Like the 1991 beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis has touched off a national wave of riots and looting.
But while the 1991 riots were driven by black anger, social media videos and news coverage of the 2020 riots show the instigators are often white, and young.
In video after video, young white people in designer clothes and driving expensive cars are smashing windows, torching buildings and looting stores, often in black neighborhoods and often as black residents plead with them to stop.
So how did the death of a black man lead so many white people to riot “for black lives,” in a way that’s destroying more black lives than it claims to save?
Is Antifa driving the violence? That doesn’t appear to be the case, as Antifa groups have largely been driven underground and have done little organizing during the George Floyd protests.
In fact, the perpetrators of the violence often seem to have little knowledge of socialism or Communism, which are Antifa’s driving beliefs.
The only thing they can seem to do is spray-paint “Black Lives Matter” on buildings as black residents beg them to stop.
So what’s driving the extremism?
A deep dive into some data by Zach Goldberg, who claims to have a “Ph.D.” in “Wokeness Studies” may offer an explanation.
His research finds the mainstream media are covering racial issues using the same language employed by activist groups.
Goldberg, looking into how the media cover issues, went all the way back to 1970 and pulled articles from The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, The Los Angeles Times, and National Public Radio.
Not only are they the nation’s largest media outlets, their reporting is often reprinted or rerun in other outlets.
He found a dramatic increase in the use of words like “racist,” “systemic,” “oppression,” “of color” and other terms that began in the liberal movement.
More notably, usage of the terms was largely occasional and stable until after 2010, when usage exploded.
The use of “racism” and “racist” to describe something has tripled since 2010.
“Systemic,” “institutional” and “structural,” often employed to claim racism and oppression are built into systems,” went from nearly non-existent to relatively frequent usage, as did “whiteness” and various terms referring to “white privilege.”
The newfound “wokeness” of the news media appears to have had an unintended consequence.
The result appears to be a generation who view racial issues through the same lens as liberal activists and are using their newfound “knowledge” as justification to act out violent fantasies.
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Michael Brigham
Michael Brigham has written for American Action News since the summer of 2019. His areas of expertise include foreign affairs, government, and politics, but regardless of the subject matter, he has a nose and an insatiable appetite for news. In his free time, he enjoys reading nonfiction, watching a mix of comedies and true crime documentaries, and spending time away from the swamp hiking in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.
NOT SO FAST… BLACK THUGS FROM OUTSIDE, USE THESE EVENTS TO STEAL FREE STUFF…
I produced Understanding the Riots for the Los Angeles Times after the Watts Riots in 1992 where the blacks in Los Angeles destroyed the very neighborhoods they lived in…goons and thugs came from throughout the city and state to perpetrate the violence, burning and the looting. This is where their mothers and grandmothers could no longer shop and market and had to take buses miles away to other parts of the city for nearly 4 years as pharmacies, markets, cleaners and department stores that were burned to the ground had to be rebuilt…
Rodney King was not worth that kind of over-reaction… Nor is this common criminal in Minneapolis…regardless of his tragic death and his petty crimes …will we now get to see George Floyd’s rap sheet and why this officer felt compelled to restrict his movement so severely?
After the King verdicts were made public an ethnically diverse crowd gathered to protest outside Parker Center, the downtown police headquarters. Many cried ‘police violence,’ others blamed an unjust criminal justice system, then they attacked the entire city government, the federal government and eventually American society itself. South Central anger exploded into action as people hurled rocks and bottles at the police and passing cars…even mobbing vehicles, dragging the light-skinned driver into the street, robbing them and beating them.
As helicopters hovered overhead a brutal ambush of a truck driver came on the screen of our television sets and like the earlier beating of Rodney King the viewers were treated to a gang of black men who dragged the truck driver out of his seat, brutally beating him and left him to die on the street…He became the flip side of the racial coin of the attack on King—the unofficial black-on-white answer to this rioting…his name, Reginald Denny became equally famous as the city was plummeted into violence, fire, destruction and chaos…just like Minneapolis, Boston, and Crown Heights where crooks, opportunists and gangsters felt they had a right to plunder and steal, and no excuse was needed—it was the violent crimes of low-expectation black criminals where petty crime was a way of life and time to get “What they deserved.” Important things like a crock pot, a flat screen T.V. or too many bottles of whiskey to carry. The right to plunder and steal became a ‘Rite of Passage’ for too many young black men, just like Minneapolis. The educational system has failed the young people who consider seeking an education as being WHITE.
South Central where we heard the term ‘BURN BABY BURN” echoed across the city… after pent-up anger and frustration, Watts became a tomb of burning ashes as over 400 buildings were leveled in three days. The police and fire departments were overwhelmed. The people of White Los Angeles were blithely unaware of the seething racists underbelly of the city contaminated with decades of poverty and drug abuse under the façade of the Hollywood sign, Disneyland, Universal Studios and Movie Stars.
Today thousands of Black people live in tents on our sidewalks as we step over them—indicating we have learned very little. The myth of the city was dragged kicking and screaming into the reality in a flash. The scars remain 28 years later and there are still signs of the violence in South Central.
At every election since 1992 the Race Card is used as many blacks in America are ignorant that the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments passed with Republican majority votes while the 14th and 15th Amendments that gave blacks citizenship and the right to vote had ZERO Democratic votes—The hideous reality of President Johnson’s ‘War On Poverty” that spent $20 Trillion dollars—Poverty Won! If we do not face these racial issues, no election and no president will have the solution, this takes a unified effort…but I do know one truth, looting, violence, burning and stealing is not the way…
The News Media is a big part of America problem
Lots and lots of white trash out there. Many stupid sheeple.
Black lives splattered is self inflicted . Most love the idea of getting away with crime. Martyrdom is a by product
There are no newspapers anymore The Washington Times and the NY Post try. They are 100% fictional. Here is something they forgot. When left wing (communist) groups use the press to go after the existing government and are successful causing that government to collapse and the new government is socialistic the very first people to disappear are the same press that caused the change. If they do it once they could do it again therefore get rid of them. The Press doesn’t do their reading.
What makes Mr. Brigham believe the consequences are unintended? The formerly-mainstream media are deliberate instigators and encouragers of the worst among us, granting them an audience, a sympathetic ear and a veneer, thin as it might be, of legitimacy.
The people in charge of these places are left-wing ideologues with no love for our country or culture, who take every opportunity to do what they can to divide and damage it. Accordingly, I doubt their contribution to the violence is “inadvertent.”
Exactly FR. they know exactly what they are doing. Anyone who thinks the media are that dumb then take your head out of the sand. Everything is planned, from C19 to Floyds death.
Absolutely Father, it’s become a media event to prove to the President who the real boss in this country is. As Mr. Briggs here suggests it is definitely planned as a Trump take down.
I see no proof that Antifa is not the driving force for the violence of these protests. Their disguises are identical. Their actions are identical and follow Antifa predictions of the types of protests they would be bringing en masse. And why wouldn’t mainstream media be on course. It has been a communist goal for 60 years to infiltrate the press.
And you continue to believe Hong Kong was all about a legitimate fight for freedom and democracy. The vicious riots in my home over several months were well planned and coordinated, and financed, and received the full support of the world’s media, and gangs of supposed journalists to shove their cameras in the face of riot police constantly, and woe betide any police officer who might shove a ‘journalist’ out of the way, using the exact same script you are seeing on the streets of America. A 12 year old, employed by a school newspaper, was arrested by the police during a less than peaceful demonstration the other week.
Leftist media is the real enemy of America . Expose them.