BLM "riots" in 1967

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There were riots during the BLM protests. We saw it being recorded around the country for ourselves. But I guess they don't call us "The United States of Amnesia" for nothing.

Oh and there were MAGA riots at the Capital on January 6th too. Let's not forget that either.

Both sides like to riot! And then pin the blame on the other while refusing to acknowledge their part in the riots.

In both cases, there were both peaceful protestors AND rioters. In both cases, the peaceful protesters were the vast majority and should NOT be blamed for the actions of the rioters.

Organizers of peaceful protests are simply not in a position to control what everyone attracted to a given protest (for whatever reason) will do. The organizers can urge people to behave themselves, and, if someone starts trouble during the protest itself, the organizers can try to isolate and expel that person from the main protest area. But there's not much more the protest organizers can do to stop the bad actors.

On January 6, 2021, there were plenty of law-abiding people who attended the "Stop the Steal" rally but did NOT participate in the Capitol riot. However, what made the Capitol riot worse (in some sense, at least) than the BLM-related riots was that the Capitol riot was an attempt at forcible interference in the Constitutionally mandated process of electing the next President.

Another important difference between the Capitol riot and the BLM-related riots is that the Capitol rioters were led by politically-purposeful groups of extremists, e.g. the Proud Boys, whereas the BLM-related rioters seem to have been mostly opportunistic criminal gangs seizing an opportunity to loot.

By and large, their approach — used by people ranging from random Twitter posters to members of Congress — has been to deny, minimize, justify, or explain away. The excuses and explanations have multiplied, often canceling each other out: It was just a protest that got slightly out of hand, with no real violence. It was a "false flag" operation by antifa, the violent far-left group, impersonating Trump supporters. The vast majority of the Trump supporters were just harmless middle-age tourists who were basically taking a tour of the Capitol and who were actually invited in by Capitol Hill police. Violence by left-wing protesters during the summer of 2020 was just as bad or even worse.

The minimizers mock the notion that Jan. 6 was an attempted coup, pointing out that the rioters had no chance of actually seizing power or of preventing Joe Biden’s certification as the election winner. That much is true. But it seems clear that they believed they had a good chance to thwart Biden (or, as they saw it, to "stop the steal"). No less important, it appears that Trump believed his supporters could successfully intimidate Congress into handing him the victory.

When the president of the United States eggs on a mob of his supporters to invade the Capitol and force Congress to reverse the results of an election, and that mob manages to seize the building and force the lawmakers into hiding, that’s an attack on our democracy even if the coup had no chance of succeeding.

Trump supporters have a smidgen of a point when they argue that many major media outlets and progressive politicians downplayed or excused the violence and damage from rioting that often erupted during the racial justice protests of 2020, which caused severe economic and social damage in many cities. I, for one, would welcome hearings on that issue as well. But the Jan. 6 insurrection stands apart as a violent assault on the seat of our democracy encouraged by the former president himself.

The fact that so many members of one of our two major parties are excusing this attack just makes it more dangerous.

You are aware that the BLM riots were all over the news right?