All Black Lives Matter equally and as much as George Floyd – Bill Carmichael

One you have almost certainly heard of, in fact you would have to be in lockdown on another planet to miss the wall to wall news coverage.

But curiously, the other death has been virtually invisible from news headlines and totally ignored by most politicians, celebrities and the Twitterati.

It is interesting to explore this incredible disparity of response to the two deaths that, on the surface at least, have much in common.

The first is, of course, George Floyd, who died during an arrest in Minneapolis after a white police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes, ignoring his pleas that he couldn’t breathe. The officer has been charged with murder.

Mr Floyd’s death has sparked protests across America, some peaceful, many not, with widespread rioting that has turned many US cities into smoking ruins, costing numerous lives and destroying thousands of homes and businesses, many of them black-owned.

The protests have even reached the UK with demonstrations in London this week – although I must admit I don’t understand how punching a police officer in Downing Street is supposed to solve racial inequalities in the US.

And of course Hollywood celebrities have been quick to jump on the virtue signalling bandwagon, some of them egging on the violence, safe in their gated communities, surrounded by armed guards, and a long way from the burning black neighbourhoods that they care about so, so deeply.

The other black man who died this week was David Dorn. If you have not heard of him, you are in the vast majority.

This is because Mr Dorn’s death received hardly any coverage. I’ve done a search for the names of the two men in several major news outlets, including the BBC, and the disparity is astonishing – tens of thousands of results for Mr Floyd’s name, and single figures, if that, for Mr Dorn’s.

Why such a huge difference? Well, I am afraid the only answer I can come up with is that Mr Dorn was the “wrong sort” of black man. His death did not fit in with the prevailing narrative, and therefore has to be ignored. And as anyone knows who observes our current culture wars, the narrative is far more powerful than the actual facts.

Mr Dorn was a former police officer who was shot in cold blood as he tried to defend a friend’s shop from a mob of looters in St Louis. According to 
the orthodoxy he simply can’t be considered a victim, because he was a police officer. He must be erased from the record and forgotten about as quickly as possible.

You’ll probably never hear about Mr Dorn again, but you’ll be hearing about Mr Floyd for the rest of your life. All black lives matter, but some black lives matter more than others.

Meanwhile the mainstream US media is gaslighting the American public, telling them the disgusting violence they can see on their TV screens every night is not really happening. The mantra, repeated ad infinitum, is that the protests are “mostly peaceful”, which of course means they are not peaceful at all.

There is even footage of a TV reporter standing in front of a blazing building set alight by the mob, insisting the riot going on around him is “not, generally speaking, unruly”, which would be hilarious if it wasn’t so serious.

Two takeaways from this. Firstly, the gun control debate in the US is finished. The events of the last week have demonstrated to ordinary Americans that they cannot rely on the government to protect their lives and property – they have to do it for themselves.

As a result sales of guns and ammunition will absolutely rocket – and there is no way on earth that those people will ever give up their weapons, regardless of how many mass shootings happen in the future.

Second, in the forthcoming Presidential election, the Democrats have put themselves very firmly on the side of the mob, with staffers on Joe Biden’s campaign even going so far as to post bail for arrested rioters.

If Donald Trump can position himself as a defender of ordinary people, both black and white, trying to protect their homes and business from violent and lawless insurrection, he could be in for a landslide in November.

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James Mitchinson

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