George Floyd, and So Much More
The last week of May has been one of, if not the, worst weeks in my lifetime for the USA. We hit 100,000 recorded deaths from COVID-19, still outpacing every country on Earth in new cases per day, even as we start reopening. Nearly one in four working age Americans is jobless. And of course, those issues were all but forgotten with the news of George Floyd’s killing. Now, the images we see from cities across the country look like war zones or third world countries. In a week’s time, we’ve gone from a Memorial Day optimistic about reopenings, to a sad but necessary reminder that “it can happen here”.
As the resulting protests turned from peaceful to violent, many wondered how it even related to Floyd anymore. Truth be told, I think his death was more of a catalyst that started the inevitable, than the sole reason for this unrest. At the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, I wrote a piece making various predictions about its impacts, and one of them was as follows.
In the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008, we saw a social movement in the form of Occupy Wallstreet. If this period continues to increase hardship for non-elites, we could see an even bigger equivalent social movement.
See, this protest was in part about the wrongful killing of George Floyd, but it’s also about much more. It’s about generations of racial oppression. It’s about all the previous times innocent minorities’ lives were taken, followed by protests, followed by no real reform. It’s about decades of economic oppression that are more evident than ever given our historic unemployment. It’s about a growing sense of hostility between different sides of the political aisle. All these have been put on display by the COVID-19 pandemic, and people are angry as a result. Once that happened, this country was like a gas leak, just waiting for a spark to ignite. George Floyd’s death was that spark.
I expect that these protests will quiet down, but don’t think they’ll go away altogether any time soon. Given the tension levels we’re seeing in this country, it’s likely we’ll have another spark before November, and more large-scale protests will follow.
One of the things that’s bothered me the most with this unrest is that it’s hard to feel good about what any of the groups involved did. George Floyd was murdered, and later the police used force on the initial peaceful protests, unlike the armed occupation of a state capitol building. Protests are necessary for a healthy democracy, and a vast majority of the protestors were fighting for a good cause, but it gets hard to support them when it turns to looting stores without any clear message of what they’re even fighting for. Many cities have enacted curfews, which are constitutionally questionable, as they infringe on freedom to protest, but it’s not like they can sit back while the city gets destroyed. Political opportunists from either side of the aisle will use this to justify their positions: the right will blame Black Lives Matter and antifa for the destruction, while the left will pin it on white supremacist groups.
It’s hard to see a winner in any of this.
That is, until you look outside the US. The clear winner of our past week was Russia. This is exactly what they hoped for when they interfered with our elections to get Trump elected. I understand that’s a weighty claim, so here’s some evidence:
Russia interfered in the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump. This is a fact that was concluded by the bipartisan (but majority Republican) Senate Intelligence Committee. The Mueller Report found that Russia was trying to “provoke and amplify political and social discord in the United States.”
It’s not hard at all to find examples of Donald Trump fanning the flames of racism and inciting violence. His senior advisor is a known white supremacist. One of his first acts as President was the Muslim ban. He was the leader of the birther movement. His campaign was based on building a wall to keep Mexicans out. At a campaign rally, he told supporters to “knock the crap out of” protestors. During his impeachment hearing, he suggested that someone should kill the whistleblower of his Ukraine call. Later he tweeted about a civil war if he was removed. Some people look past these incendiary comments, but there have been plenty of acts of violence done by citizens on behalf of Trump. His rhetoric matters.
Trump repealed criminal justice reform measures that President Obama had enacted. These reforms weren’t the final solution, but they were a step in the right direction, and are the exact type of thing the protestors want: lasting, fundamental changes. Repealing those measures was a step towards more hostile police-citizen relations.
The book Foundations of Geopolitics was written in 1997 by Aleksandr Dugin, a political strategist with ties in the Kremlin. It essentially laid out a game plan for how Russia can become as powerful as possible. It’s written in Russian, but its Wikipedia page includes an English overview that’s worth reading to see how much of it has come true (e.g. Brexit). Here’s what it said about the USA:
Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics".
With the exception of the last sentence, which perfectly describes Trump’s “America First” philosophy, the passage explains exactly what is going on right now.
Given all of this, it certainly seems like things are going exactly as planned for Russia. In November 2016, 63 million Americans believed Trump’s America would be a return to greatness. But on the opposite side of the World, Vladimir Putin dreamed of this. And he was right. This is Trump’s America. This is why a hostile foreign country worked so hard to get him elected.
Path Forward
I think a big piece that’s missing in all of the protesting is a voice of leadership. At least as far as I have seen, there is no MLK or Malcolm X of today leading the movement. Without that, there’s no concrete direction or objectives. If there was a vocal, widely-known leader, they could act as a liaison with people in power to express what the protestors are fighting for, and what could be done. The officer who killed Floyd has already been arrested and the protests continue, so there’s clearly more to it than that, but unless that “something else” can be adequately expressed, what is the goal of all the destruction and disruption? It’s very possible some influences are preventing another MLK/Malcolm X from rising to prominence, I’ll admit I’m ignorant on that front. All I know is, there needs to be better leadership, or there won’t be cooperation between the sides, and without that, nothing can improve.
So try to be a leader in day-to-day life. That doesn’t need to be anything extreme, just set a good example, and be the one who’s willing to go against the pack when the pack is headed to a bad place. Speak up against hate.
Also, look at how Joe Biden has visited a protest site, and gave this 5 minute talk about the past week. Then compare that to Trump, who, instead of talking with protestors, hid in a bunker from the people he’s supposed to be leading, and went on Twitter tirades glorifying violence. Ask yourself who is stepping up and being a leader, who is looking for solutions, who you would rather listen to for the next four years, then vote that way come November. The answer should be obvious.
