The soft left must shoulder blame for fuelling anarchy

Victoria’s Labor government gave its blessing to a Black Lives Matter protest in Melbourne. Picture: AFP

The moral purpose of punishing violent crime is to teach people that violence does not pay. For civil society to endure, the punishment for violence must be greater than the reward. When the reverse is true, society is torn apart.

The reaction of the political-media class to the George Floyd protests has been a lesson in moral cowardice. Leaders have abrogated the responsibility to lead. Instead, the soft left has capitulated to the demands of special-interest groups for the right to destroy, burn, maim and kill in the name of racial equality. If the past week is what racial equality looks like, civil society has no future.

The first Australian protest against George Floyd’s death was held in the nation’s capital. Under the banner of Black Lives Matter, a crowd walked to Parliament House. Like their comrades in the US, the Australian race protesters flouted social-distancing rules put in place to prevent COVID-19 transmission. The police did not intervene.

Further protests planned for the weekend were given the blessing of premiers and police commissioners. We would expect nothing better from Victoria, where socialist Labor is in government. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews previously allowed public servants to take time off work for climate change protests.

The Queensland Labor government also gave a green light for race protests at the weekend despite COVID social-distancing restrictions applying to other groups. But South Australia wins the gold medal for double standards with a Liberal government that maintains COVID social-distancing ­restrictions on businesses but lets activists gather en masse.

SA Premier Steven Marshall was missing in action as the police commissioner, Grant Stevens, granted race activists the right to march while everyone else is banned from gatherings of more than 80 people. Only NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian upheld equality under the law by saying COVID social-distancing measures applied to everyone. As such, protests would not be permitted in her state. But on Saturday, the NSW Court of Appeal rejected her decision.

Australians are learning that special-interest groups are above the law. Police commissioners and politicians are not allowing churches, families or businesses to flout social-distancing rules. But for Black Lives Matter and fellow socialists, there is special dispensation from the political class. The green left is learning that militant protests can deliver privileges.

For George Floyd’s death to matter, people must learn that violence does not pay. But they are learning the opposite. The media has been very quiet about Floyd’s criminal record, and black Americans who dissent from the view that he should lionised.

In a video that went viral, conservative commentator Candace Owens condemned police brutality as well as the depiction of Floyd as a hero of black America. Owens has African heritage and said she found it “despicable” that people pretended Floyd lived a heroic lifestyle given he was on fentanyl and methamphetamine at the time of his death and had a violent criminal history. That history reportedly includes an armed home invasion where Floyd held a gun to the stomach of an African-American woman.

In the week following his death, widespread shock turned into mass revolt. The footage of Floyd’s death is almost unbearable to watch. Whatever he has done, he did not deserve to die in such a manner. His protracted agony and audible distress are largely ignored. It is not possible to imagine what horror he endured during his final moments.

For more than a week, Americans protested in his name, wearing the words he spoke repeatedly as he suffocated: “I can’t breathe.” But it took only a few days for his memory to be hijacked by partisan interests.

As soon as the rioters turned on Donald Trump, Floyd was a forgotten man. He is a symbol, a distorted memory appropriated for a militant cause.

For anti-Trumpers, the killing of George Floyd presents an opportunity for partisan fire. Green-left commentators have railed against the President as though he commanded the kill.

In The Guardian, David Smith interviewed co-founder of Black Lives Matter, LaTosha Brown. Smith criticised the President for using “authoritarian language”. Brown said he had a persona rooted in white supremacy and racism. In The Washington Post, Dana Milbank held Trump responsible for protest violence even after ­acknowledging that Antifa anarchists were among those to blame. He decided they were only the “proximate cause”. The “source” was the President. It is an example of circular logic.

The evidence leads to a different conclusion.

Trump described Floyd’s death as a tragedy. He spoke about the “horror, anger and grief” felt by Americans. He contacted Floyd’s family and said: “Our deepest condolences and heartfelt sympathies to the family of George Floyd … the family of George is entitled to justice and the people of Minnesota are entitled to safety.”

He ordered the Justice Department to expedite the investigation into his death. Any further action might have risked prejudicing the investigation.

For anti-Trumpers, honouring the memory of George Floyd takes a back seat to agitating against the President. The left press rarely criticises violence when its perpetrators use the race card to excuse it. But Floyd’s history included his arrest for ­committing a violent crime against a pregnant black woman — and African-Americans have been killed during the race riots held in his name.

Looters shot dead David Dorn, a retired police captain. Race activists shot federal officer Dave Patrick Underwood for trying to keep the peace. A biracial protester, ­Italia Marie Kelly, was struck by a random bullet after she decided to leave a rally because it was becoming too violent.

For a long time, conservatives have warned that skin colour is no measure of character. George Floyd’s death proves it. The police team that watched him die was ethnically diverse. Political correctness did not save Floyd, but a person of good character could have. Floyd was not a victim of white supremacy. He was the ­victim of one man and cowardly onlookers.

Those responsible for Floyd’s death should face the full force of the law. But their brutality does not make him a martyr or a hero.