Establishment Media Openly Defend Rioting as Ferguson Burns - Alex Newman

by Alex Newman


After months of fomenting strife, hate, and unrest surrounding the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, the increasingly discredited establishment press — Time magazine, in particular, but others too — has taken it to the next level. On November 25, Time published an incendiary “opinion” piece headlined “Ferguson: In Defense of Rioting.” As the title suggests, the commentary defends the perpetration of violence following a grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Wilson on charges of murder and manslaughter. But the piece goes even beyond that, calling riots “necessary” to the “evolution” of society.

Since the grand jury’s decision was announced on Monday night, Ferguson has faced even more violence than was experienced in August in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Outraged and agenda-driven agitators — many from out of town — seized on the news as an excuse to run wild, steal, destroy property, and more. Businesses were burned to the ground and looted. Even a local church was not spared by the frenzied and violent mob. According to news reports, more than 160 gunshots were fired by “protesters,” too. At least one man died amid the chaos. Pictures that emerged after the latest round of rioting and looting revealed an American suburb that looked more like a war zone.

In response to the tragedy, Time magazine published its pro-rioting piece by Darlena Cunha, who also serves as a contributor to a wide array of other establishment mouthpieces including the Washington Post. “The violent protests in Ferguson, Mo., are part of the American experience,” reads the sub-header for the Time “Ideas” column promoting riots and senseless violence as a proper and effective means of achieving political goals. “Peaceful protesting is a luxury only available to those safely in mainstream culture.” Cunha then goes even further: “Riots are a necessary part of the evolution of society.” To defend her thesis, she even cites the Boston Tea Party, equating it with the current mayhem enveloping Ferguson.

“Because when you have succeeded, it ceases to be a possibility, in our capitalist society, that anyone else helped you,” Cunha continues, dismissing the explanation offered by one critic of the rioting who blamed the violence on the establishment-promoted mentality of “blaming everyone else” for one’s own failures. “And if no one helped you succeed, then no one is holding anyone else back from succeeding. Except they did help you, and they are holding people back. So that blaming someone else for your failures in the United States may very well be an astute observation of reality, particularly as it comes to white privilege versus black privilege.”

Before saying blacks are more apt to riot, race-obsessed Cunha insists that she is not racist, styling herself a “realist” instead. “Until I have had to walk in a person of color’s skin, I will never understand, I will always take things for granted, and I will be inherently privileged,” she claimed. “But by ignoring the very real issues this country still faces in terms of race to promote an as-of-yet imaginary colorblind society, we contribute to the problem at hand, which is centuries of abuses lobbied against other humans on no basis but that of their skin color.” Nowhere does Time or Cunha point out that the allegedly racist American people twice elected Obama, who is half black, to be president.

“I would put forth that peaceful protesting is a luxury of those already in mainstream culture, those who can be assured their voices will be heard without violence, those who can afford to wait for the change they want,” Cunha writes in her widely criticized and ridiculed defense of rioting. “Blacks in this country are more apt to riot because they are one of the populations here who still need to. In the case of the 1992 riots, 30 years of black people trying to talk about their struggles of racial profiling and muted, but still vastly unfair, treatment, came to a boil.” Of course, countless black Americans — including many whose businesses were looted and burned down in recent days — would likely take offense at the bizarre notion that their “population,” which in Cunha’s world is apparently defined solely by melanin content, “need” to riot.

Concluding the bizarre argument, Cunha goes on to defend the individuals involved in the violence, looting, and rioting, suggesting they are merely “angry” at “the system” and that stealing and destroying other people’s property while shooting randomly may be justified responses. “Instead of tearing down other human beings who are acting upon decades of pent-up anger at a system decidedly against them, a system that has told them they are less than human for years, we ought to be reaching out to help them regain the humanity they lost, not when a few set fire to the buildings in Ferguson, but when they were born the wrong color in the post-racial America,” she said. It was not immediately clear who told blacks they were “less than human for years” or how having slightly more melanin content made somebody the “wrong color.”

Cunha’s argument was promptly attacked by critics as absurd. Rick Moran at American Thinker, for example, pointed to the business owners (“almost all of them minorities”) who watched helplessly as their lifetime dreams went up in smoke. “There are, indeed, justifications for breaking the law. But there is nothing ‘political’ about destroying property not your own, injuring people, and taking what you want without payment,” he wrote, ridiculing the notion that burning, smashing, and looting could be legitimized as some sort of “political statement” that Americans had better submit to.

“Even if you buy into the dubious ‘white privilege’ sociological crap, you must recognize that when law and order break down, we are left with the rule of the jungle. And in a jungle, only the strong benefit from mayhem. The victims are those who can't or won't fight back,” Moran concluded. “So Ms. Cunha is actually supporting jungle law vs. civilization – a civilization that makes possible her freedom to publish nonsensical screeds like this without worrying about anyone setting her house on fire or looting her belongings. Wouldn't that be a ‘political’ statement, too?”

Cunha was not alone in openly defending rioting. Gawker, a widely read website that largely peddles celebrity gossip, even published a piece purporting to make the “economic case” supposedly justifying wanton destruction of property and violence. “There is, of course, the historical case to be made for rioting: the past is replete with examples where rioting gets the goods,” the piece argues. “But there is also, I'd submit, an even more straightforward case for rioting: at the right levels, rioting is economically efficient.” According to Gawker’s commentary, by rioting and looting, Ferguson residents are teaching authorities a lesson while making future shootings of citizens by police less likely through the imposition of heavy “costs” on taxpayers, businesses, and residents.

Meanwhile, more than a few analysts have suggested that the rioting and looting in Ferguson may have been deliberately fomented by the establishment and its mouthpieces in the press. “Either this was a case of almost unbelievable incompetence, or there was someone out there that actually wanted this to happen,” argued analyst Mike Snyder with the popular Economic Collapse blog in a widely cited piece, citing 10 supposed “coincidences” that contributed to the latest chaos. “If someone out there is actually trying to provoke more violence in Ferguson, then the rioters are being played like a fiddle. Most of them have no idea that they could potentially just be pawns in a game that is far larger than they ever imagined. The only other alternative to explain what we just saw is incompetence on a level that is absolutely laughable.”

Some in law enforcement even argued that Obama, outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, and other top federal officials were subtly helping to instigate the mayhem in Ferguson. “When I heard the president call for calm after the rioting started, I questioned his sincerity because some of his political strategy of divide and conquer fuels this sort of racial animosity between people,” argued Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who happens to be a black Democrat. “And so, I think when he called for calm after the rioting started, I believe it was done with a wink and a nod.” Of course, the administration has already come under fire for inciting and fanning racial tensions and unrest on numerous occasions.

While the anti-capitalist screed in Time drew swift condemnation and ridicule from the alternative and conservative-leaning press, such half-baked agitation and promotion of unrest and division has actually become a staple among the mischaracterized “mainstream” media — though perhaps not quite as openly as Cunha’s piece. From giving respectability and credibility to race-mongers and profiteers to wildly sensationalizing stories that help advance the Big Government agenda, the increasingly discredited establishment press appears to be becoming more and more brazen in its efforts to distort the facts and foment chaos for sinister purposes.

Indeed, the establishment-manufactured violence serves a number of important goals. For one, it helps keep the American people divided based on arbitrary characteristics such as “race,” “class,” “gender,” and more. Fanning the flames of hate and division while keeping the public focused on blaming other races, classes, and genders also distracts from the real issues and the real sources of many real problems plaguing America today: Big Government, globalism, anti-constitutional governance, the looting of the nation by the establishment via its banking cartel and currency monopoly, and more.       

The American people should reject the race-based hatred and division being deceitfully promoted by the establishment and its propaganda organs — along with the looting, violence, and rioting. Instead, Americans of goodwill should reach across the aisle to deal with the underlying causes of so many problems facing the nation today. There are many indeed. But contrary to Time’s absurd narrative, a lack of riots, violence, and thievery to achieve “justice” are not among them.


Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at

anewman@thenewamerican.com

Source: http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/19613-establishment-media-openly-defend-rioting-as-ferguson-burns

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