From the Chronicle of Peaceful Protests

By Kevin D. Williamson

Thursday, November 05, 2020

 

Does anybody at the New York Times speak English? The Times reports:

 

In a reprise of the violent street altercations that erupted at times in New York over the summer, a day of peaceful demonstrations in Manhattan on Wednesday turned into clashes between protesters and the police after night fell, leading to nearly 60 arrests.

 

The phrases “violent street altercations” and “day of peaceful demonstrations” are not compatible. And “peaceful demonstrations” do not just “turn into clashes between protesters and police” of their own accord.

 

So, what happened?

 

Did the police violently attack the peaceful protesters? If that’s what happened, then say so: The readers of the New York Times might be interested to know it.

 

Or did the “peaceful demonstrators” attack the police? In which case, why pretend that they are “peaceful” and that the violent confrontation is a thing that just happened, without anyone’s having made it happen?

 

The insistence that the protesters were “peaceful” until they engage in mass violence is nonsensical — there is a difference between peaceful protesters and those who simply haven’t yet got around to beginning the violence. That seems obvious enough, unless we are willing to entertain seriously the notion Jack the Ripper was a peaceful pedestrian right up until the moment when a confrontation broke out between him and a London woman.

 

How many people around the country have to die at the hands of “peaceful protesters,” how much looting and destruction must the cities endure, before the reporters of the New York Times and likeminded journalists around the country can work up the courage to simply report the plain facts of what is happening?