Me in today’s Saturday Telegraph on why, for the left, some race riots are more equal than others:
“Here it is important to note that what all these commentators and politicians and bureaucrats are worried about is not street violence egged on by an inflammatory video.
Because as history shows, if a racially inflammatory incident can be revved up to advance the revolutionary politics of the left, all the better.
It wasn’t so long ago, remember, that riots were simply about “making people uncomfortable” while pressing for policy changes.
Six years ago, after career criminal George Floyd was killed in an encounter with a Minneapolis cop, leftist politicians and media outlets didn’t call for censorship but instead made sure the vision was played on repeat.
In June of that year (this was 2020, the year of Covid) health authorities deemed protests “safe” even as cops arrested people for going to the beach.
Current British prime minister Keir Starmer famously “took the knee” in tribute to Floyd (whose death occurred in another country an ocean away) while rioters tore apart and burnt high streets across the US, leaving billons of dollars in damage and at least 20 deaths.
Condoning this mayhem was not considered “sowing division”, but rather advancing the cause of racial justice.
In short, Floyd was a martyr and all the resultant destruction was simply part of the ongoing revolution.
If a few store owners lost their life savings or cops lost their lives, well, as Lenin supposedly said, you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.
What counted then is what counts now, namely, whether the narrative serves the left.
This time the narrative is running in the other direction.”