Because a Milwaukee police officer shot and killed an armed black man last night, a mob gathered and set businesses ablaze and those that weren’t torched were looted.
I would describe last night’s events in Milwaukee as a riot.
However, DeRay McKesson, a prominent member of Black Lives Matter, views last night’s events this way on Twitter:
I denounce the state violence that led to any protests in the first place.
— deray (@deray) August 14, 2016
A protest?
I suppose by that reasoning the “protesters” in Milwaukee who stole iPhones were Keynesians in the rough.
Somehow I believe Martin Luther King, Jr. had a very different understanding of what the term protest means than DeRay McKesson.
But the fact that McKesson characterizes the actions of the police as “state violence” is basically an endorsement of anarchy. It is clear that McKesson views the man who stole a gun was above the law and that the police have no right to enforce the law and maintain order. As I have argued previously, Black Lives Matter’s raison d’etre is to delegitimize the police.
This might seem far fetched to some. But tomorrow, I have an article going up about the NFL refusing to permit the Dallas Cowboys from wearing a decal on their helmets honoring the five Dallas police officers slain last month during a Black Lives Matter protest. While it might not be the NFL’s intent, their refusal to let the Cowboys honor men who died keeping their city safe is yet another step towards marginalizing and delegitimizing law enforcement in this country. And if law enforcement is eventually delegitimized, we won’t have a country.
