Main Edition
US
FR
(Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Leonard, the hero of Christopher Nolan’s Memento, cannot form new memories. This poses something of a problem when you’re trying to find the guy who killed your wife. Her brutal murder is the last thing Leonard remembers, and he has been hunting for the perpetrator ever since. To survive in the present, he has a stack of Polaroids that he uses to identify friends and a carpeting of tattoos on his body, including the words JOHN G RAPED AND MURDERED MY WIFE draped across his collarbones. This is written backwards, so that he can read it every time he looks in the mirror. It is his purpose. It tells him who he is.
Because a human epidermis only has so much square footage, Leonard has to be ruthless about retaining only the information that serves his purpose, resigning the rest to the abyss. But the twist of Memento, when it comes, reveals more than the limits of a life defined by a quest for vengeance that will be forgotten as soon as it is achieved; it reminds us that memory can be treacherous, that history is narrative, and that sometimes, in the single-minded pursuit of justice, we do things we’d rather forget.
I was reminded of the film while reading Morning After the Revolution, the new book by journalist Nellie Bowles. Described as “a moment of collective psychosis preserved in amber”, it is a look back at the social justice movement which had been simmering under the surface of American society since roughly 2014, then exploded into a reckoning four years ago tomorrow, when George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis. The book is, among other things, a historical record — one that the movement in question would definitely not choose to permanently inscribe on its skin. The fact that Bowles used to be a New York Times writer and card-carrying member of the woke crowd herself makes her account at once more credible to the reader and less convenient to its subjects.
If the summer of 2020 was a party that eventually devolved into a chaotic rager, Morning After the Revolution is the album of unflattering photos taken by a guest who left before the police showed up. Look: there’s the moment from the pandemic where Donald Trump said he wanted schools to reopen, so we shut them down until 2023. There’s the time a male spa-goer displayed an erect penis in front of a 14-year-old girl, and media commentators hurried to dismiss the entire thing as a Right-wing hoax. There’s the one where we started recreationally destroying the lives of random white women who looked a little too much like manager-callers; there’s the $3,000 anti-racist dinner party and the “Defund the Police” banner!
The revolutionaries are in this picture, and they don’t like it. Even as early as 2022, there were signs that people were happy to forget the movement once the marching-shouting-posting action was over; when reporters discovered that the $90 million raised by Black Lives Matter had been squandered on, among other things, a party house in Los Angeles, the response was a studied incuriosity. But even then, it’s hard to exaggerate how much this attempt to defund, dismantle and drastically remake every institution in service of social justice has been… well, not-that. Four years after his death became the spark that lit the flame of revolution, George Floyd’s lingering impact can mainly be seen in the hastily-installed DEI programmes in corporate offices nationwide, where hourly wage workers sit through interminable sensitivity trainings — and where the main beneficiaries are 28-year-old college-educated white women from HR, who now receive six-figure salaries to lecture their coworkers on the importance of daily pronoun exchanges and the scourge of microaggressions.
Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, the vacant gas station parking lot that was the site of Floyd’s death, and which used to be flooded with so many protestors that it had to be closed to traffic, is now deserted save for the occasional social justice tourist. They come to photograph the murals, the graffiti, the tattered plastic flowers around the perimeter of a former bus shelter, where a high-contrast portrait of Floyd’s now-familiar face has been painted on a piece of plastic sheeting — but there’s little to keep them there. The city has promised a plan to redevelop the memorial site, although it’s more like a plan to have a plan; the neighbourhood remains blighted by crime and vandalism, partially owing to lack of police presence. The third precinct police station in the neighbourhood remains permanently closed after being burned by rioters in 2020.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeTo anyone with an iota of independent thought, it was quite clear that the BLM movement was never about George Floyd.
It is also clear that George Floyd was murdered by a racist cop, and that an occurrence of that nature is not uncommon (and not just in the US).
Have you watched the actual bodycam footage Marty?
Yes. I expect that the jury who convicted his murderer did too.
That would require him to believe his lying eyes.
Police brutality remains an issue, but race is a distraction from the actual problem. Divide and conquer.
Except that cops do tend to be racist (and not just in the US).
Many cops are poor blacks. They receive less than two weeks training and earn $13 an hour in my county. Not only do they risk their lives on a daily basis, they also live in fear of making the wrong move and being put in prison for it. Admittedly there is some corruption. A whole sheriff’s department in the neighboring county was shut down by the FBi for fraud and intimidation. It didn’t make the mainstream media because all the cops involved happened to be black and criticizing black people in the US is taboo. This whole ‘all cops are racist’ is a lazy assumption.
I can’t really speak from an American perspective, but I can speak from a British and an Australian perspective. In the latter two, the chance of a cop being racist is “extremely high”. In Australia, cops who are not white are extremely rare. Less so in Britain.
I can see why you’re forcefully expressed perspective is unpopular here, but I’m disappointed that so many have chosen just to downvote without engagement.
Having watched all of the footage of Floyd’s death and seen much of Chauvin’s trial, I’m not sure there was any deliberate murderous. But there was reckless disregard for Floyd’s wellbeing, amounting to some version of manslaughter. Nor was Chauvin a cop who had “one bad day”, as any examination of the 19 complaints against him will support. I suspect he was surprised to accidentally go way too far and kill a man, a result he lied about to his captain right afterward.
Now as to whether it made sense to go bonkers nationwide, in disregard of public safety and the COVID restrictions that seem to matter so much until they didn’t, or give Chauvin over 20 years–those are different questions.
I agree that it is lazy, reductive too. But it is not based on nothing at all, either in an historical or present-day sense.
Cops tend to tacitly mimic the values and prejudices of the elite who control them. When the Democrats ruled the American south, the cops carried out Jim Crow laws, and tacitly enforced them with extrajudicial callousness. This mirrored the prevailing ruling class values, and their bosses approved. When LBGTQI’s and their “allies” ruled all the cultural institutions, media, ngos, corporate offices and bureaucracies in 2020s UK, the police set up stasi-style anonymous snitch hotlines and blacklists, and began applying two-tier policing for a range of social issues they invested in. This mirrored the prevailing ruling class values, and their bosses approved. So you see, cops just reflect their masters.
Just a lazy assertion with not a shred of evidence. Most cops tend to be anti criminal and anti scumbag, whatever race they might be.
Martin M, you haven’t watched the body-cam footage, have you?
And I would suggest that the reason you haven’t is – in accordance with the theme of the article – you sense that if you were to do so, you would be embarrassed by the cause you support.
I clearly remember the cop, with his knee on Floyd’s neck, casually looking at his watch as though he was thinking, “Is this guy dead yet.” And before all of you downvote me, which you will do anyway, I am a strong supporter of the police. In this case though, a cop murdered a man who had not committed a violent crime. Floyd died because he used a counterfeit $20 bill. Not a capital crime.
Of course not. He was a violent, serially-offending criminal who had taken so many drugs at the time of his arrest that he couldn’t survive the standard and approved process for safely apprehending violent offenders.
Making him a hero of any kind is an affront to decency.
Only slightly less of an affront to decency than convicting the cop who restrained him of murder.
There is some merit to the idea that Derek Chauvin didn’t actually cause the death of Gerorge Floyd, but he is far from an innocent actor.
He meant his knee on the neck routine to be an extremely humiliating affront to Floyd, who he knew as a coworker from some security gigs.
At the very least It was disgusting and wildly reckless behavior.
And manslaughter charges might have been appropriate. Elevating it to 2nd and 3rd degree murder seemed more to placate the crowds which the authorities were clearly fearing. They were VERY afraid of what might happen if Chauvin wasn’t convicted of everything.
There was never any evidence or testimony that Chauvin had animus, racial or personal, toward Floyd, and you can be quite sure that had any such evidence existed, the prosecution would have used it, and the court allowed it. And the knee procedure was standard police practice in MPLS and most of the country.
In hindsight, Chauvin should have let one of the other cops handcuff Floyd after he was subdued, as one of them suggested, and Chauvin would than have removed his knee. In not so doing, Chauvin maintained a higher level of force than was needed–though it is not at all clear he exceeded MNPLS Police guidelines, or that this had any bearing on Floyd’s fate. And, the ambulance they had called for was expected at any moment–it was unconscionably late, but the fact the cops had called for it as soon as they had a read on what was going on argues against willful death.
Given the drugs in his system, Floyd quite possibly would have died, anyway, but Chauvin would have been in a better legal situation.
Of course, Chauvin was no saint, either, he was a dirty cop and had already pled out to many years in prison for financial crimes before his murder trial started. Even had he been acquitted of murder, he was looking to be in prison until a very old man.
Which is why Derek Chauvin, the imprisoned police officer should be set free – that he is in jail with virtually a life sentence is immoral.
Floyd was a POS , but it nonetheless angers me that cops can be such egotistic thugs, repeatedly.
Amy Klobuchar, US Senator (D) from Minnesota, was the Hennepin County prosecutor when Chauvin was repeatedly accused of bad acts as a cop, and she did not pursue any action against him because of the cozy relationship between prosecutors and police departments that are common throughout the country. Ended her 2020 Presidential ambitions, though… so, there is that.
For all the screaming, it is almost always Democratic county prosecutors and police departments under Democratic Mayors that are where the police brutality accusations arise–but nobody ever notices.
LOL yeah White Boy. I wish you would spew your racist cheap shot on George Floyd in front of me or any Black man worth his salt. You would be walking around with a Black foot sticking out of your flat white Skkkumbag @$$$$$. We Have to get Black cops killing more White people in Amerikkka, Africa and Caribbean. Only then will you Caucazoid Neanderthal mutants stop murdering Black People. We have to respond in kind within 48 hours some where in the world when you White Demons murder one of us.
In a nutshell ‘anyone with an iota of independent thought’
I naively imagined that the population of the U.K. was more capable of this, but sadly we have trailed in the wake of the ‘progressive’ movement in the USA. Some political parties are still gamely hanging on to that narrative, HR departments are still lecturing staff, women are still fighting for their autonomy in sport, prisons, changing rooms, refuges, etc.
If Labour form the next government – and even worse if it were in coalition with the LibDems, SNP or Greens – the fight for sanity will continue.
Correct.Adherence to these toxic identitarian credos is the one true ideological passion (besides innate class envy) uniting Labour – from the old hard left wing to the Faux Tory Starmerites in their union jacks. See Dodds and her deranged ramblings on gender. And the dark shadow of yet another race equality act which can only snuff out all criticism of malevolent religions and destroy enterprise and more councils like Birmingham with mad gender equality nostrums. We are in some peril. Labour are gripped by the anti discrimination mania/derangment and will pump more yet poison into society via the progressive State. This all must be exposed.
To be fair, the Cass report and various judicial rulings suggest the same pattern in the UK as in the 1950s when the pressure to emulate McCarthyism was intense. The British then and now were less wholehearted and recovered faster. Our indulgence of lunacy was still embarrassing but less so than the policies of other parts of the English speaking world. Given our reduced status, perhaps Britain should adopt an explicit national mission of preserving sanity in the Anglosphere on those occasions when America (Canada, Australia) goes mad. As it does from time to time. I blame the Puritans who settled in New England. Maybe Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” should be a compulsory part of every school’s syllabus.
Maybe Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” should be a compulsory part of every school’s syllabus.
It used to be. I read it in class when I was 15.
I think it still is. Quite right too. But… it’s astonishing how people can read through the play, horrified at the hysterical accusations of witchcraft and the epidemic witch-burnings, only to lay into JK Rowling on Twitter 5 minutes later. People don’t always appreciate that it is they who are in the frame.
I venture to suggest that we really, really need right now an anti-woke McCarthyism. The woke are outright neonazi child mutilation supporters and that is how we should treat them. They need to have their masks ripped from their faces, and to be publicly shunned and to be denied jobs, housing, banking facilities and internet access.
Careful, Thalia will come for you.
“What a terrifying prospect,” he muttered drily.
McCarthyism, a byword for paranoid over reaction, increasingly seems like a rational response to what was, it turns out, a real threat.
In the UK, the reds really are under the bed
Exactly.
I recently read that about 70 people lost their jobs during the four peak years of McCarthyism compared to four to five times as many dismissed during the past four years of Progressive witch hunting. As Campbell observed above, the biblical observation about the criticism of motes in other’s eyes while ignoring the log in one’s own continues to hold truth.
I am not sure a coalition would be the worse case – yes they are all equally infected by woke, but the in fighting that would ensue as they tried to out woke each other might offer some protection for us from it becoming law to, for example, believe that trans women really are women. The much more likely outcome of a massive Labour majority, with nothing to offer anything resembling rational opposition, is the real nightmare as the laws will be passed easily and without effective scrutiny – if you thought the Scottish hate speech law on 1 April was crazy, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
When he shot Greg Love in 2013, Vincent Montague was a Black patrolmanwith a shitty traffic assignment in the hectic heart of downtown Cleveland’s nightlife scene. After the young Black Clevelander tried to turn down a closed-off street, Montague approached his car with a Glock in hand. A few moments later, Love’s fresh white tee would be drenched in blood.
Although Montague was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing and only served a one-day suspension related to the incident, the U.S. Department of Justice called the shooting an example of the “poor tactics” and “unnecessary and unreasonable use of force” found in its broader investigation into the patterns and practices of the Cleveland Division of Police in Ohio. That investigation would result in an ongoing consent decree to carry out reforms under federal oversight.
So I was surprised, in 2020, to see that Montague’s name was back in the news — as an example of how Black officers could reform policing. In the years following the shooting, Montague had become president of the Black Shield, a Black police organization with a legacy of advocating against police violence in the city.
There’s a part of me that has always wanted to believe that Black cops like Montague could change law enforcement from within. That hope springs from the fact that I have blood in blue. My family members have served as police officers in Cleveland across three generations, and paid dues as members of the Black Shield.
To truly understand how Black cops can change their police departments — and how their police departments change them — I immersed myself in the world of Montague and his Black Shield. I conducted countless interviews with him, Black Shield members and his newfound allies in Black Lives Matter Cleveland.
I never imagined in that time that I’d also witness Montague’s professional and political undoing.
My in-depth story, which tries to unravel his unceremonious downfall, is out now. In following Montague’s career and its aftermath, my story also sheds much-needed light on the promise and plight of Black cops and whether their presence in law enforcement makes Black people any safer.
Thanks for reading,
Wilbert L. Cooper
I think this is important. The rights and wrongs of the killing of George Floyd, I cannot comment on. The racial reckoning in the US; I don’t know anything. What bothers me is the crafty people riding this wave and getting jobs as our better consciousness. This is a simply a means to power. They add nothing (except to an organisation’s wage bill).
To anyone with an iota of independent thought, it was quite clear that the BLM movement was never about George Floyd.
Just as it was clear from day one that George Floyd wasn’t murdered.
Eyewitnesses said Floyd was already in distress and struggling to breathe even before his arrest took place. Respiratory collapse due to fentanyl overdose seems the most likely cause though officer Chauvin (who was a bad cop – no doubt) kneeling in his neck can’t have helped. They should have sat him up, called an ambulance and got narcan into him and he’d have survived.
Chauvin is an ordinary police officer, no better, no worse. Those who had condemned him were cowards and scoundrels
It was judged neccessary to designate a scapegoat to appease and divert the unrest.
It was an avoidable death that involved unnecessary force. Perhaps you’d at least acknowledge that Chauvin deserved to be “retired” from police duty forever.
If Chauvin was retired forever, he would get lifetime pension and benefits, I assume. That said to “retire him forever” would be for those in charge to take shelter in the bland (a)moral middle ground. To punt it into the tall weeds, as you Brits say.
I’m North American, a long-time California resident born in Calgary.
I was trying to elicit some admission of wrongdoing by Chauvin from Hugh Bryant, to unsurprising silence. My American “double commas” around retired were, of course, euphemistic. I think he deserved to “get the sack”, but without the traditional farewell bundle, and get sent to gaol for some lengthy term.
But there’s an increasingly popular, insistent fiction that Derek Chauvin knee and George Floyd’s demise were only coincidentally linked, perhaps with recourse to some feeble claims about certain “imminent death”. Or the brutal force apologists use other kinds of disparagement to paint Floyd’s life as something so poor that taking it away becomes scarcely a crime at all.
What is lacking is any research done by medics and martial arts experts as to what is practical and safe. Those who train in Ju Jitsuand Judo can withstand holds and chokes which would harm most people. A person who is on drugs may be very strong, prone to violent outburts but have a weak heart and problems breathing which makes them vunerable to normal police restraint methods.
I don’t know about the truth of all this, I just tend to stick to the thought that, even though they are sometimes wrong, we are foolish to think we know better than the jury who were charged to establish the guilt of the policeman.
Amen.
Cheaper than keeping him in prison I daresay.
What did the Police training state was the correct procedure?
The chief and some other fellow officers from the Minneapolis PD claimed, under oath, that the methods Chauvin used were some combination of excessive, discredited, and dangerous. To what extent they may have skewed things to cover their own badges or reputations is another question.
There needs to be far more research on what skills the Police need to restrain people and the health implications. Teaching hand to hand combat to Special Forces men who are very fit and only need to kill the enemy is fairly simple. Teaching the skills to Police officers who are far less fit but have to to restrain a wide range of men and women of varying sizes, strengths, mental and health conditions is far more difficult. In Japan, the riot police spend a year training in Aikido.
Rather than invent the wheel perhaps Police forces in the UK and USA should consult the Tokyo Police.
Aikido Yoshinkan – Tokyo Metropolitan Police Compétition (youtube.com)
I would say many problems with the Police in the UK and USA is their unwillingness to consult organisations who have expertise they lack but need and to upgrade their training. The Japanese have a word for continuous improvement Kaizen. A vital basic aspect of Japanese culture is the concept that people have to cultivate themselves in order to improve. This is why Japanese industry has such high standards of quality, similar to Switzerland.
That all sounds sensible to me. Too many American police have come more or less directly from combat duty in the armed forces. As you aptly note, the skills and approaches that are fit for battle are not directly transferable to civilian neighborhoods, even if some of them are called “war zones” in the States–not for no reason at all.
Most police departments are deeply resistant to outside oversight or change of any kind, understandably so. As with this comment board, the conversation tends to land on automatic support for almost anything a cop does, or automatic suspicion & condemnation, with too little representation of the sensible middle ground.
I also think many police start out quite idealistic and goodhearted, but become jaded after a few years of working in pretty nightmarish communities, facing so much danger and encountering most people they interact with on one their worst days. I could readily believe this to be the case with a gone-bad cop like like Chauvin.
The default norm on this side of the Atlantic seems to be proud resistance to improvement, let alone reform, especially if comes from outside the “brotherhood”. “We already know better than you ever will, you don’t understand; but thanks”. And there is major arrogance among many critics and would-be reformers from the outside too, even very well-intended ones.
We could certainly stand to take a few leaves from Japan’s book. We needn’t reinvent the wheel, but a wheelwright is warranted.
*Just a note that I’ve made a longer reply that has been “auto-quarantined” for some reason. I don’t know why as it was perfectly civil, and not in disagreement with your remarks.
Perhaps it’s because other comments of mine have been “voted off the island” on this board? Anyway, I appreciate your knowledgeable input on this subject.
Thank you. I have lived in inner city areas with high crime rates. The complexities are much greater than people realise. Consquently there is a need for a far more self disciplined, fitter, skilled, emotionally mature Police Force. One cannot put wise heads on young shoulders.
In Britain when many Chief Constables were ex Armed Forces, colonel and above, plus sergeants were recruited from Guards, Royal Navy, Royal Marines, there were men who had been in far more dangerous situations than anything encountered on the streets and consequently could remain calm and not panic and over react.
Being confronted by a large violent drug addict wielding a knife and remaining calm and not over reacting is only possible when the police officer has extensive experience of violence; been selected for the ability to remain calm, is of sufficient size, strength and fitness plus undergone extensive training such that they are able to exert the minimal level of force to keep the public safe. The 6ft +, 175lb + ex Armed Forces sergeant who has boxed, played rugby, been in combat and then undergone extensive training in Aikido/JuJitsu will know when to diffuse a situation with a joke or go fast and hard.
However, my policy would result in fewer but better Police but lower income for Police federations and fewer senior ranks. The reality is that many people benefit from large poorly trained state sector, namely the employees. The type of ex sergeant I have mentioned could enter the private sector either as a Private Military Contractor or as acting as a security officer in companies located in violent areas/countries.
Your reply is of interest, and highly informative. I suspect you were/are a police officer, and a very good one at that.
I’m persuaded by your comments that recent war-zone military can be excellent cops. As a practical matter, and as man of 5’8″ not weak or unathletic (especially in my younger days), I do take issue with your 6-foot-plus standard. I get the idea, but there are a few men in the 5’6″ to 5’11” range who are very strong. A rare few can even play top-flight European or even American football, or MLB (Major League Baseball). It depends on the build and individual man I think.
And I think we should have some female officers in this modern world of ours, But except for a few very tough and/or butch “woman police”, it seems they should not be in harm’s way in the same way as the men. What do you think about that, sir?
I have not been in the Police but I have lived in areas where there were drug dealers outside the front and riots plus done various martial arts and been attacked by multiple assailants. On one occaision one of the attackers was on drugs of which taking LSD and Amphetamines was a common combination. Consequently, I have experience of trying to reason to reason with a drug addict. The various gangs, local community leaders, dubious politicians, drug addicts, people with mental and physical health problems and people living in state housing and on welfare, poor education, produce a toxic brew. There are plenty of people who can gain from poor policing- gangs, community leaders, politicians, etc , hence the importance of having high quality police officers and DAs
Height gives authority, hence British Police domed helmets. There is a saying in boxing ” A good big un will beat a godd little un. “The dimensions I have given are basically a light heavy weight which are often the most dangerous size in a street fight as it combines speed, power and ability to take a hit. What is important is to have suppleness, agility, speed and upper body strength, best achieved by press ups, dips pull ups and climbing a rope.
The reality is that some drugs such as Angel Dust can give people speed and strength so Police officer needs fast reflexes, ability to deflect and dodge a blow or a stab. Shooting a firerm should be the last option, not the first.
Conservative /Republicans do not live in these areas, so do not care and Democrats/Labour have too many members who benefit from crime and disorder- lawyers, social workers, local state employees managing welfare, poorly educated teachers, etc . Deprivation is a major employer of the middle classes. As Cicero said Cui Bono- Who benefits?
Yes, police need to be strong and brave, but I still think they needn’t–and should not be–mega-size warrior types without exception. That could have the net effect of further militarizing the approach of departments who are already too much “at war” with the communities they’re meant to serve*. Perhaps the biggest and toughest blokes should go into the most violent and chaotic situations in most cases though.
Wikipedia-level research shows that Cicero attributed the expression to Lucius Cassius (flourished about 130 BC).
Who benefits when the police police themselves?
*In the USA at least
I stand corrected on Cicero. You are correct.
The Dock Police were large and stronger than normal Police because the docks are usually extremely violent.
The Guards and The Royal Marine Commandos have high levels of self control. One assesses a persons military record, is it one of self control and self discipline or violent outbursts?
Using armoured vehicles and SWAT teams at the slightest outbreak of violence is militarisation.
Sending armed people who lack the mindset, experience and skills into violent situations will result in unwanted deaths and injuries because of fear inducing over reaction.
Important qualification about the given man’s military record. Many of our police have entered the force straight from the battlefield or just about: hypervigilant and shellshocked (as they used call it).
And some are too physically fearful–I don’t wanna say “cowardly” because that’s too easy to say from my comfy chair–to be cops at all in America, where there are more guns than people–and a roaring surplus of desperate maniacs.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A comment which we have forgotten.
Spare a thought for Derek Chauvin who is languishing in jail for a crime that never was having bee railroaded by a left wing establishment and legal system motivated mainly by the urge to stick it to the other side
And been stabbed in prison
Having watched most of the trial in real time – the “justice” portion of this parable was insightful and disturbing. The facts presented completely at odds with the public narrative and what most people thought at the time and remember now about the death. Police body cam footage of Floyd and his friends being detained was a particularly sad slice of life. In the end the verdict was mob justice meaning no justice. That’s what the “George Floyd” movement should be remembered as, mob justice. Floyd’s family and attorney shared $27M paid by local tax payers. Chauvin 22 years in jail and 25 years prison time on Federal charges. While at federal prison in Tucson Chauvin was stabbed 22 times by an inmate who is a former FBI informant who told people the attack was a symbolic for the Black Lives Matters movement. Don’t forget about the other officers J. Alexander Keung, Tou Thao and Thomas Lane who were convicted and each serving prison time and lives ruined. Their cases arguably even larger miscarriages of justice. It’s good to remember the start of BLM in the Trayvon Martin case and the bogus chares against George Zimmerman. Worth watching I believe free on YouTube “The Trayvon Hoax.”
Yes What a travesty that trial was. So depressing to see the US turn into a banana republic right in front of our eyes.
Those are crocodile tears. You have a deep and longstanding contempt for the United States. Right?
Even other cops said Chauvin went overboard and should have been punished. Like it or not, there are bad cops, just like there are bad doctors, bad teachers, bad accountants, bad engineers and so on.
Chauvin’s police trainer, himself a black man, grew teary when remembering Chauvin as a trainee.
“One of the best rookies I ever had.”
This largely ignored documentary below reverses many of the narratives we’ve been fed.
Of interest is the fact that the original training manual, showing the exact non-lethal pin Chauvin used (on the upper back, Chauvin never kneeled on his neck) was suppressed at the trial, as were photographs and body cams from different angles.
Thefallofminneapolis.com
You have not watched the footage. It was into the meat of his neck.
Considering it was guilty or all hell breaks loose, opinions are easily swayed to protect one’s ass.
Everyone through him under the bus
Threw?
Having watched most of the trial in real time – the “justice” portion of this parable was insightful and disturbing. The facts presented completely at odds with the public narrative and what most people thought at the time and remember now about the death. Police body cam footage of Floyd and his friends being detained was a particularly sad slice of life. In the end the verdict was mob justice meaning no justice. That’s what the “George Floyd” movement should be remembered as, mob justice. Floyd’s family and attorney shared $27M paid by local tax payers. Chauvin 22 years in jail and 25 years prison time on Federal charges. While at federal prison in Tucson Chauvin was stabbed 22 times by an inmate who is a former FBI informant who told people the attack was a symbolic for the Black Lives Matters movement. Don’t forget about the other officers J. Alexander Keung, Tou Thao and Thomas Lane who were convicted and each serving prison time and lives ruined. Their cases arguably even larger miscarriages of justice. It’s good to remember the start of BLM in the Trayvon Martin case and the bogus chares against George Zimmerman. Worth watching I believe free on YouTube “The Trayvon Hoax.”
You are right. It was about the institutional and systemic racism that still pervades much of US society
No, it was an opportunity for race grifters to enrich themselves like that BLM leader who bought three mansions from corporate donations.
Anti white institutional and systemic racism?
I was present at one of the largest riots in Portland that summer. I will always a remember a dignified and charismatic black man who stood next to me at one point. I don’t know who he was, but he seemed to be important because earlier he had been speaking from the improvised stage to a large, cheering crowd. He looked around in a kind of bewildered way and muttered, “this ain’t about black lives no more.”
Very sadly the iota of the independent thought is self conveniently and more than often twisted to an “indy” thought. An “alternative” bunch of group ideas that fearfully hate the loneliness of being independent..!
Same with Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin. Two other criminals who were used to manipulate politics.
I will not forget and I will not forgive. Simple as that.
And nobody cares. Simple as that.
Lots of downvotes & no likes would suggest you’re wrong. Simple as that.
I don’t think “lots of downvotes on UnHerd” is the same thing as “lots of downvotes from the population generally”.
I never said it was. CS claimed ‘nobody cares’ & got 46 downvotes meaning at least 46 people do. There’s a difference (of 46) between 0 & 46.
I feel the same anger at those who so quickly jumped on the moral high horse. Unfortunately, many of thise who did, were and are colleagues whom I (otherwise) like and respect.
However, yes. My regard for many of my bosses is tempered by how quickly they jumped on these trends which were nothing to do with them.
“But, as Bowles pointed out in a recent interview, this refusal to remember doesn’t change what was: “It happened. I was there. People did argue to abolish the police, that toddlers know their true gender and that 15 years old is fine to begin cross-sex hormones, that accelerated math is racist.”
The overt madness of the BLM moment might have passed, but I would argue the initiatives described in the foregoing paragraph are still very much with us, though they now creep around in the shadows of the classroom and city council meetings.
I’m not sure it has peaked yet, despite the setbacks.
There is a dynamic where, for example, even STEM oriented professional society feel they have to have a DEI position, which will be developed by DEI employees and perhaps a few motivated volunteers. Those people are still in power, and may be in power for decades.
University hiring committees have been stacking the faculty with ideological compatriots for literally decades. The old guard are retiring or dying off, while the new guard still vets new hires. At this point, to root out Critical Social Justice from faculties would need to involve firing the cumulative hires from several decades – a large portion – to regain some balance, and they can’t afford to lose that many and still operate. With tenure, many will be around long after I’ve left the planet, pushing in subtle or overt ways for their agenda.
Heavy handed mandates from conservative legislatures are problematic in their own right – again dictating what people can express.
Does anybody know of historical precedents where the educational, cultural, media and economic elites have been infected with a new religion for which they use their disproportional power to impose their agenda on the democratic majority? The Roman empire as Christianity became the state religion, or was the also a popular movement?
Keffiyehs are where it’s at now, soul sister. But will become even more awkward than George Floyd’s beatification for shrill neurotic progressive women, when, some years hence, the flashbacks happen that their campus insurrections and shouty downtown rallies were predicated on celebrating mass rape as a weapon of war.
No misogyny here! Please explain why it is always liberal white women that get the blame for what is wrong in tbe world. From where I am sitting, it is middle aged white men who are the problem. Governments and companies in the West are full of them bringing their desire of fiefdom to the fore at the severe detriment of all minorities. And the women who are stuck in HR departments are given direct orders to “manage the minorities” but with no direction in how to do it, except from their peers. Scapegoating is never a good look!
No misandry here either!
.. or the Alphabet Soup for Palestine, baffled, that one day they’ll observe how their fellow “Muslim victims” are throwing their comrades in arms off the roofs.
Yes, I’ve heard them called a ‘hipster swastika’ and they’re the must have accessory this season for the wokerati.
Hipstika.
The keffiyehs. Just tried to watch the Dune sequel but couldn’t because all the keffiyeh-clad characters made me feel like I was watching a campus protest. Had to turn it off just 15 minutes in.
So BLM just petered out, did it? I rather think it morphed into what we see today: raging antisemitism.
Well, who’s fault is that. White people got shit on during 2020 and the NYT covered it up and all the east coast institutions went right along with it and so did the Biden administration with Rachel Levine pushing the GAC lies. Then all of a sudden October 7 and now Jews are not protected oppressed minorities, they are White oppressors and they use their oligarchical power to get University presidents fired. Where the f**k were they when BLM and Antifa were attacking White people for being White. Bowles is telling us why, because the flagship Of Jewish journalism decided that White people were due a comeuppance. f*****g racist. And that goddamned stupid 1619 project. Why shouldn’t we be angry at the elites who behaved so incompetently and arrogantly? Because it is antisemitic to criticize Jewish no matter what. So we need Jews to start being honest about their power and the abuse of it. I really appreciate hearing from Bowles about the behind the scenes corruption of NYT journalism. It is important what happened at that newspaper. They wrecked the democrats when they abandoned moderation for SJW and DEI.
It IS antisemitic to attack Jews because Jews. Attack the NYT…Why are you attacking Jews?
Much of “liberal Jewish Journalism” is in a twisted way now anti-semitic. Liberals like Bill Maher or David Mamet are baffled and don’t know where they belong anymore and apparently moved to the Right of the political spectrum. Or like Maher recently said : I am still in the same position, but everybody else moved to the extreme Left.
But they were all onboard when the target was whitey
No, they weren’t. For example: Have you been watching Maher over the years?
I have seen enough to know he was onboard with BLM
I explained everything here below. They are not Jews. They are NYT. They will be reminded later that they are Jews. Bari Weiss’s already been reminded.
.
I’m an Israeli, just a little more cynical than it should be and, maybe due to my age, not having a very high opinion of human beings
But 1619 is by the NYT and they know all…Sure, 1619…genius money chasing NYT slime
Dear Mark, I doubt your antisemitism. Let me try to express your thoughts more correctly.
As I have said many times here, an educated crowd is the worst kind of crowd. Jews are disproportionately represented in the educated strata (we won’t look for reasons). One way or another, many if not most of them yapped along with everyone else as long as the conversation was about whites in general or about hillbilly. But now, when the Jews have become the most terrible whites, they feel their asses are burned, and they are divided into two groups. One group decided to blend in with the crowd in the hope that they would not be harmed. Another, more prudent, recalled a video in which a black shop owner shouted to the rioters, “I’m with you, I’m with you.” All he achieved was that his shop was destroyed with special zeal. Naivety is punishable.
.
PS. In my opinion, the kneeling during the Floyd-related events is one of the most shameful moments in modern American history.
really weird
Very good point. Modern progressive activism looks increasingly like little more than a project designed to find “acceptable” forms of expression for bigotry, prejudice and hatred.
There’s nothing progressives like more than being able to bully and persecute someone, while claiming to be virtuous while they do it.
Just like their Puritan ancestors ?
God forgives, the new Puritans/woke do not
The Anti Discriminatory/Equality mania is alive and kicking. It is not a political phenomenon. It us a pyschological derangment or mania embedded in all of us via near coercive BBC and State propaganda to greater or lesser degrees. It is enforced by groupthink and the tentacles of Social Media and our primal fear of social ostracism. Under our own State Law there is now a formal hierarchy of special victims – BLM, Palestinians, non whites – and of evil privileged white oppressors. Jews are successful rich Whites and hence attract extra venom from the deranged armies of the progressive ‘social justice’ Left and their limp unprincipled cowardly allies in our debased law and media and Blob.
Yes….not wrong. You should experience Canadian /American campuses right now. Deeply unpleasant. Two Jewish members of staff spoke to me last week and have stopped going into work….everything online….too upsetting and potentially violent
George who …… ?
The issue is never the issue. The issue is the Revolution. When sympathy for one thing wanes, they move on to the next. It’s a nonstop pursuit of gaining the moral high ground through performative politics. Relentlessly trying portray oneself on “The Right side of History” is nothing but a narcissistic ego trip.
…. and a never-ending supply of grifting products for the grifters.
I take your point, but I think it’s more than that – it’s a quest for power over others, using the payoff of asserted moral superiority to feed the easily manipulated rank and file.
As you say, the issue is the revolution (which is a lot bigger project than just feeding some egos).
What’s a ‘manager-caller’?
She’s talking about the ‘Karen’ who ‘would like to speak to your manager’ stereotype.
Took me a second to work that out, I have to admit.
I guess the downvoters would like to speak to my manager.
It certainly hasn’t stopped white cops killing unarmed black men with impunity.
Tony Timpa
Ok, so cops occasionally murder white people too. What is your point?
Not “occasionally.” Far more often. And the point is that there is never any rioting, looting, or arson after a white person’s death. The Washington Post keeps a running database of civilian deaths by law enforcement. About 75% of people are non-black. Before you tell me that blacks are only 13% of the population, they also carry out more than 50% of the homicides – usually against other black people – so interactions between cops and black suspects are substantially higher than those involving white suspects.
Ah a man who likes to stick with the right on narrative despite the evidence of Dr Roland Fryer that US black men don’t get killed by cops any more frequently than white men.
You never give up, do you??
He, her, it or whatever pronoun you care to choose is paid not to.
Yes, and not just in the US. It is common enough in Australia too (unsurprisingly, given how racist Australian cops are).
Wrong, and wrong.
Oh right. I often check in on Australia’s social justice masthead, the taxpayer-funded ABC, but even they must’ve been burying all the “racist cop murders innocent black man with impunity” stories. So obviously the ABC is filled with racists too — they’re about 90% woke but I guess — as I clasp my hands to my breast and assume the pained expression of the Madonna pieta — you can never truly remove the stigmata of whiteness. Or, are you just making stuff up?
I don’t think that discussing crime statistics is the best option for you….
Don’t believe everything you think. The stats don’t support your well-meaning but wrong-headed claims.
In 2019 only 13 unarmed black men were shot and killed by U.S police.
Protesting something — anything— isn’t the means to an end. It is the end in itself. All you have to do is to join The Protest of the Month Club and you can always join like minded company.
There are elections coming up and this is exactly the tactics of would-be political candidates. All changes if they get elected. Maybe remember that when voting…
There’s a song by the Canadian folk-band Great Big Sea (they’re a national treasure, by the way) about this very tendency called ‘Someday Soon’. I’d suggest people give it a listen, it’s hauntingly catchy tune has some very poignant lyrics.
“They kept talking
Of all the things they’d do
If only we’d vote them in!
Just one more dollar
And all the bickering
And suffering would end!”
“The arc of the social justice universe is long, but it bends toward free massages and macaroni art.”
Can UnHerd get Kat Rosenfield nominated for a Pulitzer? Always fresh, always a pleasure to read.
That line had me howling.
haha…Me To. Loved that line immediately.
Commented separately before I read this comment. Brilliant line.
George Floyd died of a massive overdoses of various drugs in the first autopsy.
He was then murdered in the second one in the media.
The full autopsy report concludes Floyd died from “cardiopulmonary arrest,” not an overdose and that it was a homicide due to “cardiopulmonary arrest” from “law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.”
He was also a lifelong drug addict, recently recovered from COVID, had meth, opioids, and alcohol in his system, and was nearly 50 years old.
He was also trying to buy cigarettes with counterfeit bills.
It’s almost as of a life of complete irresponsibility and violence (his profession was throwing drunks out of bars, along with drug dealing) tends to be a short one.
Second (paid) report… The first one was “cardiopulmonary arrest”
.
Accuracy can be useful
Caused by drugs, thrre were no compression injuries in the autopsy details in the articles i read.
And all this manufactured brouhaha over a repeat offender with too many drugs in his body and serious health issues for whom the police actions were, at most, a tiny contributor to his death.
Derek Chauvin is serving a life sentence for a crime he did not commit. He is guilty of contributing to George Floyd’s death and should be punished for that, yes, but not for murder.
GF died from “wooden chest” caused by ingesting too much fentanyl. Chauvin gave him mouth-to-mouth and pumped his chest but it was a losing cause from the start. Had the jury seen the evidence and the training the officers received, there would almost surely have been no convictions.
George Floyd may have been a deeply flawed ‘martyr’, and BLM a deeply flawed response to his martyrdom – but at least the event generated a whole host of progressive jobs that were difficult to challenge. There is that.
/sarcasm
Yes, all those useless degrees issued by universities that have become businesses rather than institutions of higher learning & critical thinking, are now worth `something’
An excellent piece, and I will look out for Ms Bowles” book. I am reminded of Shiva Naipaul’s classic “Black and White’ (Journey to Nowhere” in the US). The best analysis of Jonestown (he was one of the journalists who visited after the suicides).
His account of how Jim Jones built the People’s Temple on the dregs of 60s leftist radicalism is unsurpassed. Chilling and informative – and if seems nothing has changed.
From now on I could never associate this affair with anything other than Steve Bannon’s words that if the Democrats and RINOs had not shopped all the factory jobs off to China then George Floyd would not have been riding around high on Fentanyl looking for the next petty scam…
The word, I think is “difficult”.
This is not a sexy word for young people born in fortunate families, sheltered by mothers that “want the best for their children”. Kids raised to “follow dreams” and find “meaning of life”. For those kids, things like a revolution – or starting an enterprise if right wing – is what mother has raised them to do. Clear shiny Goals in life.
While life’s a b***h. Uncertain. Difficult. To talk “racism” and “murder” in this areas is the sign of a spoiled brat. Just as much as hail the minimal state. If stuff like the George Floyd case, the racial situation in the USA, and well, stuff like Israel/Palestine and Trump being good or bad and why he is a candidate for Presidency after all, is anything, they are deeply complex and intricate questions.
Its easy for Greta Thunberg to say “treat the climate change as the Covid pandemy”. Like No. You cannot derive an ought from an is, especially when the IS is very complex. If you have the maturity to see the problems as problems in the world.
And BLM is facing real life problems. People that live those problems, all credit to them, and their fights for a race that certainly should be fair. But young posh people with an urge to find whatever to to fulfuil life’s meaning, do something that you understand. Become scientists, politicians, MD’s or engineers.
Shriver also points to a strange amnesia after each episode of insane moral panic. ‘Supported chopping the dicks of small boys? Not me!’
I stopped reading when Rosenfield repeats the lie that officers murdered Floyd. Surely all know, as has been confirmed, that he died of a drug overdose and acute heart disease.
Why do some people do this? No different than the likes of Bill Maher claiming with absolute assurance that police officers were killed at the capitol on January 6th. I get that he’s just an obtuse talk show host pretending to be an intellectual, but Rosenfield is a professional writer who is expected to have greater depth and thinking skills. She loses all credibility.
Do people have to concur on every single thing? I don’t like Maher and strongly disagree with him on many issues, but at least he’s been red pilled and sees the rot in many of our institutions.
Maher may have seen the rot but he’s still a reliable Blue vote. He just notices the excesses, like the gender madness and how homelessness has gotten worse.
He’s disavowed the “red-pilled” part but he’s not a lockstep ideologue, rah-rah partisan, or culture-war tribalist. Neither are you.
Sadly, for many here among the (un)herd and elsewhere the honest answer to your opening question is “yes!”.
I don’t think it matters what George Floyd actually died of, because the statement “George Floyd was murdered by police” is a lie no matter how he died. His imminent death from drug overdose was certainly hastened by a callous officer who was duly tried and punished by the American judicial system. Floyd wasn’t a victim of systemic racism. He was arrested after a burglary having taken a lethal combination of drugs and alcohol. His death had nothing to do with race.
The point is, the riots and grandstanding by BLM were based on a heinous lie and continue to be leveraged by lies. Look, the living circumstances for young inner-city Blacks are indeed atrocious, festering in crime, gangs, drugs and hopelessness. None of that is the police’s fault.
George Floyd’s death, and thousands of young men like him, are laid at the door of politicians who perpetuate crime by calling normal civil standards “racist”.
Good, balanced post.
I also respect the balance and I agree with most of that. But what enables you to treat Floyd’s “imminent death” as an established fact or foregone conclusion? It seems he likely would have survived if the needless knee had been removed about 2 minutes earlier.
So calling for an ambulance and administering CPR are callous acts. Floyd was pulled out of the squad car to give him the fresh air he needed. The extent to which his neck was (not) compressed would have been shown if the other photos taken had been produced. If that had taken place in Russia then every citizen of the USA would be screaming “POLITICAL SHOW TRIAL!!!” which is what it actually was.
You simply can’t have watched all the available video, not with anything like an open mind and pair of eyes. Even most police disagree with you.
The author of this article claims Floyd was murdered by police. Is this claim legally and practically correct?
He was found guilty of second-degree murder by 12 people who included 6 whites and 4 men. One firm dissenter could have set him free, or close to it (retried on a lesser or civil charge?). I personally think it’s more like “negligent and wrongful death”, but the conviction carries some weight anyway.
Drop it. It’s about as interesting as agonizing over OJ’s glove. Move along, people.
I pre-ordered the book. About half way through.
Simply put, I adore that woman. She is funny, insightful, and has the courage to be honest.
I read her TGIF every Friday morning with my coffee. One of the things I look forward to every week.
As for that time period? Well, I knew it was all a bunch of BS when I heard black activists calling mass looting “reparations”. I knew it was BS and counterproductive to the real lives of black people in poor neighborhoods when I saw black grandmother crying because they burned down the only pharmacy she could get to. I knew it was irrational rage when I saw a crowd of BLM activists burn down the small business of an older black man and him crying and screaming asking “Why?”. Mindless rage from mindless people with no moral compass and little brains.
I saw her on Maher and heard her interviewed at Persuasion.com. I believe in forgiveness as an aspirational rule but did you see the hatchet job on Jordan Peterson she produced for the NYT in 2018?
I like her current act but I’m hesitant to let that go. With another few endorsements–or a better job of forgiving on my part–I’ll get the book.
Floyd was not murdered, he died of a drug overdose while being apprehended by the police.
Small correction re black male homicide victims: the story reports a study which says that black male victim rates since 1960 have been far higher than white male rates. The last year studied seems to be 2021, not exactly post pandemic, etc. “From 1980 to 1999, the rate hovered around 54 per 100,000 people before declining from 2000 to 2019 to around 35 per 100,000. In 2021, the number went back up to 54.” Thus the current rate, while very high, was seen in the ’90s not, as the piece says “not seen since the ’60s.” I remember DC in the ’90s, incidentally, when gang driven homicides were terrible. All that said, nice work from Rosenfield, as usual. Especially “arc of social justice . . .”
Having watched most of the trial in real time – the “justice” portion of this parable was insightful and disturbing. The facts presented completely at odds with the public narrative and what most people thought at the time and remember now about the death. Police body cam footage of Floyd and his friends being detained was a particularly sad slice of life. In the end the verdict was mob justice meaning no justice. That’s what the “George Floyd” movement should be remembered as, mob justice. Floyd’s family and attorney shared $27M paid by local tax payers. Chauvin 22 years in jail and 25 years prison time on Federal charges. While at federal prison in Tucson Chauvin was stabbed 22 times by an inmate who is a former FBI informant who told people the attack was a symbolic for the Black Lives Matters movement. Don’t forget about the other officers J. Alexander Keung, Tou Thao and Thomas Lane who were convicted and each serving prison time and lives ruined. Their cases arguably even larger miscarriages of justice. It’s good to remember the start of BLM in the Trayvon Martin case and the bogus chares against George Zimmerman. Worth watching I believe free on YouTube “The Trayvon Hoax.”
The Floyd incident, BLM, Antifa are all huge success’s for the Cultural Marxists. Remember the Cultural Marxists are the spawn of the failure of Classical Marxism. It started at the Frankfurt School and was brought to the education system in the USA. Columbia was one of the first institutions where the indoctrination started. The Leftist academics at Columbia, the future professors, soaked it up like sponge’s and couldn’t wait to start indoctrinating their own students. And so it goes. Today the descendants of those who infiltrated our education system, the useful idiots waste our time and harm our children with the trans BS among other things.
I think French ”theory” like Foucault was far more important in shaping various kinds of “woke” ideas in the US. Why do you think the Frankfurt School was important (I guess you are mostly thinking about Adorno & Horkheimer, laying the blame on Walter Benjamin’s feet seem even more unreasonable).
Gramsci, Herbert Marcuse and Frantz Fanon have probably done the most damage. Gramsci developed infiltration, Marcuse a comprehensive attack on Liberal Democracy and Fanon, Third Worldism as demonstrated by support for Palestinians.
But of those, only Marcuse was ever in any way part of the Frankfurt School. And I still think Foucault and his kind of structuralism was far more important.
Great article about a terrific book. Nellie Bowles and her partner, Bari Weiss, have thrown open the windows for many Americans suffocating on the fetid fumes of mainstream media. Their outlet. “The Free Press”, shares some characteristics with UnHerd and likewise demonstrates that there are actually lots of people out there who don’t mind a mixture of “Left” and “Right” in the media they consume as long as it’s done without insulting their common sense. Journalists of their generation reviving the best principles of their occupation encourage me to hope that something good might follow the “Boomerdammerung” that an UnHerd writer recently described.
Throwing the windows open has become quite the cottage industry. The question, however, remains – how many of these lifelong progressives will walk their talk in future elections? Weiss said almost nothing for years while whites, males, Christians, and people familiar with biology were attacked by the left. Then that same mob came for the Jews and she suddenly found her voice.
I noticed the same about Weiss discovering the usefulness of conservatives coincident to the rise in antisemitism among progressives and it does dull the sheen on my optimism. I too sense some hypocrisy in a group that has generally done much over the years to enable the Left and wonder at their historical lack of concern when they were not included in the cultural animus visited relentlessly on whites. But, as a white, male, moderate, I’d become so disillusioned by what was available news and commentary-wise that I was thrilled at what Weiss et al created no matter what motivated them.
My hope is that, if younger journalists and essayists can just to begin to reconsider parts of what they have been indoctrinated to believe, perhaps many of them will extrapolate that reassessment to all of the progressive canon and thereby become real journalists.
I feel the same about the newly found outrage of Jews concerning academia. Absent October 7 and the response from Jews to the campus intimidation, no college would have been called to account for the perverse notions they have been illiberally cramming into students’ brains for quite some time. The pressure Asians put on elite colleges regarding admission policy is analogous. I’m not Jewish or Asian and I sincerely do not wish to offend with any generalization but Jews and Asians accomplish stuff far out of proportion to their small numbers, which makes me grateful that some of them now seem to be advocating for things I agree with. For now, I’ll take that over the alternative. Je vive en esperance! Thanks for the comment. 🙂
A very potent and intelligent comment.
It is possible to think the Woke are crazy, and still think Trump and his kin are worse.
Nellie Bowles has a cute sense of humor. That said, she audaciously, described how she ‘canceled’ friends. She was mean as all others who practice this are. Immaturity? Who knows. But there’s a real ‘ick’ factor to her stories. What kind of person does that?
I could care less about Drug freak George. Am glad Nell is writing about the stupid progressives that are now using every policing issue as a basis for suing a city – they send in the cash hungry lawyers before the suspect or actual criminal is dead.
Until Biden’s progressive administration is gone America will not be the America any feared and crime will flourish. I am not voting for either old idiot. I am waiting 4 years in this toilet that I love and hoping for a real president and a real govt.
Only way to do that is turn off the TV/social media and read real information….like the Unheard, TGIF, etc
What a great line.
No surprise to see that there are many commenters repeating the lies about George Floyd’s death that the far right racists cling on to.
Oh, good; here comes the Great Condescender, once more ready to see black people as no more than his personal pets and mascots. Share your champagne with them; do something other than preen and posture about how much you care while taking every possible step to ensure as much distance between yourself and minorities as possible.
What do you do on days with no occasion to write “far right racists” in a public forum? Do you have days like those? Have you noticed they’re the better days? Anyway, I hope you’re ok. Get well soon.
As a title it sounds a bit premature. A single event, however rare, however unrepresentative and the ninja hashtags will be out again looking for blood.
The ugly truth about BLM and its acolytes is that black lives only matter when they can be exploited for political purposes. The riots sparked all sorts of mayhem and murder, almost all of it impacting the black community, and none of the water carriers for this noxious group said a word. Not. One. Word. That summer sparked a crime wave that has barely slowed down, again mostly impacting minorities. BLM is not a cause; it’s a grift.
Bowles, meanwhile, met reality head-on, seeing the enemy and noticing that it was people very much like her. So, she wrote a book and engages in the same sort of performance art as tv personality Bill Maher – raging against the excesses of the left while remaining a reliable voting member of Team Blue. Not exactly brave and bold, but so what as long as some books sell.
George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis
.
He was not murdered. He died from overdose. The judge refused to include the police officer’s body-cam recordings into the case.
This trial was a lynching of two policemen staged for the amusement of the crowd.
Dear Kat, I’m very disappointed.
A police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.
A statistic like that seems like a good reason to have compulsory training in every workplace on the scourge of blackness.
The scourge is 60 years of the fed government paying people to be poor and families to be fatherless.
It wasn’t murder. The cop was railroaded. No wonder the left and its opinion organs in the big blue cities are uncomfortable with the subject and wish it would go away.
How racist does a person have to be to see the video of Floyd being murdered and decide that the murderer cop did nothing wrong?
Officer J. Alexander Kueng (who was of course Black) said he couldn’t find a pulse. That’s when I realized it was a racist murder, although one of the killers was Black – and still is Black, and still serving time for his racist murder of a fellow Black man.
Those other two officers showed major cowardice. More blame is certainly due to Chauvin, though I don’t think it was a deliberate killing. That bad cop may or may not have deserved 20 years behind bars (I’d say 10, chance of release after 5-7) but he was brutal and used excessive force throughout his police career, as the many complaints against him well establish. It shouldn’t matter much if he is racist or not.
Perhaps you should watch the full unedited video including the parts where he cries wolf about his inability to breathe, claims he cannot go into the car because of claustrophobia and suffers obvious fentanyl poisoning symptoms.
In 2019 38 non-Hispanic whites and 71 Blacks died by homicide Franklin County, Ohio which includes Columbus, Ohio
In 2020, after BLM, 39 whites died by homicide and 143 Blacks in Franklin County.
BLM doubled the rate of black people being murdered.
I have a question about one sentence out of an otherwise excellent essay. Rosenfield claims that schools were closed due to the pandemic until 2023. No. San Francisco’s schools stayed closed for the longest time, and they reopened in 2022.
When will white progressive ideologues come to the realization that they are the “Nazis” in the room?
Nah, just Big Lavish Mansions.
George Floyd wasn’t “Murdered” that implies intention. There was never any intention that he should die. To keep repeating this as is done in this article is in itself a rewriting of history.
That BLM organisation turned out to have it’s share of Grifters and manipulators and some far out on the spectrum nutjobs with idiocy such as ‘defund the Police’, perhaps no surprise in the era of Trump, MAGA, Farage and even entities such as a Koch network with their equivalent divisional nonsense
But to be black in the US and UK is still to be subjected to more prejudice and stereotyping. In the US the imprisonment rate is, even in the non-antebellum South, 5 times the rate of White population.
What was also predictable from this article is it gave the regulars a chance to feel good about some cheap racism and a chance to howl about a fraction of possible stereotyping they’ve been subjected to. Snowflakes.
You state: “…to be black in the US and UK is still to be subjected to more prejudice and stereotyping.”
Then, as evidence for this claim, you offer this: “In the US the imprisonment rate is, even in the non-antebellum South, 5 times the rate of White population.”
Leaving aside the confusing non-sequitur of the ‘non-antebellum South’, you’re not even allowing for the possibility that blacks are imprisoned at a higher rate because, ehem, they commit crime at a higher rate.
Could this possibly be because the black population commit far more crimes? Oh, hush mah mouth!
Two of the most fearsome words: “progressive activism”.
It is endemic in various British institutions, but what would happen if public bodies were guided & coerced towards dropping DEI? Why is this not possible? Why do we give power to the minority neo-social liberals?
Washington Post called it “a deeply anti-democratic document“ – Nothing in this book suggests or implies that the right to vote, speak, elect representatives, support three branches of government etc. should be curtailed… What an abject smear from The Washington Post that says it all about the pathetic totalitarian “progressive” movement…
The irony of BLM is the greatest benefactors of DEI have been white straight men identifying as women.
A main reason England and Wales fought The Armada was to prevent The Inquisition . Bloody Mary had 283 Protestants killed mostly by urning, in three years. Britain opposed a standing army post 1660 to prevent tyranny. As Orwell said on cannot have naval tyranny only a military one. The setting up of a Police force was opposed by Tories in case they were used by a tyrant.
Ever since the Inquisition, The French Revolution, Russian, Nazis and now Cancel culture there are inadequate people who wish to use the States power to impose their will on others.
Those who have charismos, who been tempered by adversity, stood up to the test can defend their independence, have no desire to impose their will on others.
All men I have known who endured years of combat, some who were tortured by the SS for weeks, were cheerful, grateful for life, enjoyed freedom and respected the freedom of others. Many exercised the power of life and death during WW2 and after it were happy to relinquish this responsibility once peace arrived.
Since 1945 , the numbers entering political life and desirous to shape public opinion have been resentful, embittered self-pitying inadequates whose vain conceit, their desire to control others and inflict pain on whom those who oppose their will, is vast.
You can tell you are over the target when you are getting flack.
I love the way this review is framed within the story of the film.
The post-George Floyd moment was engineered and funded by people who hate liberal democratic society and especially hate yeh people who live in it; there is no other way to explain what happened. For a few days in late May 2020 they focused on creating a race war over the “Central Park Karen” incident, until they realized George Floyd’s death was a more useful instrument for their purpose, and they switched focus on the proverbial dime.
You can quip that the only lasting effect was to empower some young female HR people who enforce DEI, but the damage is far deeper and far more lasting. In the US, our med schools are turning out a generation of incompetent physicians, our Law Schools are producing radical activists with no respect for the law, much of the entertainment industry was ruined for a decade if not a generation, the education edifice that was already under pressure collapsed at all levels, and we now spend billions of dollars each year on projects and programs that are not merely useless, but actively destructive. The people behind this coup institutionalized some of the worst ideas and empowered some of the worst people in the world, many of whom are now responsible for hiring in their companies and government departments. It will be generations before we recover, if ever.
The people who engineered all this took an immense dump on all the sane people of the Western world and have never come close to conceding maybe they went a teensy bit overboard. The only fitting way to remember what they did to us and, more important, our children, is to (figuratively) shove their noses in their dung pile at every opportunity.
“when George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis”
Even this is not a certain fact. Floyd may simply have died from the stress of the drugs he was taking, albeit exacerbated by the encounter with the police. The mood of the country was such that no one was prepared to look too closely at the actual evidence. Of course, that encounter occurred because Floyd was breaking the law.
The social amnesia around the Floyd protests are just as marked when it comes to Covid. The more evidence accumulates around the harms caused by the mandated experimental vaxxines, particularly to younger age groups, the more those who, only a few years ago screamed and shouted about the whole thing, just want to forget it ever happened.
I sometimes engage them in conversation, and they seem genuinely shocked when I remind them of the teenagers in the part in Brussels who were trampled by police horses for the crime of picnicing in a park during Covid. The seem shocked when I remind them that children as young as six were forced to sit in a classroom all day with a facemask on, for months at a time. They simply don’t remember these things.
The madness that erupted in 2020 had been building for nearly a decade. I can’t help but think–or at least hope–that it will subside. But I’ve wondered the whole time: what will happen then? Will anyone be held to account? Not legally, but morally and, perhaps even more important, epistemologically… Surely some will. Innumerable people on the left have basically lost their minds. Should we somehow force them to admit this at least to themselves? Obviously we don’t want Maoist confessions…we are not like them. But when shrieking mobs are insisting that women have penises, that children must be brainwashed and sexually mutilated, that all whites are racist, that we must eliminate the police…and that we must all tearfully and publicly agree or else… I don’t think that merely forgiving and forgetting is exactly the right thing in such a case.