When Insurrection Was Okay

By Rich Lowry

Monday, January 25, 2021

 

The media almost instantly labeled the Capitol riot “an insurrection,” a description that has become practically mandatory in much of the press.

 

On CNN during Joe Biden’s inauguration, it seemed an anchor or commentator referred to “the insurrection” every couple of minutes.

 

There is no doubt that, in aiming to disrupt a constitutional process, the riot was an insurrectionary act that warrants the harshest possible condemnation.

 

It’s worth noting the media’s love affair with the word “insurrection,” though, not because it wasn’t willing to apply the same term to the riots of last summer, but because it was — as a way of elevating and valorizing that unrest.

 

When the press called the George Floyd riots “an uprising,” it wasn’t to paint them in as frightening and disturbing a light as possible, as we’ve seen after the Capitol riot. No, it was to legitimize them.

 

An uprising is functionally indistinguishable from an insurrection. Merriam-Webster defines the former as “a usually localized act of popular violence in defiance usually of an established government.” It defines the latter as “an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government.”

 

Perhaps uprising has a more positive connotation, but there’s really no difference here — we’re talking about acts of violent revolution.

 

Nonetheless, apologists for the George Floyd riots eagerly embraced the term. The New Yorker ran a piece by its editor David Remnick titled, “An American Uprising,” as well as a report, “The Heart of the Uprising in Minneapolis.” Time magazine, too, used the term in a flattering piece on the protests, “Why the Killing of George Floyd Sparked an American Uprising.”

 

NPR catalogued graffiti around the riots: “The Art of An Uprising: Paint and Plywood Memorialize George Floyd.”

 

A column at the Guardian was headlined, “The George Floyd uprising has brought us hope,” and another argued in a similar vein, “The George Floyd protests are a rebellion against an unjust system.”

 

The apologists didn’t think this uprising should be put down — in fact, they thought that would be about the worst thing imaginable. Time magazine wrote in dark tones of National Guard troops deployed to Washington during the George Floyd unrest, when, of course, an even larger deployment the last few weeks has been celebrated.

 

A riot meant to interfere with the conduct of a presidential election at the heart of the American government is going to be more of a shock to the system than violence directed at businesses or at government buildings in midsized American cities, even if both are obviously wrong.

 

Out-of-control protesters breaching the U.S. Capitol are worse — certainly in terms of consequences, if not intentions — than out-of-control protesters burning and throwing things at a safe distance from the White House.

 

Yet it doesn’t — or shouldn’t — take any moral discernment to recognize that all of this was bad, deserved to be condemned by all people of goodwill, and should have been shut down as quickly as possible by security forces in whatever numbers necessary.

 

But as far as the media are concerned, not all revolts against the American order are created equal — insurrection is a terrible thing, unless it is carried out by ideological allies in a supposedly worthy cause.