Last week, the January 6th Commission held its first hearings, in which the capitol police officers gave their testimony regarding what they saw and experienced during the assault. Strangely, the Blue Lives Matter crowd was nowhere to be seen. Crickets.
What happened to Blue Lives Matter?
Blue Lives Matter was a pro-police initiative erected in direct opposition to Black Lives Matter. It was blatantly racist and opportunistic; it attempted to deflect attention away from extrajudicial murders committed by police, as well as the flagrant abuses against peaceful protesters, over the course of the summer 2020 protests. And it completely disintegrated on January 6, 2021.
January 6th placed police in direct opposition to their own supporters as they stormed the Capitol Building. In some of the early footage, the terrorists can be heard pleading, “Let us through. We don’t have a problem with you.” But the police had a sworn duty to protect the capitol.
It wasn’t long before violence broke out. Things got so bad that five officers—including Officer Brian Sicknick from my state of NJ—were killed by the marauders. Later, one Capitol Police officer reported seeing their colleague beaten with Blue Lives Matter flags.
The problem was, from the beginning, that conservative support for police was contingent upon being allowed to break the law. In Philadelphia, PA, during the summer of 2020, vigilantes were sanctioned by the police to attack protesters. This same story played out in Kenosha, WI, where Kyle Rittenhouse was hanging out with police before he went and killed two protesters.
Prior to January 6th, armed—I don’t want to call them protesters—Trump supporters gained entry into the Michigan State Capitol to protest the coronavirus lockdown. The police, amazingly, did not make any attempt to remove them from the building. The Michigan state legislature would shut down more than once amid violent threats from Trump supporters. Later, the FBI would foil a plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer.
None of these prior events had ever caused the police to look a gift horse in the mouth, until January 6th, when desperate necessity severed their relationship with conservatives. The moment when police weren’t going to just let in a bunch of “tourists” armed with Molotov cocktails, bear spray, and zip ties, was the moment when conservatives could no longer support the police.
I would like to keep this mostly beyond the scope of this essay, but it is worth noting that the GOP is desperately trying to erase January 6th in the public consciousness, doing, among its members, what the Chinese did with Tiananmen Square. How can you support the police if the police know you beat them with Blue Lives Matter flags?
No comments:
Post a Comment