepen the bondage, the enslavement of racial hatred. It is the law of Karma that if you hate your brother, whatever his or her colour, so shall you reap hatred in return. There is great beauty in a black or brown skin, but if that beauty does not also bear self pride and self love, it becomes lost, distorted and turns inwards upon itself.
And how does one achieve self love, self respect and self pride? Not by demanding of others that they ‘take the knee’….but by turning away from violence and reclaiming lost lives.

It is quite obvious that the mind frame of BLM and leftist politics have taken over and they command social media now. The Term “hegemony” coined by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci is correctly understood different from an understanding of majority rule.

Hegemony does not mean that certain people represent a majority, but that certain people control the channels and the rituals of communication and how ideological narratives are being structured. The left is a force of hegemony in all of social media, which dominate the cultural expressions of a majority of people world wide.

That’s neither good nor bad, just a fact. What is bad (and annoying) is another fact: while racism has been practically defeated as an ideology and socially excluded, the left wing hegemony which dominates the media and communication paints a picture of our societies as if it was a “Handmaid’s tale” or the slavery states of 1861. While the reality has improved the lives of millions the communication signals that we still live in an unbearable past.

It is possible that this is just a phase in which society comes to term with itself, but I doubt it. The Antifa thugs and the social justice warriors are doing all this to get their revolution and to achieve the destruction of Western civilisation to implement their utopian paradise of Gulags and re-education camps. The hegemony of the left in the internet is just the beginning. It will get worse.

Excellent essay Douglas. Keep up the good work.

According to one study in the US, you are nearly 5 times more likely to be shot by the police if you are known – or thought – to be carrying a firearm. Meanwhile, FBI data reveals that 80% of the black people killed by police are carrying a gun, and that proportion has increased as the number of black people killed has fallen.

These data say nothing about which group is more likely to be carrying a gun, or whether a black person when confronted by the police is more or less likely to be killed than a white person, whether carrying a gun or not.

They do say rather a lot, however, about the nature of what is being demanded. The proposition that people should be equally free to go about their business is both self-evidently true and one I care about. The proposition that people should be equally free to present a lethal threat to others (including the police) is one I care less about, no matter how true it may be, since the decision to carry a gun has disqualified the individual from my concern for his or her welfare.

There is still a monstrous injustice toward those who are killed by police who were neither causing offence nor carrying a lethal weapon. But I cannot support the BLM activist’s demands for their rights without also supporting the BLM activist’s demands for the rights of those who choose to carry guns and threaten others, and who outnumber the former 4:1. I have to find a way of supporting the rights of unarmed victims while rejecting the undiscriminating claims of the BLM activist.

So I will not “bend the knee”.

If you are going to disallow my post regarding a comedian who has apologised for his previous satirical work (which is in the news), then an email telling me why might be polite. I cannot see which rule I broke.

The more I see, the more I think that peaceful separation is going to be the only answer. Leftists are NEVER going to convince me to change my mind, and I haven’t any hope to ever change the mind of a leftist. I want to live in peace and harmony with my neighbors. I want to be with like-minded people. I refuse to live my life in a totalitarian socialist dystopia. What are the options? Separate, do it sooner than later!

Admirable article. Thank you, Douglas Murray.

And soon, when the pendulum swings back and over corrects which it has to – what will polite society being insisting black people do in order to take the knee and how will they feel about that.

The irony is that it’s the genuine white supremacists who want a race war. They must be watching this spectacle with little short of glee.

Douglas Murray is to be commended for these principled and well-reasoned observations.

Unherd – I cant seem to contact you in any other way….so please forgive this. Why do i have to keep signing in when I want to ‘read more’ of the comments? Perhaps you wont read this but I hope you would moderate my comment. DM goes to the heart of the matter in his usual dispassionate way. I am a retired police officer and the sight of policemen and women ‘taking the knee’ is depressing as well as cringe inducing. That police leaders now fudge the issue compounds the action. I consider Im well balanced, after the police ive been a barrister, prosecuting and defending for 25 years. But I imagine the sight of police ‘taking the knee’ as a result of instant crowd pressure or of media pressure or of confusion following lack of leadership will infuriate Herbert Gusset and his family as well as alt right groups fuming as to how to react. The pressure of the Emperor’s new threads has impacted 360 degrees so that now the one group who should remain neutral are now victims of the pressure.

Yes, from the Bible to Churchill, we’ve been fully forewarned:

“Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.”

Exodus 23: 2

“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”

Jesus (Matthew 7: 6)

“Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear greatly that the storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar ever more loudly, ever more widely.”

Winston Churchill

But the periodic urge for self-cleansing is again proving too strong to resist :

“We are a society that, every fifty years or so, is afflicted by some paroxysm of virtue”“an orgy of self-cleansing through which evil of one kind or another is cast out. From the witch-hunts of Salem to the communist hunts of the McCarthy era to the current shrill fixation on child abuse, there runs a common thread of moral hysteria. After the McCarthy era, people would ask: But how could it have happened? How could the presumption of innocence have been abandoned wholesale? How did large and powerful institutions acquiesce as congressional investigators ran roughshod over civil liberties”“all in the name of a war on communists? How was it possible to believe that subversives lurked behind every library door, in every radio station, that every two-bit actor who had belonged to the wrong political organization posed a threat to the nation’s security? Years from now people doubtless will ask the same questions about our present era”“a time when the most improbable charges of abuse find believers; when it is enough only to be accused by anonymous sources to be hauled off by investigators; a time when the hunt for child abusers has become a national pathology.”

Dorothy Rabinowitz

https://jcdurbant.wordpress…

Mr. Murray seems to think that the number of unarmed blacks `killed by police in the US is high enough to create “mood music” making an environment where the officer apprehending felon George Floyd felt emboldened. However, the officer and confreres were instead tone deaf.

Let us note that evidence as in US government crime stats and academic studies in even left wing institutions show:
-More whites than blacks per capita are shot by police. It’s the wrong race protesting.
-White officers are LESS likely to shoot at black suspects than are police of other races. This is hardly surprising as the white officer knows harming a black suspect can be career ending. One wonders whether that second’s hesitation has contributed to the next stat?
-Cops are 18X more likely to be shot by a black suspect than an unarmed black is to be shot by a cop.
-“Unarmed” doesn’t always mean not dangerous as the Michael Brown case demonstrated where he leaned into the officer’s car to grab at his firearm as proven by exhaustive investigation instigated by President Obama’s black Attorney General Holder.

-There are 700,000 police officers in America with tens of millions of contacts with the public, many with the criminal class. One or a handful of arrests gone wrong does not systemic racism make.

-Last but not least, Heather MacDonald in her lectures and book “The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe” makes the point that police are the institution that SAVE the most innocent black lives. (Blacks at 13% of the population commit half of homicides and 93% of black victims numbering over 4000 per year including children are murdered by other blacks).

Blacks who actually care to save black lives should find means to curtail black on black killings numbering in the tens of thousands per year and stop pretending that police are the problem when they are in fact a proven defense for law abiding blacks. Anywhere proactive policing is successfully pushed back by the marxist Black Lives Matter Movement, the homicide rate goes up, especially among blacks. It’s the “Ferguson effect” seen in Baltimore and now Minneapolis, Chicago and NYC.