The D.C. BLM Insurrectionists Get a Pass
It’s okay to riot in D.C., and assault government buildings and police officers again.
By Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
The face of the Black Lives Matter insurrectionist who was arrested in Washington D.C. with an axe, a laser, and a “destructive device” will not be plastered by the FBI over any local billboards.
The BLM insurrections who rioted in Washington D.C. over the death of Daunte Wright, who had choked a woman to steal her rent money, threw fireworks and heavy objects at police. They shone lasers in the eyes of police officers and vandalized the Columbus monument with the obscene and hateful graffiti of a racist black supremacist movement. And they’ll get a pass.
Even when the racist insurrectionist mob chanted, “burn the precinct to the ground.”
While the D.C. police department has asked for the public’s helpin identifying one of the BLM insurrections who attacked a police officer and is offering a reward, the national media has not picked up the story the way that it did when there was an effort underway to identify the Capitol rioters, nor has the FBI taken to buying billboards asking anyone who knows the thug for tips.
Fighting with a police officer in January was profoundly morally different than doing so in April.
That’s all the more striking since the D.C. Metro police force is 52% black, while the Capitol Police are 29% black. Black lives don’t matter when they’re also blue. Just ask Captain Dorn.
Only a handful of months after the media agonized over the spectacle of a riot in D.C. and our political class acted as if fights between protesters and police was some inexplicably horrifying event, worse than 9/11 and Pearl Harbor put together, instead of the top outdoor sport of 2020, it’s okay to riot in D.C., assault government buildings, and call for burning them down.
It’s fine to brandish axes, throw fireworks, and assault police officers for social justice.
None of the handful of BLMers and Antifa who have been arrested will have their ugly faces splashed across social media, be fired from their jobs, or face the threat of decades in prison.
Insurrection is once again no longer a crime in America.
Scenes in which BLM insurrections “lobbed a large firework that exploded amid the police line” and “tossed debris, including water and water bottles” at police was, according to the Washington Post, merely a skirmish. There’s no particular interest in how the cops are doing. Having fireworks and debris thrown at you is just part of the job of coping with social justice.
It was also safe for Rep. Maxine Waters to head down to Minnesota and incite violence by telling BLM race rioters to “stay on the street”, fight, and “get more confrontational” if the half-minority George Floyd jury didn’t find a police officer guilty of Floyd’s overdose death.
Brooklyn Center is a long way from Maxine’s California mansion (well outside the impoverished district she claims to represent), so she wasn’t visiting her constituents. But the Democrat Chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee doesn’t have to worry that any of the Wall Street companies she regulates will stop donating to her over her incitement to violence.
Waters regularly wins every election with at least 70% of the vote, but has nonetheless raised and spent nearly $2 million. And Wall Street isn’t about to cut off the insurrectionist’s cash flow.
After the Capitol Riot, MetLife announced that “the board of MetLife’s Political Action Committee (PAC) is reviewing all of its guidelines and giving to ensure that they are consistent with the company’s purpose and values” and that “one of our guiding principles will be to support candidates who uphold our values and the rule of law.” MetLife has been a Maxine donor.
Will MetLife continue donating money to Rep. Maxine Waters after she incited violence?
Don’t bet against it.
No one in the media is calling the latest outburst of Black Lives Matter rioting, even when it targets D.C. police officers and takes place in D.C., an insurrection. The city has asked the National Guard to be ready to provide assistance, but the national media is carefully overlooking the fact that the first time troops have been needed to deal with actual violence in D.C. since Biden took office has been in response to violent race riots by a Democrat political movement.
If it’s not an insurrection, then what is it? Following the AP Stylebook definition, some media outlets are calling it an “uprising”. What’s the difference between an insurrection and an uprising? Much as with the famous quip, “none dare call it treason”, it’s a question of power.
Challenges by Republicans to Democrat power are an “insurrection”, while Democrat riots are an “uprising” meant to seize power. The difference is not in the substance of the violence, but in the morality of who has power. Democrats and their media believe that Black Lives Matter race riots are righteous, while protests over a rigged election are not. Just as doxxing, election fraud, and cancel culture are right or wrong depending entirely on their practitioners and targets.
The only rule is that leftist power is moral and everyone else’s power is immoral. Everything needed to rectify a leftist imbalance of power, from violence to election theft, is justified.
If an anti-government riot in the nation’s capital that attacks government buildings isn’t an insurrection, then what is it? It’s whatever euphemism the media uses to glamorize it.
“Focusing on rioting and property destruction rather than underlying grievance has been used in the past to stigmatize broad swaths of people protesting against lynching, police brutality or for racial justice, going back to the urban uprisings of the 1960s,” the AP Stylebook had argued.
We heard a great deal about the “ransacking” of Pelosi’s office during the Capitol Riot. The focus on “rioting and property destruction” there was justified because the AP didn’t agree with the politics of the rioters. But when the AP and the rest of the media does agree with the politics of the rioters, then it’s important to ignore the violence and focus on the rightness of the cause.
The police and other law enforcement officers caught in the middle of the riots are confused because they’re never sure if they’re supposed to stop a riot or kneel to the rioters.
The Bidenite military leadership just disciplined soldiers who had flown choppers too low down to the crowd of rioting Black Lives Matter insurrectionists who had set fire to a church and the White House gatehouse during the BLM riots over the summer. The media accused the military of being tinpot fascists out to terrorize a mostly peaceful uprising and their arson attempts.
“Immediately after this event, we instituted a very strict … approval process for the use of the National Guard, not just [for] the Metropolitan Police Department, but any agency that is requesting them,” an Army official said.
And then when the Capitol Riot happened, and the National Guard, which had by the orders of the D.C. government, been relegated to unarmed traffic control, didn’t arrive right away, the media once again howled holy hell, this time because there weren’t choppers and soldiers.
But that’s because the National Guard wasn’t using the AP’s stylistic spinbook.
Under Biden the mostly peaceful race riots, the uprisings, or insurrections, by any name, are back. After the worst part of a year in which the Biden regime decided to keep thousands of troops in the city for political theater, the National Guard is actually needed to keep the peace.
The BLM mobs are shooting off fireworks at police, shining lasers in their eyes, throwing debris at them, and shouting, “If we don’t get it, burn it down!”
But that’s not an insurrection.
It’s an insurrection when the rioters are out of power. When the rioters have the White House, the Justice Department, the House and the Senate on their side, it’s not an insurrection.
Just like the Nazi brownshirts or the Maoist Red Guard, BLM is now a form of state terror.