As nearly a week of violent unrest raged across the nation, leaving more than a few broken bodies and countless burned buildings and looted businesses in its wake, much of the violence was blamed on outside agitators like Antifa and white supremacists in an effort to paint most protesters as peaceful.
Except that according to arrest records, either these guys are really, really good at not getting caught – or they weren’t nearly as prevalent in last week’s turbulence as was presumed.
From the AP:
President Donald Trump has characterized those clashing with law enforcement after George Floyd’s death under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer as organized, radical-left thugs engaging in domestic terrorism, an assertion repeated by Attorney General William Barr. Some Democrats, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, initially tried to blame out-of-state far-right infiltrators for the unrest before walking back those statements.
There is scant evidence either is true.
The AP analyzed the arrest reports for more than 200 of those arrested in Minneapolis and D.C. during last week’s riots, finding that a full 85 percent of those arrested were local residents.
“Of those charged with such offenses as curfew violations, rioting and failure to obey law enforcement, only a handful appeared to have any affiliation with organized groups,” the AP reported, adding that “[t]hose charged with more serious offenses related to looting and property destruction – such as arson, burglary and theft – often had past criminal records. But they, too, were overwhelmingly local residents taking advantage of the chaos.”
Last week, the Trump administration announced the president would designate Antifa a domestic terrorist group following several days of violence that left several people dead, others wounded, and hundreds of stores looted and destroyed in cities across the nation.
Likewise, many on the left have pointed to outside agitators with white supremacist groups as the instigators behind much of the violence, claiming that the protesters themselves have largely been peaceful.
But it looks like, just as with the claim that unarmed black men are systemically targeted for killing by police departments across the nation, the evidence just doesn’t back this one up.