Which seems prophetic, if that’s not the wrong word.
This was followed after the war by Norman Cohn’s The Pursuit of the Millennium, a book that was talked about a fair bit as last summer dragged on. Cohn looked at various millennial Christian movements that had sprung up during the late medieval era and following the Reformation, his historical account having one eye on the tragedy that had just hit Europe. Most of the movements Cohn described shared certain characteristics, including a veneration of the poor and hatred of the rich, a belief in the inevitability of a future earthy paradise — “the Third Age” — and a division of the world into good and evil.
“These people could be regarded as remote precursors of Bakunin and of Nietzsche” and the “armed bohemians of National Socialism”, he wrote of one such group, the Brethren of the Free Spirit.
The Brethren believed in “a quasi-mystical anarchism — an affirmation of freedom so reckless and unqualified that it amounted to a total denial of every kind of restraint and limitation”. In order to come closer to God, they first had to engage in group sex and surprisingly the group didn’t have much trouble attracting recruits, until the Church cracked down on them.
More disturbing were the Flagellants, large groups of people who would proceed from town to town and whip themselves into an agonised, bloody fury, accompanied by weeping crowds. The flagellation movement had started in Italy in the 1260s, during a period of great stress, with an epidemic and a civil war, but over the decades had been taken up by the Germans, who made it far more extreme and violent, and also adding uniforms.
When the Black Death struck in 1348, it led to huge Flagellant processions and hysterical scenes wherever they went. But on top of spreading the disease, the group soon turned violent, possessing an angry, quasi-revolutionary element and a hatred of clerics, the rich and, most of all, Jews. Horrific pogroms followed, despite the Pope’s condemnations.
The Flaggelants had spread all over Germany, France and the Low Countries although strangely it never took off in England; a group arrived in London where they set up shop outside St Paul’s, proceeded to whip themselves and cry… and were met with stony, embarrassed silence. They soon left. The Flaggelants were eventually suppressed by the Church — bizarrely, its leaders were taken to Rome and publicly beaten, which surely can’t have been a terrible punishment.
The period culminated in the most extreme event of all, the Münster rebellion of 1534-5, when a group of Anabaptists created their own proto-communist paradise. It ended — incredibly! — with mass murder. The Münster rebels believed in equality, a dream of many Christian cults and one which in Cohn’s lifetime had also led to millions of deaths. It is an unachievable goal, but it still inspires believers today, even if the focus has moved from the individual to the group.
The leader of the Münster rebellion was an actor, a reliable force for evil throughout history. He had used the moral anarchy of the Reformation to charm, bully and sexually exploit — also a characteristic of cults throughout the ages, and one that distinguishes them from religions (a fuzzy difference at times). The political cults of today often have similar psychological dynamics.
Cult members are expected to give everything, body and soul, and this means keeping away from non-believing friends, and even denouncing family members who oppose the cult’s goals. One of the most disturbing trends of 2020 were videos of teenagers denouncing older family members for their racism or “white supremacy”. One teenager crowed on social media when her mother was punched at the Capitol for her opposition to BLM.
There were echoes of Soviet Russia and Mao’s China, both of which encouraged young people to denounce anti-communist family members. Many of the children who did so then suffered psychological traumas in later life as the enormity of what they had done dawned on them. But, then, the lure of peer popularity is incredibly strong with adolescents.
Cults enable bullying to flourish, endorsed by the ideology. Being a vehement believer in a cause, locked against powerful and malignant outside forces, is the perfect vehicle for anyone with sadistic or even violent tendencies; it has been seen throughout history, and it is quite obviously on display in many of the social justice causes of recent years.
We live in an age of changing social mores, and the speed of moral change was illustrated last year by the warnings Sky Cinema issued about old films reflecting the different social values of the year they were made in. One of the movies featuring this warning, a remake of Aladdin starring Will Smith, was made in…. 2019.
This kind of moral confusion is the perfect environment for bullies and sadists because it is far easier for people to be punished for using the wrong language, or having the wrong opinions, and for many it is a ruthless competition to reach the top. Most of the nastiness is mercifully online, but we had a taste of the medieval at one point when a latter-day mini-Münster — the CHOP — sprang up in Seattle.
The victims of that utopian experiment, not being part of the litany of the saints, have been largely forgotten, but the underlying violent energies of the social justice movement shouldn’t be. George Floyd the man is dead, and his family have received the justice they deserve, but George Floyd the icon will live on, a powerful symbol for the faithful as they strive to build a third age of racial equality.
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SubscribeUgh.
Finger down throat.
Yeeeech.
If Pelosi says it, or even thinks it, that’s enough to make me go ‘yeeeech’. The woman is a disgrace.
When I think of Nancy Pelosi, the words “rancid” and “hag” spring to mind.
Informative and amusing article. I particularly liked the bit about the flagellants attempting to setup shop in Britain being met by embarrassing silence. Reminds me of the good old days when we didn’t use to fall for imported cultish behaviour.
Like dancing mania (my favourite) one instance of which presumably led to the hopping procession at Echternach, Luxembourg, which still happens.
Actually that was a troup of comic entertainers, not sincere flagellants. Precursor of Monty Python.
Yes, the locals didn’t even organise a “whip round” for them in those days!
He appears to have been the commonest of criminals, wholly unremarkable except for his misogyny.
There used to be a ‘Judge Judy’ video clip of him at the age of 16, in front of her for car theft.
The circumstances of his demise come as no surprise.
Poor George he’ could have been a contender’. His teacher said he wanted to be a supreme judge while at school-and it seems he did appear in front of a lot of judges.A legal adviser sobbed ‘ I am so relieved that this is what justice finally looks like for my community’.Strange I don’t identify with someone just because we are the same hue.
Look on the bright side, his family swagged $27 million. (gross).
Unfortunately every family of every ‘offender’ will want their payoff.
Which they will now get, thanks to the hard earned taxpayer’s money.
No pay off required if police don’t kill subdued arrestees.
I think you’ll find there will be a lot more of ‘-Please send the police we have a problem’-‘Where are you calling from’? ‘Oh!.. Sorry they are all out on an extended lunchbreak-I’ll get someone to call you when they return’
And a free trip to Washinton to visit their friend, the “President” at the White House at the taxpayer’s expense. Perhaps it is time to talk about black privilege.
You are not allowed to talk about that. Re-education camp for you!
Agreed. Tried to up vote, rarely works.
I ticked it for us both, I regularly get 2 or 3 upticks at the same time…sometimes just the 1; useless Unheard software
I don’t know why you call the “President” the “President.” (a case of Joe Bidenitis, tee! hee!)
Their neighbours will be so jealous!
People like Pelosi would undoubtedly have crossed the street to avoid him if they’d encountered him in the state he was in, in his final hours.
Assuming Pelosi ever actually walks on a public thoroughfare without a security detail.
But more importantly so would the legal adviser. We have entered an Alice in Wonderland world where super-successful people-Vice President , Meghan etc can also class themselves as victims because they are BIPOC. This is not just personal hypocricy , it is government policy which now classifies all people of European origin as a privileged group, who oppress these other people.
The show didn’t go on the air until he was 20, perhaps it was then he appeared, or maybe you’re thinking of a different show.
You are absolutely correct, my apologies!
Apparently there was a George Floyd IV and our chap
George Perry Floyd.
All very confusing.
I find it hard to believe you rightist types have fallen en masse into the ideological pothole of deprecating George Floyd’s character. How could you make such a mistake? There is more to politics than tribal grunting, you know. Usually I like arguing with rightists and soi-disant conservatives, but you all have to exert some wits and style.
Of course the quality George Floyd’s character in no way mitigates what happened to him, save to the extent that his own actions contributed to his death.
But you must concede that the characterisation of Floyd as some kind of martyr figure would be hilarious if it wasn’t demonstrative of such a malevolent trajectory for culture and society.
If nothing else it demonstrates that George Floyd the man and his life mean little to those who have seized on the circumstances of his unfortunate death to advance their own agendas.
George Floyd is a tribal symbol, so his person is indeed of little meaning now to most of the people who are flogging it around for one reason or another. I do not refer solely to such as BLM. While I would not ascribe intention to an abstraction like a trajectory, I agree that the trajectory of events thus far observed does not bode well for our culture and society. The exertion of some intentionality might be of benefit to all. As in, someone should ask, ‘Where are we going with this?’
Good post. I don’t know why it got a minus. Perhaps it was from somebody who didn’t understand it.
At some point, where I think we go is that BLM will be formally proscribed as a criminal organisation, and CRT will be declared to be hate speech. We don’t need to hear from either; that way we won’t.
i disagree, i think it will go the exact opposite. we are headed into dark times.
In the UK it has become a political party.
isn’t it obvious?
I guess it has to be political. George Floyd put himself in harm’s way, repeatedly. His disrespect for the society that now martyrs him is stunning. The cop that arrested him is now as much a victim as were Floyd’s other victims. The cop was in the wrong in his callous action but so was Floyd. Tragic for both.
I presume when you say ‘rightist types’ you mean people who are in the right? Hopefully we are able to ‘exert some wits and style’-if we knew what it was,is it a ritual or do you have to pass an exam?
I’m just giving my reaction. Obviously, I have no authority, and you can take it or leave it. It’s obvious to me that complaining that George Floyd had many faults is a serious case of missing the point. And yet there’s been a great deal of that, here and elsewhere.
I agree with you in if you mean the police should try to treat everyone equally . However George was a well known person to the police and didn’t react to their request* , so they started to restrain him , which they felt was necessary. The media has decided to both demonize the police and romantize the criminal -which has happened in all these events which have occured in the last year. * In England in a poor area of a provincial city many years ago , police cars kept squealing to a holt beside my husband and myself ( who was heavily pregnant). They demanded we stand against a wall , state who we were,where going etc. This continued for weeks until they must have got bored. We did as asked at all times, made no complaint , but we hardly fitted the profile for Bonnie & Clyde-so I know some police can be complete b******ds.
The fact that he targeted a pregnant woman alone in her home – a planned and organized violent home invasion – .is unforgivable to me; I don’t care how many years he served for the crime, or if he wasn’t actually the one who pointed the loaded gun at her stomach (he wasn’t; after violently breaking into her home by posing as a uniformed water department inspector, he ransacked the place while one of his buddies held her at gunpoint). The guy was scum.
She also miscarried after the traumatic event-shouldn’t she get some of this 27 million payoff?
That doesnt give the police the right to execute him in the street though does it?
So it’s totally fine to execute him then? By strangulation?
Execute? Strangulation? He died of a heart attack caused by a drug overdose.
Nope he died because a cop knelt on his neck for 9 minutes
No. I’m sure you’d like people you hate to think like that, so you could hate them too, but no.
He was simply a common or garden woman-abusing criminal who led a wholly worthless life, which not surprisingly put himself into harm’s way, which meant he died an unpleasant death to which his vices of criminality and drug abuse contributed.
There are no lessons whatsoever for anyone else in how he died, and he is as deserving of sympathy as a car thief who crashes the car he stole.
The question is not whether George Floyd deserved to die, or what he died of. For the Right, who are supposed to be concerned about principles of authority, legitimacy, order, law, and personal conduct, strangling a bound captive — publicly, as if it were just another day’s work — cannot be justified, however much it gratifies anyone’s tribal instincts, especially when it is performed by officers of the state supposedly in the line of duty. How are you going to admonish people to better behavior if you don’t adhere to your own principles?
Try responding to what I wrote rather to what you wish I had written or to what you imagine “the Right” thinks. And don’t give me any baloney about “principles of authority” – it’s not the Right that tries to wreck people’s lives for disagreeing with it.
All we learnt from Floyd’s death is that if you’re a violent drug-using career criminal who attracts police attention you may wind up dead. I don’t care in the slightest that he wound up dead. As, like almost everyone, I am not a violent drug-using career criminal who attracts police attention, I’m never going to be at risk in the same circumstances, nor is anyone else, so there’s nothing instructive or noteworthy about his death.
If Jimmy Savile had died in police custody I wouldn’t care either.
The epitaph for Georgen Floyd could read: “Scumbag killed, then canonized.”
The police officer involved should have been, and was tried, for murder and/or manslaughter and in the event were found guilty. That is the correct response.
However, after Floyd’s death, there was widespread destruction of property and, yes, assault and killing of other black and white people. Wikipedia says ‘at least 19 people’ died.
These riots were an outrage, and should have been condemned unequivocally by everyone. Instead they were almost cheered on by many left-liberal people and institutions even ironically CNN, whose own premises were invaded and smashed up). It was a very, very bad thing and an appalling precedent that it no such condemnation was made.
No one remembers or commemorates the victims, whatever their colour. Why not, I ask? I don’t know the answer, but it is all too plausible that extreme left-wing elements with a revolutionary agenda were deliberately trying to stoke as much violence and destruction as they could, people who don’t actually give a damn for Floyd his family or anyone else caught as ‘collateral damage’.
This rioting by the way would not have been tolerated, and would have been suppressed rapidly in almost any non-Western state.
The article is about how George Floyd was quasi-sanctified by the BLM movement and its many allies (in my mind ‘useful idiots’). The ‘rightist’ arguments on here, simply say that he in no way justifies that treatment.
imo it should have been manslaughter, not murder. they didn’t just happen by; chauvin was called into the situation. he was stupid, not murderous.
His death was terrible and shouldn’t have happened, but he was certainly no saint.
I would add his extreme brutish ugliness.
Pelosi’s vision of George Floyd is so typical. It reminds me of the absurd character in the film Knives Out – the young Latina caregiver who is so pure that she vomits whenever she attempts to tell a lie. What sort of serious writer invents a character like that? California progressives who don’t see Latinos as real people, if you ask me. For California liberals, who live in a sanitised environment where they never have any meaningful encounters with anyone who isn’t exactly like them, the great unwashed are just blank screens on which they can project their latest psychodrama and their obsession du jour. They are the worst.
An effort is under way to demonise a white cop in Ohio who shot dead a black teenage girl who was about to stab another black girl. Whether the wound would have been fatal had the knife struck we will never know.
Valerie Jarrett of Obama fame said the cop should have tried to defuse the argument. How he would have done that from 10 yards away while the knife’s trajectory was already in progress she does not explain. Basketball player LeBronJames tweeted to his 50 million followers that the cop was “next”. As the media did not fail to note, the shooting coincided with the Chauvin verdict.
Despite videos which clearly show the knife, some liberals are claiming the assailant was unarmed. Others are claiming that teenagers get into knife fights all the time and the cops shouldn’t interfere. The problem with that argument – or rather one of many – is that this wasn’t an equal fight. A girl who was armed was attacking a girl who was unarmed and unable to escape because she had her back to a parked car.
No one would even have noticed this incident had the girls been white. There’s a contradiction here for Black Lives Matter et al. to resolve. If an unarmed black girl’s life matters less than that of her black assailant as liberals seem to be claiming, all black lives do not matter equally.
Radical movements such as BLM do not concern themselves with resolving contradictions in their dogmas. As the writer points out, its doctrines are to be believed and obeyed, as any observer of cults will know. The consequence of challenging them from inside is banishment at best, and from the outside, bullying and cancellation – again at best. In common with all organised religion, any event which does not conform with the narrative is passed over or dismissed as an aberration – witness the immediate explanation of these as the result of “mental health issues” by their allies in the media.
Your comment made me think of Jasper Fforde’s clever and amusing dystopia “Shades of Grey” (not to be confused with the sleazy garbage of a similar name). It has a character called “the Apocryphal Man” who everyone has to pretend they can’t see lest they violate “The Rules of Muncel”. Acknowledging his existence would question the recieved wisdom, the indoctrinated perfect order of the society (where does He fit into it?) so they can’t even point to the aberration without extreme risk to themselves! There’s more to it but I don’t want to spoil the fun. Suffice it to say people end up deploying all sorts of roundabout language when he shows up to take a plate of food or sit in a chair that someone else planned to sit in, all the while buck naked.
It wouldn’t have been a problem if the cop was black as well.
No indeed. Hence the perpetrator of the premeditated killing of Ms Alisha Babbitt is to go free with total anonymity.
He/She will have to live with their conscience, assuming they even have one, which is doubtful.
Ashli.
Yes, thanks!
Some how it turned into a classical pre nomen.
Oh, there are still riots when black cops kill black criminals; happened in Milwaukee a few years ago. But still, the media and the elites can’t milk it in the same way.
Frankly i don’t quite understand why the police even bothers with saving black lives from black knifers. They could just say “You don’t want police? Fair enough, bye!” – and leave them to their own resources.
I have watched the video of this event – the woman was clearly moving forward with intent to stab the woman up against the car. But of course the BLM bunch immediately labelled it as a racist murder by police.
I would be interested to see if someone is brave enough to write an essay on ‘What if George Floyd had been white’?
it’d be a short essay.
I lack sufficient imagination to write it
Or how about having Chauvin as a black trigger happy capitol guard while Floyd becomes an unarmed white woman?
No one would care. For that matter, how many people still talk about Samuel Paty, the French schoolmaster whose head was cut off several months ago for discussing in class the murders of the Charlie Hebdo staff? He was a genuine martyr to liberal democracy if that is still can be said to exist except as a smokescreen for leftist bilge.
You can bet his family didn’t get the grief bribe.
That Time Magazine celebrated Assa Traoré rather than Samuel Paty is an indication of the rot in modern culture. For the woke- the self-hating and suicidal fanatics of the left– a black criminal is always more worthy than an honourable white man. Without exaggeration, civilisation is at risk if this situation cannot be reversed.
i fear it has passed the ‘at risk’ stage…
They don’t have to. What about the premeditated murder of Ms Alisha Babbitt by a so called Capitol Police Guard?
Not only does this murderer not face prosecution, he has even been given total anonymity!
No wonder Georges Clemenceau described the US as country that “had gone from Barbarism to Decadence without the normal interval of Civilisation”.
If you were that bothered about it, rather than just defending the right of police to kill black people, you’d have got Ashli Babbitt’s name right. The investigation was closed without charging the police officer who killed her, because she was shot while trying to break through a barricade protecting legislators, while taking part in an insurrection. Conversely, Floyd was an habitual criminal, but prone and handcuffed when he was suffocated by his murderer, so no threat to the cop or others.
Thanks for that ‘Whitewash’ both literally and metaphorically.
The video film is unequivocal, premeditated murder beyond any shadow of doubt. It reminds me rather of that other deplorable killing of Lee Harvey Oswald Esq by Jack Ruby Esq which I watched in some astonishment on a Back & White Telly back in 1963.
The problem is the Capitol killer appears to have been Black and in the current climate that just too embarrassing to admit.
Duly admonished over Ashli for Alisha, but at least you could still identify who I was writing about could you not?
Finally on what grounds do you have the impertinence to suggest that I “defend the right of the police to kill black people”?
Had she been black and attempting to break through a barricade the police officer would have been charged with murder.
not an insurrection, most weren’t armed and not one of them killed anyone. it was a riot regardless of how corporate propagandists like to frame it.
Ashli.
Different tribal customs. Poor White people seem to worship the police, whereas poor Black people and their friends seem to be pretty hostile. Hence, when a poor White person is gratuitously murdered by the police, which probably happens at about the same rate as that of poor Black people, it’s nothing — they have no tribe to back them up, or they think the police are their tribe.
Cannot possibly compare completely different circumstances.
The only response would be ” George who?”
Had he been white the media would not have reported the story beyond a footnote in the local paper. His death would have remained wholly unremarkable.
It already happened. Look up Tony Timpa.
And Shaver as well.
However, on this special day I will have Kriss Donald in my thoughts.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6129409/stephen-lawrence-day-what-date/
For some reason the loathsome former PM did not decree a Kriss Donald day.
You don’t even have to be white. No one gave a damn about David Dorn, black ex-cop murdered by “racial justice” looters while protecting his pal’s pawn shop.
Floyd was definitely murdered in the second degree by Chauvin, but just read up on your Dorn comment
At the time, Trump’s response to Dorn’s killing was thus,
‘Our highest respect to the family of David Dorn, a Great Police Captain from St. Louis, who was viciously shot and killed by despicable looters last night. We honor our police officers, perhaps more than ever before. Thank you!”
To which filmmaker Ava DuVernay apparently angrily responded,
“We won’t let you use this Black man for your political gain. You can try. But we will not let it happen. May he rest in peace. May the truth about his murderers come to light. And may he not have his name dragged into your vicious, evil game.”
This CNN headline-making latter comment not only infers to my mind that its relatively high profile poster might have had a pretty strong inkling as to the ‘ethnicity’ of his likely killers, but also that their skin colour was irrelevant to this particular murder, which it undoubtedly is, just not to her….
What is most telling here is that Trump didn’t see fit to mention it, portraying Dorn purely as a decent ex-public servant rather than as a ‘black’ ex-public servant, or even to simply reduce him to being a man or a ‘black’ man righteously defending his friend’s business from looters.
The upshot of all this is that it’s not difficult to see who is often projecting ‘race’ onto all of this and who is uniquely allowed to own and control this narrative in order to perpetuate it and who is utterly forbidden from doing so, in no small part for fear of derailing its seemingly inexorable trajectory of perpetual grievance.
White people killing white people and black people killing black people might well be a story, but they’re still just unfortunate ‘deaths’ and how much melanin they have in their skin is irrelevant, but when a white person kills a black person, particularly if the former is in authority of any kind, then this almost invariably supercharges the narrative to a story of an abhorrent, historically informed abuse of power heavily predicated on skin colour.
What I find most disturbing is that people like Biden, Pelosi and Harris are unquestioningly quite happy to buy wholesale into this divisive narrative regardless and, in the miserable case of George Floyd, cheerfully, ‘use this black man for’ their ‘own political gain’ without so much as a hint of a blush, and doubtless without any objection whatsoever from the very same Ava DuVernay mentioned above who excoriated Trump for apparently trying to do so
Thus, in conclusion, to the BLM movement and their like, Dorn represented nothing more than a statistic or worse an inconvenient anomaly that simply doesn’t fit their narrative.
He’d still be dead but without the rioting or the trial. The end.
Long story short.
John McWhorter may be the writer you’re looking for.
Or Glen Loury or Coleman Hughes.
Remember Tony Timpa? There’s an answer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c-E_i8Q5G0
Lots of interesting answers and the main thing that I was thinking is that all the reasonable people I know would have thought that he would have got what was coming. I also believe that there are questions to be asked of the excessive response to him being arrested, but let the courts do their job without the ludicrous riots and the kangaroo court.
Two words: Tony Timpa; in other words, nothing.
No one would have been the wiser! But we should be grateful to this false idol because we now know there is very little backbone in law enforcement, commerce, justice, media, politics, academia and sadly young people. The latter however do have an excuse, they are easily lead and social media cesspits, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, are all skilled masters. All that the rest of us can do is wait for the time, which will come, when we will be able to rise up and castigate our accusers with impunity
,
That is a one-word essay: Who?
I expect they would get death threats and might have to go into hiding.
His name would have been Tony Timpa. Look up the video–almost identical to the George Floyd episode, except Timpa was white. And mentally ill.
Good article. Ed might have mentioned though the engine of the current instability in the USA: the pursuit of so called ‘equity’, fuelled by critical theory. Together they act as a perpetual division-generator and gasoline for the revolution’s unending bonfire.
Critical race theory, in particular, is causing Americans to lose their minds as it forces them to account for *every* different human behavioural trait between different skin colours as immediate evidence for race-hatred. No national leaders are offering a way out of this. Unless somebody does it will destroy the USA.
Canada is in the same boat,I am afraid.
And the UK!
Every year American police kill about 40-50 unarmed civilians, of whom just under half are black,
Actually, numbers show that about 70% or so civilians killed by cops are NOT black, yet there are no riots, no looting, no hysteria after their deaths. And those stats are incredibly easy to find, if one is disposed to find them. Studies have shown that black officers are more likely to shoot black suspects, yet the talking point of ‘racist cops’ continues, despite a significant number of black officers, command staff, and chiefs.
George Floyd set in motion a series of events that ended badly. No one forced him to practically OD, and no one forced him to belligerent. Yes, Chauvin is culpable, too, but painting the event as Floyd happily going about his day until this rogue cop showed up is a bit much.
It’s only a question of time before black cops who shoot black criminals are called “Uncle Toms”.
Aren’t they called Coconuts already?
(Black on the outside and white on the inside) for the technically minded.
On average around 50 unarmed Americans are killed by police every year, of those 50 the majority of course are white, usually between 40 to 50 percent. Anywhere between 25 to 35 percent are Black, with the remaining group Hispanics with a very small percent Asians.
If you take those figures at face value there seems to be a racial disparity because African Americans make up less than 14 percent of the population of the US but suffer around 35 percent of unarmed shootings. However in reality, you have to adjust these percentages for other variables, for example in practice, statistically and on a daily basis, the police are not encountering individuals in proportion to national racial demographic percentages. The Police are normally responding to 911 calls and reliable records show that police get a higher percentage of 911 calls from black neighbourhoods, records show a racial disparity in committed crime such that black people are around seven times more likely to commit or suffer homicides. If therefore the police are getting around 7 times the number of homicide calls from black communities there are just many more opportunities for things to go wrong. Therefore, once we control for those important variables, as the vast majority of the most rigorous studies, such as for instance Prof. Roland G Fryer’s Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force do, one can only come to the conclusion that there is no racial bias when it comes to likelihood of police pulling the trigger on unarmed black people as opposed to any other racial group, precisely the opposite in fact.
I saw that stat that in 2019, 19 black and 29 white unarmed people were shot by police.
This man was a violent criminal and the world is a better place without him. I have no time for people that want to make him a martyr.
Very well said.
Makes you wonder why the media benefit by making him a saint……..give it time!
They identify with him?
The whole situation is ripe for an appeal and a complete acquittal. There was never any possibility for justice. And by “justice” I don’t mean ‘the correct expected judgement’, which the lunatics want, I mean judgement that fits the evidence. Clearly, the jury was got at, obvious by the ambiguity of the evidence and the speed at which they reached the answer.
I don’t think there is any doubt Chauvin’s actions caused the death. He has not been convicted of murder because it was never suggested what he did was premeditated.
Chauvin deserves jail time, but what he did was simply wrong and nothing to do with race.
According to the ‘Word of God’, otherwise known as the BBC, he has convicted of second-degree murder.Is that murder or isn’t it?
The person who needs “jail time” is the cold blooded killer of Ms Alisha Babbitt on the 9th Jan last. The fact the killer appears to be Black is of note.
However I doubt very much if you give a toss about that do you?
Second degree murder is intent to kill without premeditation.
Thank you.
That sounds like an impossibility, rather like walking on water.
And was there INTENT to kill in this case? And did the prosecution even try to show INTENT?
100% But she was not as important as a drug-addled convicted violent armed robber.
White, and a military veteran I gather.
In other words “Guilty on both counts”.
Second degree murder is “not premeditated murder, intended to cause bodily harm”.
Ashli.
Yes, thanks, I subconsciously turned it into a classical pre nomen.
‘I doubt very much if you give a toss……’
Nick Harman’s comment seemed pretty reasonable and unexceptional to me.
Why do you, as so many do on this site, so often impute motives and views of others that they have not said, and you have no evidence for?
Now that really confuses me. Absolutely everything reported that Chauvin did was contradicted by the evidence presented in the trial. There was not even any actual evidence that his knee was on Floyd’s neck in a way that could have even contributed to his death. Only an appeal can properly unravel this as it is so clear, that non of the evidence was properly explored by the jury.
Tbh, I don’t even know which way is up any more.
They weren’t allowed to use the bodycam film as evidence which clearly shows his knee was on his shoulder , rather than neck. However someone I know who is very bright intellectually still insists the policeman deliberately killed Floyd that way.As the police only arrived answering what is quite a trivial call , its not like he woke up & thought ‘I know today I’ll go out and kill somebody and ruin my whole life’.
If you listen to the testimony from the doctor the defence called in, there is indeed doubt about Chauvins actions causing the death.
His conclusions after a day in the stand were that underlying health conditions, high levels of Fentanyl and Amphetamines plus the physical constraints combined to cause his death.
Therefore cause of death ought to be “undetermined”. Chauvin is not guiltless, clearly in breach of a duty of care…..but the way he has been thrown under a bus suggests something much more disturbing..
What’s disturbing is the way you white supremacists will come up with anything to excuse the cold blooded murder of a black man
What about a Black Capitol policeman killing a white woman, Ms Ashli Babbitt?
Or did you miss that one Zac?
….said a passing CCP troll.
Come on white supremacists or not you have to admit this was a forgone conclusion no matter what happened. And actually I would like to ask you……wouldn’t you say “white supremacists” is racist but I guess that doesn’t count!
When you say ‘white supremacists’ I presume you mean Trump supporters? As it is allowed that 70 million voted for him and add in teenage support that makes about 100 million-thats a nation not a clique. If you want to hear the words of a supremacist , listen to the utterances of a former cricket player , now leader. Strangely our governing class favours his ideas over the likes of Trump , otherwise why would they not only invite millions to live here but give them priority over the law re-hundreds thousands young victims and the recent Batley episode?
Thank you for your sanity, among this group of racist reactionaries.
Silly, it is probably a relic now.
it should not have had anything to do with race, but it does. Although Chauvin was not actually accused of kneeing Floyd BECAUSE he was black, the MM has made him into an icon for BLM showing proof that America and all white Americans are racist. Now of course we are not just anti-Black but also anti-Asian. Interestingly, all of this is making me. an old line Liberal and Howard Zinn devotee, into a flag waving lover of the country .
.
But, Nick, of course what he did wasn’t premeditated; he only arrived on the scene seconds before his actions. The question you may be striving to ask is this: were his actions INTENDED to kill or harm Floyd. If so it’s murder pure and simple. If not it is, at the most, by any honest judgement manslaughter and undeserving of an up to 40 year jail sentence.
You would never have got a conviction for Murder or indeed Manslaughter under English Law. Floyd died of heart disease and Fentanyl poisoning.
I wouldn’t be so sure is I was you!
If you had been on the jury with an angry mob outside, how would you have voted? This was mob rule.
100% You would be in dereliction of your duty to your family if you were the 13th man to say “hang on a second”. The best movie ever IMHO (the original Henry Fonda one please), was meant to be a truth check, but in the days when demented threatening mobs were not even imaginable.
Correct. The judge’s comments on the very vocal political demands for ‘guilty’ have perhaps deliberately set up solid grounds for a miss-trail so that justice can be served at a more distant time and in a less aggravated community. There are other reasons for an appeal and the various medical evidences surely guarantee that the accused did not actually kill the ‘victim’.
To be honest there was no need for a trial. Irrespective of DC in this, the outcome was clear because the new order is guilty before innocence.
Where are you going to hold the appeal-the moon? Everone concerned with this case were frightened out of their wits.
What must be apparent is that most of what is accepted and taught as history must be complete bunkum.
If in the modern world its the likes of George Floyd can be transformed in to an heroic martyr when there is abundant evidence to the contrary, the idea that an historical account from decades or centuries ago could be considered reliable is absurd.
“George Floyd did not; he was not a martyr, he was a victim of murder. “
“George Floyd the man is dead, and his family have received the justice they deserve,”
Is this guy a kool-aid drinker, or just CYO, and like the jury, saying what is obviously false to avoid personal, and professional, violence.
When the new generation of Pelosi Saints, who have based their life on Floyd’s, begin their crusade in your community it will get rough.
George Floyd was turned into a martyr because the left needed a crisis and a real one was not available. Boil this down to the simple facts: a career felon high on drugs tried to pass a counterfeit $20 bill. As he was being arrested for the crime, he ingested his stash of fentanyl to avoid a drug charge. Not surprisingly, he died of an overdose. This is not a rare occurrence nor is it a mystery. The only thing that made it noteworthy was the fact Floyd was black and the cops mostly white. Had he been a white junkie and a black cop, it would have been Two line story in the police blotter of the metro section – and rightfully so. The difference? Liberal political agenda. We are seeing it again with the killing of the black girl in Columbus who was shot as she was stabbing another black girl half he size right in front of the cop! Again, same situation with white people would not garner a second of airtime. Since the girl was black, it is instantly called racism and news outlets are editing the video to NOT show the knife in her hand and labeling her ‘unarmed.’ Total dishonesty.
The difference between a religion and a cult isn’t the behavior of the leader, but whether or not you can leave. And nobody in the USA is allowed to “leave” the new cult of Critical Race Theory.
Serial Criminal, 1) The judgement Should have been Manslaughter 2) American Police shoot more Whites,they are ‘Trigger’ happy 3) floyd is No martyr he was jailed 4 times…
I really appreciated Mr West’s comments about the Flagellants, despite the variable spelling , and especially the role of English embarrassment .
That made me chuckle. Obviously the English character is many centuries old.
Although one wonders what the English character will be in ten or so years time. We are a multiculture now after all.
No we are not. 6-7% ‘other’ is a minority, for the present.
Those are the official figures. Only the official figures.
Anyway, who says that a minority can’t have disproportionate power? I believe that the political class has, and they are certainly a very small minority.
It’s certainly happened before. Rwanda, for example. And Fiji, from recollection.
I’m afraid this whole situation is untethering values and the laws as well as stampeding intellectual discussion and rational debate. Pelosi is unhinged and like the rest of her ilk, is creating more division and hate by jumping on the proverbial bandwagon. The United States through its own stupidity, vanity and lack of thought and guts is heading into the abyss.
Unfortunately, statistics clearly evidence disproportionate levels of crime being attributed to the black community. Fact. Isn’t it about time the black communities took some responsibility for the high levels of mysogyny, homophobia, domestic abuse and violent, aggravated crime? What about the Black Community addressing the disproportionate number of single mothers raising young boys on their own who desperately need a role model that stand up for the values and behaviours that will contribute to better life style choices and a better quality of life in the future? What the white cop did was appalling and he had a history of being over zealous but the trail reminded me of the OJ Simpson outcome. He never ever stood a chance of a fair trial or anybody providing any evidence, however damaging, to prove the contrary to what the mob wanted. Floyd was high on Fentanyl and the real cause of death has been documented as such. Biden sentenced him before the Jury was out. The whole situation is wrong and distorted on so many levels. I was reading about the BLM mob that turned up at a diner in New York yesterday and its white leader yelled rascist profanities at other white diners telling them they weren’t wanted and to leave the city. The idiot was too stupid, like the majority of these tools, to see the irony.
The video of the murder of Ms Alisha Babbitt seems to show the perpetrator as Black. Is that possible?
He will not face prosecution.
Well, that is a national disgrace, the video evidence is overwhelming.
Perhaps the ‘wrong’ side won the Civil War?
Ashli.
Ashli…
“Right now, hundreds of millions of Muslims are fasting for the month of Ramadan, during which time they will raise huge amounts for charity”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but would it not be more accurate to say that they will raise huge amounts for islamic charities.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but would it not be more accurate to say that they will raise huge amounts for islamic charities.”
You’re right. One entire 5th of which raised ‘charitable’ zakat must by order of the Sharia’t be hypothecated to fund jihad against non-muslims.
It is a pity that so many non Muslims (including the Pope) don’t know that.
You are right. They don’t raise money to help non Muslims.
The theatrical show that performative, elite, woke progressives put on around the Floyd saga is incredibly translucent and flimsy.
They self-flagellate and weep for his death, but they interact with and know approximately zero living people like Floyd. Why? Because ivory tower, elite, ruling class liberals do not go anywhere near the neighborhoods where people like Floyd live.
They don’t associate with opioid addicted, women-abusing, meth-using petty criminals in the hood. This is testable. Ask them to introduce you to anyone remotely resembling George Floyd. They can’t. Because the only friends they have are the upper middle class $12 latte-sipping cosmopolitan, posh aristocrats like themselves.
These elites sit afar in their lofty perches as people in the ghetto do “ghetto things”, and instead of holding them to account, or raising the standard for them to live better lives, they lower the bar, raise thresholds for prosecutable crimes, reduce police presence, enable destructive behavior, and offer more programs that incentivize reliance not on themselves or their own self-betterment, but on the state. All of this under the guise of “empathy”.
Progressives have not changed for over 100 years. They still see the lower classes, and especially the black lower class, as incapable of social ascendance. Hell, they don’t even think blacks are capable of acquiring state IDs.
They do not care about the “Floyds” who are alive; they do not want people like him to get off drugs and live upstanding lives, because ultimately, they don’t think they’re capable of that.
Floyds do not matter to these people until they are cadavers, whose lifeless bodies are then strung up as political props so this ruling class can seize more power.
You don’t even have to listen closely to hear the evidence of this. Every so often, some of these people will say the quiet part out loud—no surprise that it would be Pelosi, who is a career state puppet, and who has been doing it so long, is completely fried and operating on a rich cocktail of pharmaceuticals to maintain any brain function at all.
So she blurts it out, “Thank you George Floyd for sacrificing your life for justice.”
Right now, there are 10s of thousands of people like George Floyd, addicted to pills, committing petty crimes, living less than ideal lives. But they don’t matter to the liberal ruling class. Because they’re still alive. And it’s not black lives that matter to them. It’s only black deaths.
But of course ‘the Floyds’ have votes thus keeping the elite in the elevated manner they have all become accustomed to. And so the merry-go-round goes on, and on, and on….until one day…Your comment was spot on the nail Jordan, I couldn’t have used words anywhere near as fine myself.
Nor me!
George Floyd: Accidental Martyr — given a big stretch of a very generous imagination.
George was something of a man-child with a room temperature IQ — not exactly an inspiring figure. An insipidly boring figure, really. But, he was the only candidate martyr on hand that week, it seems.
George Floyd is only a matryr to a totally racist organization BLM when in fact he was nothing but a violent lowlife who is no loss to society at all. You are making a hero out of someone who led home invasions, put a gun to a woman stomach and threatened to kill her before she was pistol-whipped around the head and body and even though I agree no arrestee should be killed in custody i think that applies to all regardless of colour or religion, in the UK out of all the people that have died in police custody only 8% have been black, so do the other 92% not matter at all, of course they do but it is obvious that real name of BLM is black lives matter only when killed by a white person, to them 800k blacks murdered in Africa in genocides is irrelevant but if one of those 800k were accidently killed by a white man they would campaign all around the world. They increase racism instead of cure it as they are racist themselves towards white people
This ridiculous ‘trial’ made the ‘Peoples Court’ presided over by Roland Freisler seem the very model of jurisprudence. Chauvin didn’t kill Floyd and you could never have secured a conviction in an English Court as the Post Mortem just does not substantiate a verdict of Murder or even Manslaughter under English Law. Floyd died of heart disease and an overdose of Fentanyl. Chauvin might be an unpleasant character, but he didn’t kill anyone and right from the word go had no chance whatsoever of a fair trial. The whole circus was a damn disgrace.
Seth Myers channeling his inner AOC: “a conviction on all three counts does not mean justice was done. True justice would mean George Floyd would still be alive today. True justice would mean black people no longer having to live in fear of being killed by police.”
What nonsense. When he says “true justice” he actually means “utopia” he’s just too ignorant to realize it. It’s like saying “true justice means that Bernie Madoff wouldn’t have ripped off all those investors.” But he did. So the best we can do it punish the perpetrator, that’s the whole point of the JUSTICE system. He’s simply handwringing that we don’t live in a perfect world, which, from his lofty, affluent, and dare I say privileged (and very twisted) perspective, seems to be a possibility, human nature be damned.
Horst Wessel
How George Floyd became a martyr.
Easy. Someone knew a good thing when they saw it and ran with it. The rest is history. Nothing to do with martyrdom, it’s to do with money and power. Follow the money and it will lead to the purchase of a number of fine houses, amongst other things no doubt.
I’m wondering if Speaker Nancy Pelosi would have the same thoughts had Geo’ Floyd held a loaded pistol to her heavily pregnant granddaughters belly whilst his friends ransacked her home?
How typical of our times: a career criminal choking on fentanyl and dying while being apprehended by the police becomes a worldwide martyr just because he happened to be black. Twenty years ago it wouldn’t make the news.
The Woke religion’s version of Jesus. It’s fast becoming a False Religion.
Perhaps it is poor old Mr Chauvin who has ended up as a latter day Christ?
Manifestly, no form of anti-racism, or any proxy for it, was ever anything other than false and the very opposite of its claimed humanity and compassion when it comes to its white victims.
Said a racist white guy…
Said a racist.
George Floyd is rapidly becoming the Horst Wessel of the Left. I believe he had some claim to being a musician, too.
So will we soon witness the flsgellants of Woke matching
No end to the pathetic liberal self-guilt in sight so far.
They need something to really worry about.
Like a pandemic, say. Oh, wait, how well did this Covid thing work?
Well, there’s Covid-19, isn’t there?
The George Floyd mass media focus and liberal left woke race activists exploiting it to incite racist anger and their poltical agenda was a violation of a principle both left and right have stated for diverse peoples to live togther.
We do not unfairly smear an entire group for thr acts of the few bad ones.
This event has bern exploited by the left racist race activists to smear the entire police force and race.Only news where theres a white and then black ” victim” is shown and highlighted and fetishised, all other crimes ,murders, racism commited by the ” victims” groups are downplayed, unreported or absent, the liberal media taking events out of context to create a distorted truthless message to incite racist violence.
The racist hate and violence incited by the tyrannical intolerant left became very real for our family as a stranger from one the hyped ” victim” groups assaulted and repeatedly beat our daughter , causing concussions, saying “You think you are better than me!”
The harm damage violence and racist anger being incited by the distorted , racial scapegoating is real and deeply deliberstely inflicting unjust harms to people.
Humantity needs liberation from the demented, maliicious left woke progressive tyrant cult.
Shocking post about your daughter’s assault. I hope she recovered and her assailant was punished.
Look at this folks. It tells white people how to behave when in the presence of the fallen hero
https://twitter.com/MattFinnFNC/status/1384919393088548865/photo/1
George Floyd, America’s very own Horst Wessel
…but without the music..
Yea, well you know how that turned out.
The Guardian article you linked to had no comments allowed – they have become such P* s* ie s and will never let the public comment – only their tame few, and not even them if any controversy is possible.
This is not going to end well and I feel sorry for all decent people who are about to get caught up in this psychosis. My guess is today is worth a hundred thousand extra gun sales in USA.
I don’t understand the connection between Bakunin and Nietzsche. Nietzsche was neither an atheist nor an anarchist. He was a classical scholar, who regretted the change in human ethics and behaviour brought about by ‘Christianity’ and his projected belief schema has been shown to resemble German Lutheranism, to a degree. No surprise, as he was born as one.
I don’t think it is quite true to say that “White Fragility…offers no redemption or hope at all.” It offers the chance to feel superior to those who do not believe, and that’s not nothing…For those who are interested, I wrote a piece for Areo last year on how Intersectionality tries to function as a moral system, and how it fails – https://areomagazine.com/2020/07/21/intersectionality-a-cheaper-form-of-virtue/
Thanks Stewart for the link to your article. It is inevitable, I suppose, that you and the author above evoke the concept of ‘good’ or morality. The author states that goodness and selflessness is ‘demanded’ of Muslims, that Abrahamic religions are based on self-sacrifice, with special reference to the Jesus figure’s apocryphal death. (This kind of saviour figure was rampant throughout the region, combining Greek and other myths into an amalgam of personal salvation religion.)
The author does not go on to say that Islam also demands that you get an education, learn to think for yourself and develop some independence of mind. While in the XII Century Spain’s Islamic territories had 17 universities to Europe’s two, this is no longer the case. Humanism has allowed, demanded, if you prefer, the enlightenment of the mind, while Islam is stuck on obedience to authority, to the petrified, immutable word. Religion may be premised on self sacrifice, but it will never willingly weaken itself for anyone, especially truth. Copernicus knew this, Galileo was stifled by it.
What we call goodness, or morality, or self sacrifice is readily apparent in Nature. The very structure of Nature is premised on sacrifice. If you live you must die and your death will nurture new life. Any animal or human family member know what sacrifice is. It’s for the benefit of others, the group. The more one can expand this natural characteristic to include the clan, or society, the better. But it can never be demanded religiously, or imposed dogmatically. It is a natural phenomenon which must self generate, evolve naturally.
Religious belief is, of course, not about self sacrifice. It is inherently selfish, since the end goal is self preservation, the eternal life of well deserved bliss. Abrahamic religions have cursed humanity with the notion that we are different from the rest of Nature, that we are masters of our own destiny and keepers of all other things. Nothing could be more demonstrative of all encompassing arrogance. Regrettably those who are ‘believers’ or have ‘faith’ can never get past this stumbling block and are unwilling to give up that (very natural) sense of self importance. (I talk to God, and He to me.) Humanity is clearly not ready to give up this security from uncertainty, or embrace a notion of collective interdependence with all.
George Floyd is being made a martyr. Martyrs are always declared after the fact, for the convenience of the message, be they Saint, suicide bomber or outcast.
There is not much self sacrifice in any of this. Floyd’s was unintentional, so is Chauvin’s. The police are acknowledging some wrong, but not enough to change anything. The oppressed communities want revenge, the politicians the limelight and power. And Benjamin Crump… well he might make a few million every single time the police kill someone.
Nancy Pelosi ? Yuk !! An awful woman.
‘Odious’ is the word I’d use
I call her “rancid” and “raddled”. She disgusts me.
“Of course, the veneration of Floyd is indisputably Christian in flavour; Jesus himself was a criminal…”
Not according to the Biblical accounts. There was no crime under Roman law which he had broken. It was only the Jewish law against blasphemy which the religious authorities in Jerusalem believed him to have transgressed; but they could not implement the death penalty prescribed for that offence because only the Romans could execute someone. Even though Pilate had declared Jesus to be innocent of any crime, the religious authorities manipulated and blackmailed Pilate into having him executed, arguing that if Pilate let Jesus go he was ‘no friend of Caesar’. Luke’s Gospel chapter 23 and John’s Gospel chapters 18 & 19 are the sources for most of this.
Also the idea is to forgive the sinner but not the sin-and the sinner must want to be redeemed. You can forgive a teenager ( most things ) as its hoped they might ‘grow out of it’ , but George was almost fifty years old.
Late developer?!
Good post.
“The…movement had started in Italy…but over the decades had been taken up by the Germans, who made it far more extreme and violent, and also adding uniforms.”
I see what you did there.
Hard to find, but if you can find some older photos of the Massachusetts State Police uniform circa 19650-70 you’ll see an exact replica of a Nazi SS uniform. Pure coincidence I am sure.
Horrible essay. Poorly researched and written.
Floyd was NOT murdered, he )D’d on drugs, and the verdict is a travisty of justice.
Nancy Pelosi; odious woman
Is the author of this piece being tongue in cheek when he says, “George Floyd the icon will live on, a powerful symbol for the faithful as they strive to build a third age of racial equality.”
If I was a Black man and I had just been shot dead, I would not really care who shot me, a White cop or a Brother from the hood….dead is dead……anybody seen the statistics on shootings lately in NYC , Chicago etc……..ridiculous.
GF’s faithful are less concerned about equality than fear and the power that comes with that. Equality comes from mutual respect , not threats of violence, are you listening LeBron James, Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi………
Human behaviour in the past is difficult to understand and I have tended to put it down to general ignorance, but that no longer applies. There is also an enormous difference in the medieval economy to now and the rapid way in which news spreads round the world.
I think we should be more concerned about all events today, particular the completely fake climate crisis which is not supported by empirical evidence or physics. The same applies to the damaging polices that have been implemented to fight a not very dangerous virus.
The Flaggelants were the epitome of early “woke” – so proud they met stony silence when they came to England!
if only the “later woke” could illicit such a response from todays pumped up virtue signallers and the trouble makers in politics, most of the MSM and all of Social Meeja. Then the rest of us could get on with living our lives in peace, and helping those less fortunate than us of whatever hue in the manner we choose, within the law and with a moral compass.
Excelent article. I would like to point out, however, that, alone of the Abrahamaic faiths, Islam’s self-sacrifice and selfesness does not extend to non-Muslims.
Judaism enjoins charity to the stranger, the widow and orphan because “you were once strangers in a strange land” (Exodus 22:21, Deuteronomy 10:19), and, for Christianity, Jesus Christ, when asked “who is my neighbour?” gives the example of the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37). There is no such equivalent in Islam. The zakat raised by Muslim charities, especially during Ramadan, is solely in aid of Muslims.
Whoops! “Excellent”…
I watched most of 13th on Netflix which presents the black grievance side of US racial history from slavery via lynching and segregation to the current war on drugs that has filled the prisons with hundreds of thousands of black underclass males.
It’s a case for the prosecution and deliberately makes no attempt at balance; no Thomas Sowell, or John McWhorter or Glenn Loury who don’t buy into the BLM version of black life in America.
It’s a straightforward account of white oppression of blacks throughout America’s history from witnesses like Angela Davis, Professor Henry Gates and former White House advisor (briefly) Van Jones.
Inadvertently, these three spokesman and others like them, because they are smart and articulate and speak like whites, show what blacks could achieve in America if they chose to assimilate and oppose the system from within – Angela Davis – rather that fight it by refusing to conform.
It requires a conscious effort of will to do what they did and 13th with its open bias explains why many blacks refuse to co-operate with a system they believe is fundamentally hostile to the black temperament forged in slavery and still vivid today. Another way of explaining the claims of police brutality would be black men shot while being deliberately arrogant towards white law (Michael Brown, Aaron Blake).
A balanced documentary would have blunted our understanding of what has driven the violent reaction to the deaths Trayvon Martin and George Floyd.
America after BLM and the inevitable lessening of today’s unsustainable race hysteria will be a different place because of them. Netflix documentaries are of variable quality but 13th did a remarkable job.
Wouldn’t it be fitting if ”George floyd” passing Fake $20 notes,had his face on US Treasury ones?..Sleepy Joe would
In China, engineers, scientists and soldiers are deemed national heroes. In the West, these roles are played by a drug addict with a criminal record who happened to be a black, and a 16-year-old Swedish girl who is obsessed in parroting leftist agenda.
The pathetic Western left remains narcissistically immersed in its own fabricated moral system, meanwhile the entire political elite of China is laughing its ass off on their social media.
China under Mao’ rule had a 30-year social disaster because the country was kidnapped by the communist ideology. But now, it’s the self-proclaimed enlightened and progressive West voluntarily marching towards its second medieval age of doom， while China has not even moved a single bullet.
Sorry Ed, Jesus Christ wasn’t a criminal. Pontius Pilate himself said ‘I find no fault in him’ (John 19:4), but the pharisees and chief priests called for his death – not because he was a criminal, but because he threatened their status quo. Your comparison of George Floyd with Jesus Christ is a desperate stretch of the imagination to make a fatuous point.
Sorry Ed, Jesus Christ wasn’t a criminal. Pontius Pilate himself said ‘I find no fault in him’ (John 19:4), but the pharisees and chief priests called for his death – not because he was a criminal, but because he threatened their status quo. Your comparison of George Floyd with Jesus Christ is a desperate stretch of the imagination to make a fatuous point.
“Our opponents”????
Curiously enough I wrote a poem about just this..
https://redpilluk.wordpress.com/2021/04/21/the-ages-rhyme/
I will just leave this here.
https://legaldictionary.net/second-degree-murder/
This implies the officer intentionally wanted to kill the man, who was high on drugs and in the process of resisting arrest.
Second degree murder may also refer to a death caused by an individual’s negligent or reckless conduct.
From your linked definition. I think you were a bit selective in your interpretation.
George Floyd the icon will live on, a powerful symbol for the faithful as they strive to build a third age of ‘despotic’ racial equality.
As I was reading your comment, the British Army came into my mind. No idea why.
Good article on a concerning trend though the concluding statement that the family have had their justice is a bit dismissive of the wide challenges in the US
It’s interesting that the portrait of Floyd in your photograph makes him appear wide-eyed and somehow “innocent”. But in the actual photos of him he looks the sort you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. Which, I wonder, is the truer picture?
The demonstrated vileness of religious gibberish will not be redeemed by constant verbal assaults from this sinister god-bothering bigot.
Sorry to contradict but it was much more than a month of “peaceful”protests.
Of the many things that don’t add up in this circus is the junky and his GF were given pills by the guy who refused to testify which the GF testified she thought she’d die after taking, and she thought it was meth/yabba or similar. So you’ve been a junky for a while and can’t tell a fix from a crank of speed? BS. BTW i think the cop murdered the wasteman, in the context of US/UK society I firmly agree that ACAB, but it does not have to be like this. We set up gangs of roided drug addled young men and call them “police” and it does not solve the problem. Maybe a minimum age for front line cops of say 40 would be a start? There are many other options – civil militia/civil guard, cops divided into 4 groups like Spain so there is always someone to police the police, governments stop importing coke, meth, badly made fentanyl/thorazine etc etc etc
Good humour in the essay despite the actual gravity of the topic. The Flaggellants being beaten in Rome was a good touch.
My personal favourite “religious cult taking over a city” story from history is that of Savonarola in Florence. It has a Bonfire of the Vanities episode, a peroid of folks walking around in white robes as self-appointed morality police, the rise of public resentment that built over time, and finally a Trial by Fire to prove Savonarola’s divine mandate… which he basically tried to call in sick for. I won’t ruin the ending for you!
The House of Medici by C. Hibbert handles the period very well.
I am reading Niall Ferguson and found the following quotation fro Voegelin:
Ferguson describes the extraordinary way the Nazi creed spread through Germany. I am quite shocked.
The person who wrote this nonsense is verging on insane.
How George Floyd became a martyr?
The really hard part was being murdered. The rest, he didn’t play much part in.
This was a really tedious article. I started skimming after a couple of paras and gave up altogether soon afterwards.
How’s that subscription service going? Badly I trust.
Further to my earlier comment calling out Ed’s doubtful fact-checking and partial use of statistics to make it fit his own Fox-like narrative, (the Unherd house style?), just noted that Ed Luce of FT has highlighted the point that many viewers of Fox News believe that Chauvin was the real victim; and that for them believing is seeing, rather than the other way round – relevant given the bulk of the comments below and the laborious framing of Ed’s misinformation to support a cult narrative.You don’t really need to go back to the Middle Ages.
Luce soberly reported that a majority of those killed are white, but black people are more than three times as likely to die from police bullets, and that Chauvin is likely to be among a tiny handful of officers to be convicted of unlawful killing.
Hopefully his conviction will serve as a catalyst for positive change in police behaviour and attitudes that will reduce the death toll for both whites and blacks, although, of course, wider gun control and wider socio-economic changes are required that reduce the drivers and causes of gun-related crime.
With respect to those that argue that black people get shot more often white people by the police in the US is their relative tendency to commit violent crime; even if true ( don’t know without careful analysis of data), why do they think that is the case?
Hopefully it will be a catalyst for those stopped by police to follow directions, not resist and not attempt to flee. If one does those things the probability of being shot and killed by police are practically nil.
And FYI, some of the most restrictive gun control measures are in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington DC. Seems criminals don’t much follow the law.
So fleeing police, justifies being shot, presumably in the back, if necessary?
Self evidently wrong and totally disproportionate response, which rightly is not tolerated in the UK.
George Floyd was not armed and the legal disproportionate and cowardly use of force in his case has resulted in a murder conviction by a jury subsequent to consideration of the presented evidence. Due process, rather than a lynching.
Yes, well. following the law would damage the criminals’ street cred.
Your last question is exactly the point. But the hysteria drummed up diverts attention away from the problem that actually needs to be solved. This is a consistent theme of the current narrative across many issues – feelings are considered over facts meaning actions taken do not address root causes, so nothing changes.
Ed West states: Every year American police kill about 40-50 unarmed civilians, of whom just under half are black, referring to a USA Today article, which actually said:
For the last five years, the police have fatally shot about 1,000 civilians annually, the vast majority of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. Black people account for about 23% of those shot and killed by police; they are about 13% of the U.S. population.
Whether armed or not black people are disproportionately likely to be fatally shot.
Whether armed or not black people are disproportionately likely to be fatally shot.
This is true. It is also true that black people commit a grossly disproportionate share of violent crime in the US and that other black people are disproportionately victimized by such crime. Aren’t statistics fun?
Over 90% of those shot by the US police are men, yet nobody accuses the police of misandry on that account. Since FBI statistics indicate that men are responsible for 80% of homicides, it is hardly surprising that they have more violent interactions with police. Homicide statistics also indicate that a disproportionate fraction are perpetrated by black people. And while homicide statistics don’t necessarily translate directly into the statistics for other violent crimes, they have the advantage that it is hard to dismiss their accuracy.
Racist attitudes among the police may well lead to disparities of treatment, but police shootings don’t do much to prove it when all relevant numbers are taken into account.
One in three black American males will be imprisoned during his lifetime. If we add in those who commit offences that either aren’t detected or don’t result in a jail sentence, it seems possible that the majority of black American males are offenders.
If police officers note this empirically and further note that black people are disproportionately likely to be involved in violent crime, which statistically they indeed are, it’s not racism. It’s observation. Racism entails prejudice which entails forming a judgement in advance of the facts. It’s entirely plausible that police officers who are “racist” in fact formed such views after, and based on, the facts.
On average around 50 unarmed Americans are killed by police every year, of those 50 the majority of course are white, usually between 40 to 50 percent. Anywhere between 25 to 35 percent are Black, with the remaining group Hispanics with a very small percent Asians.
If you take those figures at face value there seems to be a racial disparity because African Americans make up less than 14 percent of the population of the US but suffer around 35 percent of unarmed shootings. However in reality, you have to adjust these percentages for other variables, for example in practice, statistically and on a daily basis, the police are not encountering individuals in proportion to national racial demographic percentages. The Police are normally responding to 911 calls and reliable records show that police get a higher percentage of 911 calls from black neighbourhoods, records show a racial disparity in committed crime such that black people are around seven times more likely to commit or suffer homicides. If therefore the police are getting around 7 times the number of homicide calls from black communities there are just many more opportunities for things to go wrong. Therefore, once we control for those important variables, as the vast majority of the most rigorous studies, such as for instance Prof. Roland G Fryer’s Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force do, one can only come to the conclusion that there is no racial bias when it comes to likelihood of police pulling the trigger on unarmed black people as opposed to any other racial group, precisely the opposite in fact.
And yet, there are many who support the broader aims of BLM, consider the murder of Floyd as one of the recent examples of problem with policing in many countries, don’t think of George Floyd as a saint/martyr and think Critical Race Theory (in its many forms) has interesting things to say about the way societies are structured. Where is the consideration or engagement with their views?
At least the article references the fact that BLM has been going since 2013 – so many people seem to think that it was all about Floyd.
Basically the article is saying there is a cult called Woke. It’s not like religion which is generally a nice thing. It’s like all those nasty bits of religion which were cults not religion because they were nasty. To categorise cults as being guilty of sexual exploitation as opposed to mainstream religion, in the light of what we now know about systemic child sexual exploitation and organised religion, is a bit of a stretch.
To claim the ‘Great Awokening’ is a cult without explaining exactly what you mean by it is about as helpful as saying ‘All white people are racists’.
Both statements are divisive and inflammatory and reduce the possibility of understanding between opposing views rather than encouraging it.
You could argue that there is an anti-woke cult which has been created and exploited by some writers as it ‘offers only rewards — status, popularity and often jobs and money’.
Where is the consideration or engagement with their views?
It’s with the consideration or engagement with the views of the BNP. They believe about ethnic minorities what BLM believe about white people, but the BNP is less extreme and unpleasant because unlike BLM it supports law and order and does not seek to have small children indoctrinated with its views.
Racist organisations have no legitimate claim to engagement or a platform. They know this and it’s why they tend to infiltrate the Labour Party instead.
Reading comprehension failure
No, deliberate ‘wind up’. He’s been at it for over a year now, and is firmly in contention for ‘Gold’ in Downticks!
You should not be worrying about up or down ticks, this is not a popularity contest, and in any case it’s fairly obvious what gets upticks here.
I don’t, it was just an observation over some months.
Critical Race Theory has absolutely nothing interesting to say about how societies are structured but it’s quite clear in saying that all white people are racist. CRT’s only real aim is to create division and conflict.
Critical (Race) Theory and postmodernism, ideas so absurd only someone within academia would come up with them. I’m sure it has its rewards such as status, popularity, jobs and money.
I agree, Andrew. This theory is inherently divisive and destructive. It is destructive of real progress in healing racism, which is among it’s most disturbing aspects. It elevates race, an immutable trait, as a cornerstone of identity, and provides no meaningful path towards reconciliation. It also is inherently self-contradictory, and promotes anti-white (and anti-Asian) beliefs, as well as violent social action. I believe, along with many others, that the underlying intent is to escalate social tensions, undermine the institutions which hold our socio-political system together, and enable the eventual emergence of a new social order with Marxist ideology ascendant.
I would argue that woke is a religion – I don’t agree that religions are basically nice. People have been killing each other in the name of ‘God’ for thousands of years.
Wokes believe in things which are not provable.
Wokes repeat mantras over and over to convince themselves they are correct.
Wokes try to spread their religion by writing pamphlets, they meet in groups to discuss converting others, they worship saints like George Ffloyd, even if those saints are bad people (think of St Paul here), wokes use education to spread the religion to the next generation.
I can continue……. Woke = religion.
It was Ed West arguing that religions were nice, not me.
Every political position, ideology, philosophy or view of society:
It’s no more helpful or insightful to say Woke (which seems to cover a very broad spectrum of views on everything from race to environmentalism to promoting gun control) is a religion than to say free market capitalism or supporting a football team is a religion.
Then maybe the problem lies with ideology itself. You can have viewpoints, ideas and even beliefs that don’t have to coalesce toward an ideology. The only reason they do, is to create belief in large numbers and in doing so lead to societal structures, complete with symbols and hierarchies. This will develop into cultish/religious behaviour in order to show fidelity to the cause, which then creates cognitive dissonance as shortcomings in the ideology are discovered.
Critical Race Theory is such a cult.
Maybe you’re right. I think, though, people will always describe people who disagree with them as ideologues while they believe their own opinion to be a viewpoint or belief or just ‘common sense’. I notice in UK the Conservatives have recently often used the phrase ‘governed by ideology’ as a put down of political opponents. As if there is no ideology behind their own policies.
I think a lot of CRT (and there are many variants) does ask some sensible questions about the historical and contemporary causes of inequality but I wouldn’t call it my ideology. It’s one analytical tool among many. I don’t think race is the only thing that impacts on inequality, or is necessarily the most important. And it varies across societies.
So when you say CRT is a cult I think you are really talking about people who regard it as an ideology and as the most important thing in their lives or world view. When everyone who broadly supports the wider objectives of BLM (to increase awareness of racism and take action to reduce its impact) is placed in the category of CRT cultists it is a reductionist act. Like saying all white people are racists.
For instance, when footballers take the knee before games they are doing it because they want to make public their commitment to reducing racism. They aren’t doing it because they are fully signed up supporters of a particular brand of CRT or the objectives of the official USA Black Lives Matter organisation.
I don’t believe I’m a racist but I’m willing to accept that I might have internalised some of the racist perceptions of the society I exist in and I don’t feel threatened if I’m asked to examine that. I don’t feel the need to apologise for that or for the society I didn’t create. I think it would be wrong, for me though, if having found examples of how either my thinking or societies norms have racist implications, I did nothing to challenge my thinking or challenge those norms.
To my mind there’s too much shouting on all sides and not enough thought and listening.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I don’t really care for ideologies, in fact I think they are deeply harmful. I don’t deny the injustice that has happened over the last 250 years and it appears that the U.S. is now facing a reckoning from it. Peoples behaviours are, in my opinion largely driven by heuristics which can lead to very poor outcomes, such as those we have been witnessing over the last year.
I’ve heard CRT described as lots of things, but never as an ‘analytical tool’ or perhaps a set of tools since there are many CRT variants. And societies don’t have perceptions. People have perceptions. I wholeheartedly agree with the the last sentiment, but much of what I am asked to listen to is sloppily expressed sweeping generalisations and pantomime standard debate.
I answered and got ‘Awaiting for approval’. Obviously, they don’t like to see ‘religion’ used too often.
If you carry the argument further, why can’t football be a religion? Try to define ‘religion’ and football fits.
I agree.
the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods
No it doesn’t.
But not “every political position, ideology, philosophy or view of society” that exhibit those traits is totally intolerant of dissent, nor do all seek to destroy unbelievers. The only two that I can think of that do so are wokeism and Islam.
Wokes believe in things which are not provable.
Wokes repeat mantras over and over to convince themselves they are correct.
Like environmentalists, in fact, who also like other religions kill people. They do this by arguing for and ensuring more fuel poverty.
Where is the consideration or engagement with their views?
BLM and Critical Race Theory advocates broach no such thing as ‘consideration or engagement’ with any criticism or even questioning of their poisonous, racist views. People who espouse that particular set of views aren’t up for debate – didn’t you notice, or are you being wilfully blind?
As the article sub-heading says ..’for heretics there is no redemption’. So less of the ‘consideration and engagement’ flannel, please.
So, what am I doing here trying to engage?
Winding people up, I guess.
Correct. If you tried to “engage” with these lunatics it would imply discussion, which would imply an alternative viewpoint to theirs. This makes you a racist and an enemy to be hated, humiliated and destroyed.
They is so little actual racism in the US that incidents need to be made up to “prove” its existence (Jesse Smollett, Bubba Wallace, to name a few. Laws are in place to prevent and punish those engaged in the practice. Dems have been in control of most major cities, the administrative state and the media for dang near 50 years. What are they so racist?
Ha ha ha Whitey says theres no racism,because he’s never experienced any..
“And yet, there are many who support the broader aims of BLM, consider the murder of Floyd as one of the recent examples of problem with policing in many countries, don’t think of George Floyd as a saint/martyr and think Critical Race Theory (in its many forms) has interesting things to say about the way societies are structured.”
So a few problem officers are a problem with ‘policing’? That’s like condemning all musicians because of the appalling music of some ‘country’ performers.
And ‘social ‘structures’ are just so much Marxist guff. Define ‘social’. I guarantee that you’ll get it wrong, simply by defining it. The word has actually no discernible ‘global’ meaning.
country music, like all musical genres, has its duds. No reason to single it out. Pop music, in particular, is right up there.
Have you read Voegelin, or Cohn?
No, I’ve not.