The bios that are emerging of those who have been arrested for breaking into the Capitol are grim. Some include association with QAnon (conspiracy theory). More than one were said to be white supremacists or white nationalists. Another was disapprovingly characterized as a neo-Confederate. Sky News reported that an Anti-Defamation League representative who was on the scene “saw members of several white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups among the pro-Trump crowds.”
All monsters, crazies, deranged lunatics. Easy to dismiss. Satisfying to see them get what’s coming. Whether or not they are a collection of deplorables, if they really did what they appear to have done (forcibly enter the Capitol, vandalize, steal, possibly murder), then peace-loving Americans should indeed relish in their capture and criminal prosecution. Let’s see what happens.
Inevitably, and quite understandably, there has been comparison between the Capitol riots and the BLM “mostly peaceful protests” of last summer. But some of the conclusions being made by some people on the left are not understandable. If the rioters were black, they would have been met with severe and brutal resistance by the police, goes one such narrative. OK. Well, one person was killed by the police at the Capitol. Have not heard much about that person: Ashli Babbit. She has not become an overnight cause. She has not been canonized or praised as a martyr. Nobody is demanding that we “say her name!” Nobody is demanding that the Capitol police be defunded. The scarce biographical information we find about Ms. Babbit informs us that she was a military veteran who, according to the New York Times, “delved into far right politics.” The Washington Post and other outlets have reported that she “avidly followed the QAnon conspiracy theory.”
That is all fine and well. But compare this to the media’s treatment of George Floyd, a deeply flawed human being whose criminal history includes armed breaking and entry for which he spent five years in prison. The media chose not to focus on Mr. Floyd’s criminal past, and drug abuse. Instead they talked about his personal struggles to overcome his past, his relationship with his children, and of course the final excruciating moments of his life, captured on video. They humanized him. Ashli Babbit has not been, and will not be (at least in the MSM), humanized. Ashli Babbit is a caricature, a paranoid nutcase. George Floyd a powerful and righteous symbol of presumed racial injustice in America. One is a joke. The other is a hero. One will be reviled, or at least dismissed, for what she thought. The other, celebrated, while people ignore the terrible actions he actually took.
So…If Ashli Babbit were black, and shot by the Capitol police, would she be as anonymous and dismissible as Ashli Babbit, the white female conspiracy follower?
None of this is to excuse Ashli Babbit for attempting to break into the Capitol. Nor is it to suggest that George Floyd deserved the painful death he suffered. This is simply to point out the hypocrisy of those who advance the absurd “what if they were black?” argument.