Rationalpolitik

Statement on the Ongoing Protests calling for an End to Police Brutality

PREAMBLE

As it was hard to miss, many major US cities have been quaking due to mass protests commenced in consequence to the heinous murder of an African-American citizen by a policeman. George Floyd, the citizen who was asphyxiated by policeman Derek Chauvin who knelt upon his neck for nine minutes until Floyd had deceased. Chauvin was backed by three colleagues, which didn't avoid a recording that led to a subsequent arrest a couple of days later. Floyd's death arrived only days after another unjustified murder of a US citizen of African-American origin—Ahmaud Arbery. Unlike Floyd, he was murdered by two citizens who made use of a “citizen's arrest”—a law that allowed them to arrest a criminal they encountered in flagranti. Still, they didn't choose to arrest him (he didn't commit a crime as he only snooped into the forefront of a construction site) but instead chased him until they finally shot him down. Both of them were arrested days after. 

What both of these back-to-back murders had in common was the particular feature of their victims: They both were African-Americans, and both of them were murdered by white men. Whilst white US citizens are absolutely fatally shot more often than their African-American counterparts, they also make up a greater part of the overall population. Thus, we should execute a small calculation: 

WHITE CITIZENS:	246,179,642 [76.5 %]*
BLACK CITIZENS:	34,984,096.082 [13.4 %]*

WHITE PEOPLE MURDERED BY POLICE:	408.67**
BLACK PEOPLE MURDERED BY POLICE:	222.33**
OVERALL FATAL SHOOTINGS IN THE US:	2,228**

(1)

(* of overall US population)

(** Average ratios from the three years displayed in the Statistics linked hereunder) 

The numbers are clear in this picture: While white people make up more than three quarter in the US' overall population, they accounted for only 18.34 percent of all shooting victims in the past three years (Caveat: As the fiscal year 2020 is only finished by half hitherto, the chiffres for this year are still pending). Likewise, almost ten percent (9.98 %) of all shooting victims were African-Americans. Hence, we could peak this calculation dramatically in the following manner: While African-Americans make up only a seventh of the US' overall population, their deaths experienced through police brutality are not even half to the deaths of white victims, who make up three quarter of the US overall population. There is a stark discrepancy to read from those statistics, even though the numbers of casualties and fatalities in comparison to the respective population are obliviously small. We could only be slightly relieved to see that this rat race did not bring up numbers beyond the decimal chiffres. 

Again, people are protesting the stagnant racism experienced by thousands even outside of shooting incidents—the people evidently claim that the legacy of the Jim Crow South prevailed until this day. They protested this legacy violently, drawing abundant criticism not only from the Alt-Right pretending to be upset about both, the murder as well as its aftermath and Conservatives concerned about the public's expense of the corresponding damage committed by the protesters, the looters, among others, but also from those who could be classified as moderates and were worried about the blurred message it sends: That the lack of damage control would leave behind only an image of people who subjected to George Floyd's death to “justifiably” destroy public utility vehicles (i.e. police cars), commissions and small businesses, among subsidiaries of nationwide warehouses and supermarkets (e.g. Walmart, Target, &c). The correspondence between righteous protests emphasising nuisances in our society are not exclusively known to US-Americans alone: In Germany too, a couple of years ago, the G20 summit hosted by the city of Hamburg drew extraordinarily violent protests from all around Europe to its attention, sparking a wild debate about where the limits of protests lied and where they morphed simply into sensations of vandalism. Another common feature were the accusations of a fringe right infiltration—that groups of white supremacists and other neo-fascist schools of thought undermined the otherwise dominantly left-winged and leftist protests (in Hamburg, there mainly were groups of Anarchist, anti-Capitalist and anti-Globalist movements equally dressed in pitch black gown) to surreptitiously ransack stores and destroy public property (2). What might be said is that we could suspect the share of fringe right extremist to remain marginal even though the MN officials mentioned in the second footnote's first source estimated their share to be of significant size. In the end, and according to occasionally spot cellphone video footage from the protests' “frontier”, most of the people were outraged African-Americans who were likely to have seen similar violence committed by policemen in their own neighbourhood. 

I. 

Alas, does their anger justify looting? Contrary to what many people on the internet seem to believe—these are just my two cents, of course, and do not necessarily reflect the ominous people's personal belief—, it is not. Many celebrities, such as Taylor Swift, already announced to pay arrested protesters' legal bills in case they should be put on trial for having caused damages, according to police reports. To many, this might have been a blow or a relief, depending on the side of the line they stood at. But imagining that perhaps, looters or vandals could be supported by celebrities in their trials might feel grotesque. Of course not all protesters who could see themselves in court in hindsight did in fact perform any damage against public institutions or businesses. Some might have been arrested for no apparent reason and then had to defend themselves against the injustice they experienced because they were lumped together with people who did commit such damages. the celebrities' call for relief could therefore easily be exploited, a matter-of-fact of which they should be aware. 

Other than that, why do I believe that a protest of any kind, in response to a crime of any degree, does not justify the destruction or damaging of at least private property? (Under specific circumstances) Because this might mislead the protest's target and injure the wrong individuals or entities. The question that, for such an evaluation, had to be proposed firstly is: Who is the perpetrator that should be put on trial and be punished in accordance with the given rule of law, presuming that this rule of law was worth defending and introducing to the very case that was in court? in Floyd's case, it's the executive branch of government, the police. It is neither any supermarket chain such as Walmart or Target, nor is it the everyman living in one's neighbourhood. some everymen might condone Floyd's murder and could therefore be viewed as wilful bystanders to such violence, at lest in regards to normalising it in our society. But to principally victimise them would still be unjustified unless they openly opposed the protest and even injured any protesters on their behalf. In this case, victimising them was justified. The problem is that any prophylactic victimisation would immediately backfire not only among moderates in society but also among like-minded individuals sceptical about exaggerated violence. Violence, as any use of power, had to be calculated, not adapted arbitrarily. 

II. 

Aside of private property, I didn't exclude public property, i.e. property constructed and established on the taxpayers' expense. Wouldn't this exclusion qualify as the utilisation of double standards? Only narrowly, so please allow me another explanation. Again, we deal with the murder of a public citizen by an official employed by the state of Minnesota. The police have got a long history of violence against innocent individuals in US history, in recent history in particular (3). Much anger has been suppressed by bonmots such as that justice awaited for every wrongdoer, and that one should abstain from lynch justice as this would make one a wrongdoer anyway, at worst leading towards mitigating circumstances lowering the sentence for the original proprietor. But when no justice seems to come for them, the valve had to be loosened to unload the jammed anger. And then, riots take place. It's not only because of this that in these days, one phrase once uttered by Martin Luther King Jr. had been quoted multiple times on the internet: “Riots are the language of the unheard”. While some people might believe that the usage of this quote as to have a popular figurehead justifying rioting (4), we shouldn't fall for the fallacy that has become so common in the public discourse: To generalise protestign “the correct way”. (We might also question whether a contributor to a political magazine could be more correct about MLK's remarks than the centre organisation concerning MLK's legacy. At least a debate could be held about it, there would be nothing to complain about it) Instead, we could contemplate a maxim surrounding Kant's “means to an end”, that there could be damage committed in a justifiable manner as it accelerated one's cause. Damage committed against the wrongdoer that sparked the protest in the first place—the police, in this case—could fall under this maxim. On the one hand, the people were able to retaliate Floyd's sudden and pointless death, and on the other hand, the (state and/or central) government were again reminded that their actions and subsequent inactivity would not remain untouched. To not do what had to be done—examining the root causes of this injustice and cleansing the executive branch of any such hacks—lied like a burden upon the people who could fall for such a fate as the scope of the victims of racism is particularly wide: Any African-American citizen could be victimised as had been shown multiple times beforehand. It was the governments' turn to prevent pointless murders at their behest, and as nothing had happened and racist murderers clothed in their uniforms were not discontinued, the protesters had any right to destroy public property, with the scope narrowed down to property in possession of the police, namely their vehicles and their buildings. In the end, it was the one opportunity to show that they would not give their security in for impotent obedience, and it was incomparable to the lives lost on the officials' lethargy, as ideological and pretentious as it may sound. 

Image by Bruce Emmerling from Pixabay

III. 

Now that some might have thought that this was going to becoming nothing better than an ideological onset towards justifying people's property for the good cause, I should sum my statement up with a short résumé: No, I do not condone damage committed against anyone who did not condone Floyd's murder or anyone who was not even closely related to anything that happened during this murder in broad daylight. The only targets that should have existed with those riots were the police commissions as mere buildings, and unseated police cars. Casualties of any kind and colour have to be avoided at all costs at least in terms of public display—when it comes to public movements, what matters first and foremost is the breadth of support the movement enjoys not only among the most like-minded people but also among those who represent the centrepiece of society, namely the moderates. Fatalities and casualties among people are poorly received and therefore have to be avoided. Moreover, to go astray from public relations stunts, it's also ethically questionable to hurt or even murder anyone to demand justice not only for a single murder but also for the well-being of our society. When it comes to social justice, what has to be achieved is unanimous tranquillity among the people, acceptance at least. Contrarily, tranquillity and peacefulness seldom achieve this when it comes to protests, as even MLK's “martyrdom” could not cease racism in the US, as has now been shown for another time. Mahatma Gandhi's march might be the sole evidence for peaceful protests putting oppression to an end. Hence, if protests usually aligned with the rule of law and a government's good conscience, one might question whether the paramount objective would ever come close to be reached. Protests have to be “calculatedly preposterous” from time to time to pressure legislators towards action in their favour. And if one can side with such protests because they could be understood as committing themselves to the good cause, the movement is likely to indeed fight the good fight. The existence of an opposition, regardless of its size, is not a sign of the opposed movement's irregularity or dubitability—discussions and mutual opposition are what drove our society towards glory in the first place, and assuming humankind to not be lost yet, the size of each side could determine whether a movement was worth supporting or opposing. Once the “good” side became the minority, we should ask ourselves where we were heading. But then, the issue at hand is completely different from where we stand now. 

— Oliver

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(1) “Number of people shot to death by the police in the United States from 2017 to 2020, by race”. Statista: https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/

 United States Census Bureau -- Quick Facts: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219

(2) The US: “Minnesota Officials Link Arrested Looters to White Supremascist Groups.” Courthouse News Service: https://www.courthousenews.com/minnesota-officials-link-arrested-looters-to-white-supremacist-groups/amp/

    Germany: “Gegen den 'kapitalistischen Ungeist'”. TAZ: https://taz.de/Rechtsextreme-bei-G20-Protest/!5428630/

(3) Miller, Marshall. “Police Brutality”. In: Yale Law & Policy Review 17 Yale L. & Pol'y Rev. (1998-1999). Link: https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/yalpr17&i=155

(4) No, Martin Luther King Was Not Pro-Riot. National Review: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/no-martin-luther-king-was-not-pro-riot/

(5) Additionally to the text but with no reference inside it whatsoever is the report then-POTUS Lyndon B. Johnson commenced after the Holyweek Uprising in 1968 in Baltimore, MD. Due to the conclusion the Senate subcommittee drew from its investigation, Johnson withdrew a public presentation as he apparently disliked what he read: That the police was the main driver of the violence the nation thereby observed. What we needed now was a similar investigation concluding what drove the people towards looting stores and destroying private property, although there were two reasons why we are not going to see such an investigation: 

1. President Trump already drew his own conclusion, claiming that Antifa activists, anarchists and others ignited the violence to damage him and his re-election chances in November. (the latter only opined and not heard from him)

2. The Senate in these times is obedient to President Trump so that their investigation's conclusions, unless conducted by independent investigators or state bureaucrats, were foreseeable in advance. 

 Still, the people deserve such an investigation, including a free release of the results to enjoy a clear sight of what actually happened during those protests and why they escalated so quickly and so infernally. 

As for the “Kernel Report”: “Report on the National Advisory Commission On Civil Disorders”. Link: http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/docs/kerner.pdf (PDF, 85,5 KB)