Don’t Let Them Whitewash The 2020 Riots

The month of May marks many things: Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, warmer weather, and a sense that summer’s right around the corner. Sadly, for many, myself included, May also marks the moment the country’s perception of the police changed overnight — when George Floyd was killed by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

Understandably, people were upset with Chauvin’s actions, but the Twin Cities decided to take things to a whole new level by rioting outside the 3rd Precinct on a daily basis after the incident, leading to a chain of events that saw mass destruction to Minneapolis and St. Paul. The rioting and its devastating aftermath were not contained in Minnesota, either. Soon, whole cities were engulfed in riots, with participants justifying their actions because of what happened to Floyd.

It wasn’t just rioters who were trying to claim what they were doing — setting buildings on fire and attacking police officers — was actually a good thing. Media members also downplayed or excused the rioters’ wrath. Many within the mainstream media became the BLM and Antifa rioters’ rapid response team by trying to put the chaotic events in “context.” This grew into a cycle that I became all too familiar with when I went to cover people in the BLM and Antifa movements finding any excuse, no matter how thin, to riot in city after city throughout 2020. 

“It’s not, generally speaking, unruly…” said Ali Velshi of MSNBC. “Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Protest After Police Shooting,” read a CNN chyron describing Kenosha, Wisconsin. The media’s rush to defend the rioters was frustrating to see while witnessing the riots firsthand. Oftentimes, it was minority neighborhoods that bore the brunt of the damage caused by “racial justice” actors, totaling at least $2 billion by the third month.

We don’t have to look far to find examples of the BLM and abolish the police movements’ forces trying to glorify riots. The end of this past April marked the 30-year anniversary of the Los Angeles riots that broke out in 1992 following the acquittal of city police officers who were caught on film beating Rodney King.

People’s City Council – Los Angeles, a popular Twitter account for progressive causes, tweeted the following with pictures of the devastation: “TODAY IN HISTORY –  April 29, 1992. Today marks the 30 year anniversary of the 1992 LA uprisings. The city will never forget this and we shall rise up again. POWER TO LOOTERS. POWER TO RIOTERS.”

Calling the ’92 riots an “uprising” has become a popular tactic with the BLM to abolish the police movements. It seeks to legitimize the destruction of the property of people who had nothing to do with what caused the outrage in the first place, lumping it under the umbrella of the objectively true message that Black lives matter.

I should know. I documented the riots as they were happening during that hectic year and followed up with survivors months later for my book, “Fiery But Mostly Peaceful.” I wrote the book because I wanted to have a physical record of what occurred in 2020 since, while many things can remain on the internet forever, these days it’s not a guarantee. 

Not only do we have to worry about Big Tech censoring my reporting on the riots because it went against the broader “mostly peaceful” narrative, but now we have to be concerned with the Department of Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Governance Board” created by the Biden administration. The person put in charge of this Ministry of Truth has been revealed to be a hardcore partisan for Democrats. There are a lot of questions over how exactly this board will carry out its mission to combat “disinformation,” but if the riots and the COVID-19 pandemic have taught us anything, it’s that the powers that be — Big Tech, the media, and our government — will lie or gaslight us even about things that can be plainly seen to be the opposite of what they say they are.

This brings us back to what will be retold on the second anniversary of Floyd’s death. His death should not have happened, but neither should the riots that followed. Ordinary Americans’ lives were turned upside down as police were overwhelmed or told to pull away from areas that were controlled by the rioters. 

Over a year later, survivors of the riots told me that the feeling of something like that happening again was very much on their minds. In order to prevent something like that from happening again, we have to accurately remember what transpired. Yes, there were many peaceful BLM protests. But there were also many riots that cost lives and millions of dollars. Two years later, the country is continuing to see a high violent crime rate that was jump-started by the riots and fueled by progressive “racial justice” policies. Two wrongs don’t make a right and the ends certainly didn’t justify the means.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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