A roundup on the Antifa\/BlackLivesMatters riots still wracking the nation:<\/p>\n
At least one big-city mayor is now calling on the federal government to investigate what appears to be an \u201corganized\u201d effort to foment unrest and engage in rioting, as security experts in other cities discover evidence that many of the weekend\u2019s violent incidents may have been pre-planned and coordinated.<\/p>\n
In Chicago, mayor Lori Lightfoot told media Sunday that she believes there is \u201cstrong evidence\u201d of an organized effort to use the weekend\u2019s anti-police brutality protests as a cover for violence, Crain\u2019s Chicago Business reports, and said the city is speaking with at least three Federal agencies about a possible joint investigation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Snip.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no doubt. This was an organized effort last night,\u201d Lightfoot said in a weekend press conference, referring to Friday\u2019s unrest. \u201cThere were clearly efforts to subvert the peaceful process and make it into something violent.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
How the pandemic, idle hands and alienation helped create the conditions for the riots<\/a>:
\nMinneapolis and urban centers across America are burning, most directly in response to the brutal killing of a black man by a white Minnesota police officer. But the rage ignited by the death of George Floyd is symptomatic of a profound sense of alienation that has been building for years among millions of poor, working class urbanites. The already diminished prospects facing such people have only been worsened by the unforeseen onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic and the policies devised to combat it.<\/p>\n
Like earlier pandemics, the virus has devastated poorer communities, where people live in the most crowded housing, are forced to travel on public transport, and work in the most exposed \u201cessential\u201d jobs, most of which are badly paid. Unlike the affluent of Gotham, some 30 percent of whom were able to leave town and work remotely, the working class remained, forced to endure crowded conditions as the disease raged through the city. No surprise then that inhabitants of the impoverished Bronx have suffered nearly twice as many deaths from COVID-19 as those in the more affluent, but denser borough of Manhattan.<\/p>\n
This pattern can be observed globally. In Spain, the bulk of infections and reduced incomes are concentrated in poorer areas. Similar disparities can be found in countries as varied as China, Japan, France, and Italy. Even in egalitarian Singapore, infections have risen precipitously among the country\u2019s migrant workers\u2014an underclass who tend to live in crowded dormitories. Similarly, in Los Angeles the poor have died from COVID-19 at four times the rate of the city\u2019s overall population. In both New Orleans and Detroit, the vast majority of fatalities have been among disproportionately impoverished African Americans.<\/p>\n
As if this were not already quite bad enough, we are now starting to see the economic consequences of the lockdowns. In the US, roughly half of all job losses in April were in low-paying fields such as restaurants, hotels, and amusement parks; in contrast information and finance jobs were barely touched. Almost 40 percent of those Americans making under $40,000 a year have lost their jobs as the wage gains made during the first two years of the Trump administration largely evaporated.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Snip.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most alarming development during these riots has been the urgent revival of what urban historian Fred Siegel calls \u201cthe riot ideology.\u201d The roots of this thinking can be traced to the late-1960s when they were set down among progressive analysts who decided that violence and looting constituted a just response to abuses by law enforcement and other agents of oppression. This notion became painfully popular during the 1992 LA riots, which I covered as a journalist, when random looting and even killings were applauded by some radical activists as part of a glorious \u201crebellion\u201d or uprising.<\/p>\n
Today, two generations later, this ideology is staging a comeback. Progressive outlets like Vox scold anyone who refers to outbreaks of widespread mayhem and looting as \u201criots\u201d preferring to describe them as righteous protests; Mother Jones says that anyone using the word \u201criot\u201d to describe violent looters is intrinsically racist. Writers at the New York Times have even proposed \u201cde-funding\u201d police forces in favor of spreading more money to other government programs. Slate, for its part, endorsed the burning of the Minneapolis police station as \u201ca reasonable reaction\u201d to George Floyd\u2019s death, and suggested that such wanton destruction is a \u201cquintessentially American response, and a predictable one\u201d comparable to the Boston Tea Party and Stonewall.<\/p>\n
National Democratic leaders, including presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden, have been strangely reluctant to denounce the violence, while correctly criticizing President Trump for his needlessly inflammatory tweets. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has quoted Martin Luther King\u2019s remark that \u201ca riot is the language of the unheard\u201d and stripped it of its original context to decorate the current violence with the romanticism of justice. Radical Minneapolis firebrand Rep. Ilhan Omar has suggested that her constituents are \u201cterrorized\u201d by the presence of the police and National Guard.<\/p>\n
Deep blue Mayors like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a 38-year-old progressive focused heavily on racial injustice, cede the streets to the most violent elements, even abandoning a police station that was set alight\u2014a response former St. Paul Mayor and Senator Norm Coleman called \u201cstunning.\u201d Rather than contain demonstrations, some cities initially conceded critical urban space to the rioters to the point of threatening prime central city real estate. In Chicago, city officials, much like their Medieval counterparts, raised the bridges over the Chicago River to keep the protestors out of affluent parts of the central city.<\/p>\n
Remarkably, these mayors seem to be largely indifferent to the rise of largely white, anarchist groups, like Antifa, who can be seen in videos committing acts of vandalism and violence, even over the objections of African American protestors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Tucker Carlson thinks that President Donald Trump hasn’t been tough enough cracking down on rioters<\/a>:\n