Some riots are protests and some protests are riots, depending on the participants and their causes, and who’s describing them. From Patrick J. Buchanan at buchanan.org:
To Parliament, in the London of George III, the Boston Massacre of 1770 and the Tea Party of 1773 were not seen in the same light as they were by the Sons of Liberty in the Massachusetts colony.
To Parliament, this was mob violence, and the shooting and killing at Lexington and Concord were acts of insurrection and treason.
But because we won the Revolution, those events are portrayed and remembered differently. For when it comes to riots and revolutions, all depends on who writes the narrative of history. It is the winners.
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,” said George Orwell in his novel “1984.”
To the media, the long hot summer of rioting, looting and arson that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis was driven by “racial justice” protests against a “systemic racism” that permeates society.
The rioters were calling attention to injustices we Americans have failed to address, like police brutality. And almost all of these “peaceful protesters” were calling us to be a better people.
And did not the riots produce beneficial results?
