The people who have spent the summer setting communities on fire and razing businesses to the ground are not overwhelmingly “leftist radicals,” according to the Associated Press.
In fact, the news organization claims, “most of those arrested in U.S. protests look like regular citizens caught up in the moment — many are young suburban adults.”
What a disingenuous way to frame the story. And what are we to make of the explicit classism in the Associated Press’s language? Are we to believe that burning down a store is less indefensible if the perpetrator is a “young suburban adult” or that such a demographic is largely free of left-wing radicals?
“President Donald Trump portrays the hundreds of people arrested nationwide in protests against racial injustice as violent urban left-wing radicals,” the AP reports, suggesting that this is being done to “to scare suburban voters.”
Note the framing and the wording. People were “arrested nationwide in protests against racial injustice.” Oh, is that right? Was “racial injustice” at the top of the docket when they razed Kenosha, Wisconsin? Was protesting “racial injustice” the driving force behind the 60-day siege of a federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon?
“Very few of those charged appear to be affiliated with highly organized extremist groups, and many are young suburban adults from the very neighborhoods Trump vows to protect from the violence in his reelection push to win support from the suburbs,” the AP report continues.
It adds, “While some of the defendants clearly hold radical or anti-government beliefs, prosecutors have provided little evidence of any affiliations they have with organized extremist groups.”
The entire report is basically a 700-plus-word attempt to “well, actually” the self-identified left-wing radicals linked closely to this summer’s unrest and violence.
“Some of those facing charges undoubtedly share far-left and anti-government views,” the AP reports. “But many have had no previous run-ins with the law and no apparent ties to antifa, the umbrella term for leftist militant groups that Trump has said he wants to declare a terrorist organization.”
Even more depressingly, the report also tries to “both-sides” the issue by raising the separate issue of right-wing violence.
“Far-right protesters also have been arrested and charged,” the report notes. “[T]ucked into the protest-related cases are accusations of far-right extremism and racism as well.”
There is one part in the AP report in which its reporters, who are supposed to be playing it straight, tip their hand, revealing they are coming at the story from an ideological perspective.
It is when they write, “Even though most of the demonstrations have been peaceful.”
There were an estimated 10,600 demonstrations in the United States between May 24 and Aug. 22, according to a study by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project and the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University.
Of these protests, roughly 570 involved “demonstrators engaging in violence,” the group said. That means there were an estimated 570 violent demonstrations nationwide within the span of just 90 days. That is an average of six violent protests per day.
Further, the damage from the riots and looting is estimated to cost between $1 billion and $2 billion, according to the Insurance Information Institute.
This is not something to be proud of, and anyone in the press who claims “most of the demonstrations have been peaceful” is misleading you about the nature of the problem. It has to do with the sheer amount of violence, arson, and looting, not with whether a majority or plurality of gatherings were violent. The only thing more dishonest than the attempt to characterize the protests as “mostly peaceful” is the one that downplays the role that radical left-wing politics have played in all of this, the one that recasts the perpetrators as “regular citizens” and “young suburban adults” who simply got “caught up in the moment.”
