The normalisation of violence through the rewriting of history is not just some disinterested academic pursuit. Rather, its objective is to legitimise rioting and looting in the here and now. Indeed, Carter Jackson describes the recent events as a ‘black rebellion’. She writes: ‘[T]he language used to refer to protesters has included looters, thugs, and even claims that they are un-American. The philosophy of force and violence to obtain freedom has long been employed by white people and explicitly denied to black Americans.’
The implication of this statement is that it is now the turn of black people to use the ‘philosophy of force and violence’, which hitherto was employed against black people.
The attempts to normalise violence draw on a narrative that depicts America’s past as being defined almost entirely by violence. As one commentator has asserted, ‘Today, as the deeply divided United States endeavours to find a way forward from its present perils, it is finally time to look back and reckon with this nation’s divisive, violent founding’. So if looting and rioting was good enough for the Founding Fathers, it is good enough for BLM protesters, too.
Another approach adopted by the looting apologists is to compare looting to acts of injustice directed against black people by racist America.
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