Legacy media are downplaying comparisons between the siege of the U.S. Capitol and the Black Lives Matter riots that took place over the summer, saying such comparisons are a “false equivalency” despite well-documented similarities.
The media have criticized Republicans for invoking the violence that plagued the Black Lives Matter protests to highlight their double standards regarding riots, saying there are few similarities between what transpired this summer and what occurred at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Instead, multiple outlets insist that the Capitol riots were a violent insurrection, while the social justice riots were mostly peaceful responses to legitimate grievances.
The “Save America March,” which devolved into the Capitol Hill riots on Jan. 6, resulted in the deaths of five people, including a woman who was fatally shot while trying to breach the House chamber and a Capitol Police officer who was injured by the surge of rioters who were forcing their way into the building. Authorities have yet to figure out how much it will cost to fix areas of the building that were vandalized, but reports indicate that it is likely taxpayers will end up footing the bill for the damage.
In the aftermath, Democrats impeached President Trump, charging him with inciting the mob that eventually descended on the Capitol grounds. Many Republicans opposed impeachment, charging Democrats with remaining silent about the violence that took place throughout the country over the summer. Democrats sharing some blame for a summer of unrest didn’t sit well with the media as they reported that there was little comparison between the competing sets of riots.
Trump’s supporters are “warping reality” by “exaggerating the unrest last summer” that only featured “isolated instances of property destruction and calls to defund the police,” the New York Times reported on Sunday.
But the claims that the destruction of property involved isolated instances are disputed, with one report showing that riots across 140 U.S. cities were expected to cause at least $1 billion to $2 billion in paid insurance claims, which would break the record set by the 1992 Los Angeles riots following the police beating of Rodney King.
In Minneapolis, where George Floyd’s death in police custody initially sparked the summer of unrest, Gov. Tim Walz’s office estimated that rioters damaged more than 1,500 businesses and caused over $500 million in property damage. Calls to defund the police became widespread, with at least 13 major cities making cuts to their police budgets in response. While the majority of U.S. residents oppose measures that would defund the police, polls find that the movement has the majority of support among black people.
In Seattle, demonstrators took over multiple city blocks of the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood and designated it the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, also known as CHOP, for over three weeks in June. The area was plagued with vandalism and violence, resulting in six people being shot during the area’s occupation.
A similar scene played out in Portland, Oregon, where protests and riots broke out for over 100 consecutive days and resulted in widespread vandalism and the shooting of a Trump supporter who was downtown participating in counterprotests. All told, damages in the city exceeded $23 million before the protests reached 100 days, with the federal courthouse in the city becoming a nightly target of vandalism.
While the New York Times debunked conspiracy theories claiming BLM protesters and antifa agitators orchestrated the Capitol riots, similar unfounded claims that right-wing agitators were to blame for the summer’s unrest were also made, but they were later found to have little basis in fact.
Some have argued that the majority of racial justice protest activity over the summer was peaceful despite the widespread damage to communities across the country. One report claimed that 93% of documented demonstrations did not cross the line, with instances of violence and destruction limited to a small group of bad actors in only a few protest locations.
Trump supporters who peacefully assembled in Washington have not been offered the same charity despite the fact that the vast majority of those in attendance did not take part in the storming of the building and ensuing destruction.
The Associated Press reported that the summer’s protests were “occasionally, but not frequently” violent, and ABC News pointed out that Black Lives Matter activists often “distanced themselves” from the minority of “provocateurs and instigators.”
All three outlets also criticized the rationale behind the Capitol demonstrations, saying that they were preceded by unfounded claims of election fraud. The social justice summer of unrest, on the other hand, was a result of the legitimate grievances over the unequal treatment of minority populations in the United States, the outlets argued.
While many in the media have been willing to brush aside the claims of election fraud demanding hard evidence, seldom have they required the same for claims of “systemic racism” made by the Black Lives Matter movement.
Economist and author Thomas Sowell, with decades of scholarship on racial disparities under his belt, is one critic who has questioned the legitimacy of modern-day social justice movements, saying that words such as “systemic racism” lack “meaning.”
“It really has no meaning that can be specified and tested in the way that one tests hypotheses,” Sowell said of systemic racism as unrest gripped the country over the summer. He added that the phrase reminded him of “propaganda tactics” that were used in Nazi Germany, and if a lie was “repeated long enough and loud enough,” it would become widely believed.
Other critics have pointed out that data contradicts the central claims of the BLM movement. The Wall Street Journal reported that African Americans represented about a quarter of the people who were fatally wounded by police in 2019, which is a “share of black victims” that is “less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects.”
Though claims of widespread fraud costing Trump the election are without sufficient evidence, concerns over unilateral changes to election law during the coronavirus pandemic have raised some legitimate legal questions, particularly in Pennsylvania.
“The Court’s handling of the important constitutional issue raised by this matter has needlessly created conditions that could lead to serious post-election problems,” Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said in October after the court declined to hear the Republican Party of Pennsylvania’s lawsuit challenging the secretary of state’s decision to extend mail-in balloting deadline.
“The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has issued a decree that squarely alters an important statutory provision enacted by the Pennsylvania Legislature pursuant to its authority under the Constitution of the United States to make rules governing the conduct of elections for federal office.”
A recent poll showed 3 out of 4 Republicans do not believe President-elect Joe Biden won the election legitimately.
But Biden has made uniting the country a central theme of his campaign and transition.
“Let’s give each other a chance,” Biden said after being declared the winner of the election by most media outlets.
“It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature, see each other again. Listen to each other again,” he continued. “And to make progress, we have to stop treating our opponents as our enemies. They are not our enemies. They are Americans. They’re Americans.”
