What was the most demented moment of the Black Lives Matter summer of 2020, asks Dan Hannan in the Washington Examiner. For him, it was “when 1,200 public health officials declared that, although meeting other people was a health risk, especially if you were protesting the lockdowns, demonstrating in support of BLM was fine”. Here’s an excerpt.
Few dared speak out against this obvious madness. Being the only sane person during a spasm of collective psychosis is dangerous, and it truly was a collective psychosis, triggered by months of confinement, with people poring over their screens instead of going out with friends.
Almost every organisation joined the bedlam. Congressional Democrats knelt in Ghanaian stoles for 8 minutes, 46 seconds, the amount of time Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck. The New York Stock Exchange observed an eight-minute silence.
McDonald’s changed its name on all social media platforms to “Amplifying Black Voices”’ Apple replaced its music app radio stations with a single stream playing N.W.A’s “Fuck Tha Police” on repeat. Lego cancelled advertising for its police-related toys. Woe betide you if you did not post a black square on June 2nd 2020, to mark #BlackOutTuesday. …
Britain went every bit as bonkers as the United States, from the Royal Family down. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, then leader of the Opposition, took the knee, as did every Premier League soccer player at the start of matches. Oxford University granted black students extra time on their exams. Bookshops replaced their usual stock with Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility and Ibram X. Kendi’s How to be an Antiracist. Even British children’s shelves were filled with nagging morality tales.
The BBC, like CNN, lost all self-awareness. Its presenters gabbled about “mainly peaceful protests” while viewers watched footage of burning buildings and injured police officers. People lost their jobs for saying ‘All Lives Matter’, which is about the most uncontroversial statement imaginable in normal times. One retired policeman actually went to prison for posting a tasteless joke about Floyd in a private WhatsApp group.
Ten billion dollars were poured into the coffers of BLM and BLM-adjacent outfits without anyone daring to ask what it would be used for. … To this day, no one has much idea of where the $10 billion went or who has it now.
We’re currently living through an anti-woke backlash and much of the overreach is being rolled back. But Hannan remains pessimistic for the future: “The needle never quite moved back to where it was. … Leftists sometimes talk of a ‘long march through the institutions’, but in truth, it is a long Foxtrot with occasional backward steps.”
Worth reading in full.
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