Tell a lie once and all your truth becomes questionable – Harsh Sinha
The protests that followed the murder of George Floyd, a black man, by a white policemen became a symbol. Floyd became the symbol of systemic racism against black people in America and the cause of much gnashing of teeth by young upper middle class whites.
Many of the protests turned into riots. Innocent people were injured and even killed in the frenzy, and property was destroyed. Much of the property belonged to people from minority ethnic and racial groups who had worked extremely hard to create their businesses
Black Lives Matter (BLM), which organised the initial protests and failed to condemn the deterioration into rioting, is shown to have been founded by Marxists. Its website called for the destruction of capitalism and the nuclear family. Floyd’s death was a convenient hook to hang BLM’s cause on.
Aided by relentless media, the pandemic-aggravated release of energy and passion crossed the Atlantic to the United Kingdom (UK), even though the situation in the UK is very different to America’s.
It also spread to South Africa, with the African National Congress expressing support for BLM while South Africans were struggling with the effects of years of misrule and illogical pandemic decision-making.
Sportsmen and administrators were pressured into demonstrating that “Black lives matter!” because they didn’t want to be considered racist and be ostracised. Woe betide anyone who didn’t ‘take the knee’ on behalf of BLM and its agendas.
Sports minister Nathi Mthethwa saw fit to berate rugby players who, despite wearing a slogan on their shirts “Rugby against racism,” refused to ‘take the knee’ while playing for a club in England. He threatened: “‘We are ready to take whatever steps necessary to ensure that people toe the line and those who are racist are taught to embrace other people.”
Supporting BLM became a demand in the Anglosphere to support an anti-racist narrative that is both racist and supported by a potentially false narrative.
The police shooting of Breonna Taylor in March is instructive of the hysteria promoted by groups and celebrities in support of victimhood over truth.
The New York Times described it thus:
“When they punched in the door with a battering ram, Mr. Kevin Walker [her boyfriend], fearing an intruder, reached for his gun and let off one shot, wounding an officer. He and another officer returned fire, while a third began blindly shooting through Ms. Taylor’s window and patio door.”
Bullets ripped through nearly every room in her apartment, then into two adjoining ones. They sliced through a soap dish, a chair and a table and shattered a glass sliding-door. Ms. Taylor, struck five times, bled out on the floor.”
Whereupon Taylor became another icon of victimhood; her silhouette has become a symbol of police violence and racial injustice. Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris ‘spoke her name’ during their speeches at the Democratic Convention. Oprah Winfrey ceded the cover of her magazine for the first time to feature Taylor, and paid for billboards with her image across Louisville. Ultra-rich and famous singer Beyoncé called for the three white officers to be criminally charged. National Basketball Association star, LeBron James, devoted postgame interviews to keeping her name in the news.
Taylor became an icon, one of several unarmed black people who have been shot dead by the police in recent years. The narrative has grown, spread by BLM and others, that blacks are disproportionately the victims of police shooting because of systemic racism.
Since the shooting of Floyd, however, this narrative was contradicted by academic research revealing that unarmed whites were more likely to be killed by the police than black people.
Last week the Republican attorney-general of Kentucky, Daniel Cameron, an African-American, gave a press conference to explain at length the result of the grand jury’s decision on the Taylor shooting. Two of the three policemen are not going to face criminal charges and the third is going to be charged with a misdemeanour, not murder.
Cameron’s presentation was dignified, measured and detailed, and he expressed regret at the shooting which he described as tragic. In the inflammatory atmosphere of the conflagration over the killing of George Floyd and the victimhood narrative repeated by activists and the media, Cameron must have dreaded this press conference because he knew that he would be criticized, even if what he said was justified.
In summary, Taylor’s previous boyfriend was a known drug dealer. Investigations showed that Taylor may have been more deeply involved in the drugs trade than originally thought. So the police staked out her apartment.
The policemen were issued with a ‘no knock’ warrant meaning that the police were allowed to force their way into her apartment without knocking and announcing themselves first.
The policemen did not in fact use their ‘no knock’ right. They knocked on the door and announced themselves: neighbours confirmed this. They entered the apartment and were faced by gunfire from Taylor’s current boyfriend who shot at the policemen, wounding one of them. The ‘Breonna lobby’ alleged that the policeman had been shot by friendly fire, but the evidence did not support this allegation.
In returning fire, the police shot and killed Taylor. Her boyfriend had moved behind her in the passage placing her between him and the police.
As predicted Cameron’s press conference was followed by violent protests because none of the policemen would be charged with murder. The outcome ran counter to the narrative of outrage.
The responses from representatives of the activist community were intensely insulting.
Tamika Mallory, controversial co-founder of the Women’s March, said: “I thought about the ships that went into Fort Monroe and Jamestown with our people on them over 400 years ago and how there were also Black men on those ships that were responsible for bringing our people over here.
“Daniel Cameron is no different than the sellout Negroes that sold our people into slavery and helped white men to capture our people, to abuse them, and to traffic them while our women were raped, while our men were raped by savages.”
Sophia A. Nelson, a regular pundit on CNN, tweeted: “Uncle Tom. Step & fetch Negro. The end.”
Retired Los Angeles Police Department Sergeant Cheryl Dorsey, said: “Let me say this as a Black woman: He does not speak for Black folks. He’s skin-folk, but he is not kinfolk. And so just like he thinks they can’t speak for Kentucky because he’s up there with a Black face, he does not speak for all of us. This was not a tragedy. This was a murder. He should be ashamed of himself.”
Cameron has said that he will release the tapes of the grand jury hearing. His detractors probably won’t even listen to them. The knowledge might disrupt their narrative and destroy the lie. And the fact that Cameron is a Republican remains a cause for accusations of treachery.
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