Over the course of the past few days, the biggest grievance some of my far right friends in my network are complaining about is the contrast between law enforcement and liberal/Dem politician's response, or failure to respond, to the riots this summer and their reaction to the Capitol insurgency. It's not the only grievance, but it's the one everyone has been talking about lately.
I-5 wrote:Thanks for clarifying. I agree that's the major grievance I hear. Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't there police in riot gear and mass arrests during the protests last summer? Meanwhile, we barely saw any resistance in DC, certainly no riot gear to speak of, and hundreds of people left the riot without getting arrested. I hope they can also see that. Of course, the biggest point is the purpose of the protest. One was to air grievances about police injustice, and one wanted to reverse an election....but, in their defense, the president is the one that told them the election was stolen.
There were so many BLM-spawned riots over such a long period of time that I'm sure that the response varied from police in riot gear to no police at all.
I am not trying to justify the far right's position. I've argued with a number of them over social media that the insurgency differs from the BLM riots in that it was an attempt to overthrow the government and was far more serious threat than the BLM riots. My point in our discussion is that as far as the response by liberal/Dem politicians to the BLM riots this past summer, the right does have a legitimate point, that it was tepid and wholly inadequate. That doesn't mean that I think that their actions were justified. Two wrongs don't make a right.
That's the other strategy, using softer terms to describe the activity to make it sound more benign.