Архив метки: storming of Capitol

BML riots vs Capitol Media Reporting

BLM Riots vs Capitol Media Reporting

A Creepy Case of Contortionist Comparison: There will be a time when history needs to be rewritten to arrive at the truth

Published: 29 January 2021 ~ BLM Riots vs Capitol Media Reporting

BLM Riots (United States)
Date: 26 May 2020
Duration: 26 May 2020 – 8 June 2020 (2 weeks)
Extent: More than 20 states across America
Costs: Insurance costs estimated at between $1 and $2 billion dollars
Deaths: More than 19 deaths
Arrests: 14,000
+
[source:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests]

BLM Riots (UK)
Date: 28 May 2020
Duration: 28 May 2020 – 21 June 2020
Extent: 3 weeks, 4 days
Costs: ????
Deaths: 0
Arrests: 135+

[source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests_in_the_United_Kingdom]

Storming of Capitol Building (United States)
Date: 6 January 2021
Duration: During one day
Extent: The Capitol Building
Costs: ??

Deaths: 5
Arrests: 162

[source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_storming_of_the_United_States_Capitol]

WHAT validity is there in comparing these two incidents: the BLM riots and the storming of the US Capitol? None: except that both were violent and both should be condemned as such. However, the disparity is that only one of these violent incidents appears to merit condemnation, the other is being excused.

I was amused in a morbid fashion to see how rapidly the liberal-biased media moved to make comparisons between the recent incident on Capitol Hill and the Black Lives Matter riots ~ amused, because quite clearly the two do not lend themselves to comparison, at least not a legitimate one.

I read a few more articles, and it soon became clear that the object of the exercise was to vindicate the BLM riots whilst denouncing the  Capitol attack as a Trump-instigated insurrection inflicted by white supremacists and far right groups .. and then came all the usual stuff about an assault on democracy, etc.

After I had stopped yawning, I dismissed the latter out of hand. When a politically partisan media spends four years relentlessly attempting to delegitimise a presidency and in the process cold shoulders the democratic process, for it to suddenly reinvent itself as the guardian of democracy and reclaim the moral high ground at a time fortuitous to its own agenda, is a bit too rich to take.

BLM Riots vs Capitol Media Reporting

Let me make clear, that I am not so much concerned with whether you believe the BLM movement to be a legitimate one, with legitimate grievances and that their taking to the streets is condonable or, conversely, whether you believe them to be a subversive, anarchistic mob supported and directed by far-left extremist groups such as Antifa, as I am with the way in which western media reports such incidents in an attempt to influence and manipulate opinion.

Scales of justice: BML Riots vs Capitol Media Reporting
Balanced … something the media finds hard to achieve (see Image credits)

First, let us look at some of the statistics about the BLM riots. They are not easy to find, and, obviously, I have no way of verifying their authenticity. Like you, all I can do is repeat what I have read in the media (scary, isn’t it!)

The BLM riots, which kicked off in the States, took place over a period that spanned two weeks and resulted in more than 19 deaths, 14,000 arrests and an insurance bill of between $1 billion and $2 billion. The BLM riots in the UK took place over a period of more than 3 weeks and resulted in 135+ arrests. I have not been able to ascertain the costs of the UK riots either in terms of insurance or policing. There is your homework.

The storming of the Capitol building was a flash incident that took place during one day. It resulted in 5 deaths and 162 arrested. As with the BLM UK riots, I have been unable to determine costs.

The first media report that I chanced upon in the wake of the Capitol Hill incident was one from the liberal-left online feed of The Guardian. The first paragraph reads:

“The contrast between the law enforcement reaction to the storming of the Capitol on Wednesday and the suppression of peaceful protests in the summer is not just stark – it is black and white.”

Yes, and so is the article. After the all-important ubiquitous word ‘peaceful’, a word much favoured and flaunted by UK and US liberal media in relation to the BLM riots, the article continues as a series of photographs put together in such a way as to contrast the ‘peaceful’ nature of the BLM riots against the ‘not so peaceful’ storming of the Capitol.

SOME COMPARISONS WORK BETTER THAN OTHERS!
(see Image credits)

If I was to edit an article in favour of those who forced entry into the Capitol, I would select photographs that showed demonstrators waving flags and hugging one another ~ photographs, in other words, that depicted a happy crowd of peaceful revellers ~ and juxtapose these with scenes of mayhem, violence and looting during the BLM riots. Not only do you get the pictures, but I am sure you get the picture.

In addition to awareness of carefully selected pictures, recognising carefully loaded-words and expressions, that is to say biased words and expressions presumed capable of influencing thoughts and opinions, are also a certified means of determining where media bias lies. Once you have identified these, you will begin to understand along which garden path any one article or media corporation is attempting to lead you.

BML Riots vs Capitol Media Reporting: Led up the garden path
Up the garden path! (see Image credits)

For example, in the article to which I have referred, in addition to the keyword ‘peaceful’, others to watch out for are those that label, particularly those that label and define political street groups and affiliations. Comparisons and contrasts between any one group and its counterpart are key indicators of a specific article’s political bias and usually that of the publisher, unless the article closes on a disclaimer that specifically states that ‘The statements, views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Lie.’

So, in The Guardian’s article, we find the headline: ‘Maga v BLM: how police handled the Capitol mob and George Floyd activists – in pictures’.

Capitol mob; George Floyd activists. Spot the difference.

If you care to read the article you will see that those who breached the Capitol are ‘rioters’, whilst BLM are not only George Floyd ‘activists’ but ‘demonstrators’ and ‘protestors’, which in the carefully selected photographs they most surely are.

If you undertake a Google search on ‘BLM riots’, the search returns nothing on the word ‘riots’. Predominantly, uselessly as far as the search is concerned but with revelatory consequences, the search returns a deflecting preoccupation with the alleged difference in the police response to the storming of the Capitol and the law enforcement procedures adopted to contain those involved in the BLM ‘protests’.

To understand the futility of such a comparison, please refer to the statistics that I have provided on both counts at the beginning of this post.

By far the most involved and convoluted article to labour this perspective is one that seeks to justify the BLM riots on the grounds that certain types of mob violence and the destruction that it wreaks can be excused, even ennobled, depending on the stated cause and aim. I quote:

‘Violence that is intended to spread democracy, end injustice and encourage fairness in the application of the rule of law …’

Oxymoronic, simply moronic or true? Certainly, history and the events currently taking shape in Eastern Europe prove the premise that violence is used to spread ‘democracy’, but as for violence ending ‘injustice’ and ‘encouraging’ fairness in how the law is applied, this just sounds like an unconvincing repetition of that age-old get-out clause about ends justifying means, or, in this instance, the stated ends justifying the means. Rather ‘violence begets violence’ and ‘those who live by the sword die by the sword’ would be more appropriate, don’t you think?

BLM Riots vs Capitol Media Reporting

Nevertheless, you have to hand it to them, to support their tenet of a noble species of violence, the liberal media did manage to quote business owners who in the course of the US riots, although they suffered damage to their premises, loss of stock by looting  and near loss of life, yet came out on the side of the rioters, claiming that it was worth it.

This dubious response reminds me of films based on prohibition days. James Cagney and his boys would invade a downtown bar and remodel the interior, persuading the proprietor that it would be prudent in future for him to sell their brand of bootlegged beer, or else. And the proprietor when asked later by the police or press about who trashed his premises, would very swiftly reply that it was just some guys letting off steam, and besides no harm was done.

Media corporations that have taken refuge in this typical liberal response, which is to ‘coset the pepertrators, blame the State and ignore the victims’, are also quick to further jeopardise the integrity of law and order by suggesting that not only is there a racial bias in the way that the police deal with mob violence but also a political one, that the police in other words are harder on riots involving neo-marxist antagonists (which the liberal media always deny exist) and people of colour and soft on far-right white extremists.

Karl Marx ~ the darling of neoliberals
Hello, my name is Karl Marx … (see Image credits)

Inflicting disparagement on an already embattled police force when the glass has hardly been cleared away from broken shop fronts and the smoke not yet extinguished from the burnt wreckage of cars and buildings is not exactly the most diplomatic scapegoating. And with the cries of ‘defund the police’ and ‘abolish the police force’ still ringing in your ears, as silly as these slogans sound, you could be forgiven for believing that the BLM riots have less to do at the end of the day ~ the end of several days ~ with racial injustice and more with the neo-marxist dream of disempowering law enforcement, of making the law think twice before confronting and apprehending criminals from certain volatile backgrounds.  Buy our brand, or else!

From an ideological standpoint an accomplishment of this magnitude is as good a deflection technique as stirring up riots in countries whose socio-political beliefs run counter to your own purely for the sake of making political capital out of the photographs that ensue, thus distracting the public from the carefully crafted political mismanagement that is taking place in their own back yard. It happens, and it is happening.

BLM Riots vs Capitol Media Reporting ~ conclusions

From an analysis and evaluation of the comparison strategy applied by the liberal-left media, which egregiously synonymises the storming of the Capitol with the BLM riots whilst ignoring the difference in scale and extent, (the Capitol Hill incident bears no relationship to riots that engulfed over 2,000 cities and towns in 50 states and was replicated in over 60 other countries*), it would be difficult not to conclude that the objective is to paint one outrage as irredeemably despicable and the other as excusable, even justifiable.

The narrative goes that the storming of the Capitol was carried out by white supremacists and factions of the far right, whilst the BLM riots were ‘peaceful’ protests that had a legitimate and transparent basis in hundreds of years of racial discrimination and intransigent police brutality.

The manipulation is an insidious one because by deflection the narrative plays squarely into the hands of the extreme left, the neomarxists, who, let us be perfectly honest, would like nothing more than to see the police defunded, but, failing to realise that fantasy are willing to accept, at least for the time being, the compromise of a hamstrung police force whose ability to prosecute law enforcement is severely hampered or even paralysed.

Defund the police is so stupid
Ahhh, isn’t he nice! (see Image credits)

Fairness, equality and the alleged misappropriation of the law are things to be resolved through constructive debate and due legal process, not street violence and outlandish demands, the anarchistic nature of which emphatically betray ideological motives.

As a footnote, it would be inexcusable of me if I did not mention the BLM riots that took place in the UK. These occurred, as did many, as a sort of clip-on afterthought. The grievance list was read from the same script and the neomarxist desire for the police to be defunded was reiterated, although not a lot of people in the UK bought into that one. With crime in the UK running at an all-time high, and a growing proportion of the UK public believing it to be linked to failed social engineering, surviving in an increasingly fractured and disharmonised society with no fuzz and just a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ was a proposition straight down the pan.

The fundamental difference between the BLM riots in the US and UK was that in the UK it can be contextualised as a continuation or extension of legacy Britain vs others. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the de-erection of statues and the affront that this inflicted symbolically on the legacy values of ancestral home, heritage and history, an affront which reached its apotheosis in the attacks on Churchill’s statue, the shameful considerations among MPs afterwards to remove it to a ‘safe house’ and the gormless daubing in paint on the plinth ‘Churchill was a racist’.

Churchill's statue which anarchist BLM want removed
‘We shall fight them on the beaches …’ … and everywhere else I should imagine! (see Image credits)

I think we can safely say, and without valid contradiction, that if it was not for Churchill people from faraway lands would not be enjoying the privilege of sailing to Blighty’s shores, taking up residence here and with the blessing of the state rampaging through the streets in the carefree way that they do (another way of saying ‘protest’). Those who perpetrate such acts and daub ‘racist’ on Churchill’s statue would do well to pause for thought. It was after all ‘racist’ Churchill who led this little island to defeat the Nazi hoards. Had it not been for Churchill’s yesterday I think we can safely say that today it would be Adolf’s statue that they would want to deface, and not without some justification, except, of course, to do so would take a lot more courage than the little that is needed in a country where our police force is less skilled in riot control than it is in offering apologies.

Spurious comparisons, such as the one perpetrated by the liberal media in BLM vs Capitol, though completely meretricious, are timely reminders that never before has the media played such a manipulating part in our lives.

Rolling TV news mesmerises, but it is the spawning of the internet, as an instant and incredibly volumetric means of disseminating ideological gunk wholesale that we need to be aware of. Add to this the incessant chatter and babble from Facebook and Twitter and, unless you choose not to believe anything until it is proved otherwise (and for goodness sake do not rely on Full Fact), you have about as much chance of getting safely through the misinformation and disinformation static as you have of navigating successfully through a fog-filled maze whilst wearing your Covid mask over your eyes (where, it would seem, as time goes by, most prefer to wear it).

BML Riots vs Capitol Media Reporting: and Covid mask
(see Image credits)

Where will it all end? It is better not to think about it, but ‘Happy ever after’ is not by any means the place where the New World Orderists or their media lackies would have you believe they are taking us.

Read, watch, listen. Keep your eyes and ears open and above all — think!!

Further reading: Katie Hopkins Life After Twitter

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests

Image credits

Feature image, Masks: Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay; https://pixabay.com/vectors/drama-comedy-and-tragedy-theater-312318/

Scales: [Karen Arnold] https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=72186&picture=scales-of-justice

Bolt of lightning: [Ronald Carlson] https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/100000/velka/lightning-bolt.jpg

Sunny day: [Larisa Koshkina] https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=26508&picture=sunny-day

Karl Marx: [John Jabez Edwin Mayal, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Karl_Marx.jpg

Toy police car: http://pdpics.com/photo/1274-toy-car-police/

Churchill’s statue: [Ivor Roberts-Jones] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Winston_Churchill_statue_in_London.jpg

ARP Warden in gas mask: [Openclipart] https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Air-raid-warden/62281.html

Copyright [text] © 2018-2021 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.