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An Old Crisis re-ignites, and Trump responds with Distraction
As the country burns, Trump borrows an old tactic from authoritarian regimes
“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.” -Martin Luther King
The United States has erupted into crisis — more than a dozen cities smolder from the aftermath of riots sparked by the killing of George Floyd, merely the latest in a long string of police killings of unarmed black men. Amidst civil unrest not seen on this scale since the 60’s and as a pandemic rages that has killed over 100,000 US citizens, protests rage in over 28 cities and the U.S government is responding with a tactic from a very old playbook.
De-legitimizing the protesters.
African-Americans have watched countless members of their community killed as police officers or would-be vigilantes walked away with impunity for centuries. For hundreds of years they have been promised that this would change — it has not. And now this long simmering crisis of injustice has erupted once again into civil uprising. Sizable protests have manifested in at least 29 American cities as multitudes take to the streets.
In the theater of the street protest, how a movement is perceived is critical to its…
