@The_Dybbuk #46924
It isn’t entirely a “strawman on the right”, headlines were calling him a “gentle giant”. You can find many such websites just by googling “George Floyd gentle giant”.
It’s true that none of his actions warrant being killed over, equally his murder does not warrant the mass hysteria that followed with violent protests, statues being destroyed (and no they weren’t all confederate soldiers), stores being looted and even many innocent people being killed including David Dorn, a retired black cop. Did his life matter? Not to BLM.
The US has a population of ~330 million, ~43 million of which are black, millions of police interactions. The number of ALL people killed by police (white majority included) last year is around 1000 (that’s an average of 20 per state), only 240 are black, most are career criminals and people who are not cooperative with law enforcement. No evidence that any of them were killed for their race. The odds of this happening to you just minding your own business are pretty fucking slim.
Sure, there is room for reform, you can ask what about Europe? Okay, so why were there protests in Europe including violent encounters in UK, a country that goes out of its way to train officers for non-lethal takedowns and where very few people die (both absolute numbers and per capita) there when interacting with police.
I’ve even seen a small BLM protest as far as Romania, an eastern European country with very few blacks and no known cases of a black person killed by police. The protest was not even primarily about police brutality (like other European countries, police will use a lot less force to subdue a suspect compared to the US), the organizer used this as an opportunity to attack capitalism.
These are not merely protests over police brutality (Europe is already doing fine, you basically have to be a violent maniac to get shot in a European country and even then there’s a good chance you’ll survive just being shot in the leg or knocked out) they’re an attempt to start a cultural revolution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mZvOchD2Lc
Google translated: We condemn white supremacy in all its forms: systemic racism, police crimes and violence, patriarchy, colorism, capitalism, classism, hatred of women, transgender people and sex workers!
