We’ve been told for months now by liberals that the nationwide protests that began in the wake of the death of George Floyd were “mostly peaceful” or in CNN’s case “fiery, but mostly peaceful.” And now they’re attempting to quantify the Orwellian phrasing for real.
According to the same people who went apoplectic when a 16-year-old Nick Sandmann smirked at someone, the mass riots nationwide actually aren’t all that bad, as long as you ignore the parts that are that bad. In a headline that I couldn’t help but burst out laughing at, The Hill reports that “Over 90 percent of protests this summer were peaceful, report shows.”
According to their writeup:
Despite several incidents of protests against racism and police brutality turning violent, more than 90 percent of the summer’s protests were peaceful, according to an analysis released Thursday.
The report, produced by the nonprofit Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, identified 7,750 protests between May 26 and Aug. 22 in 2,400 locations.
The report found that about 220 became “violent” — a term defined as demonstrators fighting with police or with counterprotesters. The term also applies to demonstrations that resulted in property damage. In 93 percent of cases analyzed, there was no violence.
I’m not sure who determined that 7% of total protests is the acceptable threshold for riots, looting, and murder, but here we are. I guess The Hill thought “over 90% peaceful” made for a more convincing headline to their audience than “220 protests became violent.” Their methodology is sloppy too in that it doesn’t account for the size of the protests. If 99 small towns each have peaceful protests that 100 people show up to and a large city has a protest that 10,000 people show up to that turns violent this study would claim that the protests were “99% peaceful,” when in reality they were slightly more than 50% violent.
And don’t expect this kind of “logic” to be applied consistently. Take police brutality, the issue they claim to be fighting as an example. The percent of calls that officers respond to that turn violent (rarely due to anything the officer did wrong) is a fraction of a fraction of a percent, but you won’t see The Hill reporting on that.
Furthermore, just to demonstrate how absurd their logic is, how would liberals react to the headline “Report: All Charlottesville Protesters Except One Were Peaceful”? If ten more Charlotteville-type protests were held without violence it would also be the case that “fewer than 10%” turned violent, and that would do nothing to change the fact that somebody was killed in the first one.
When people are rioting, looting, and murdering, it doesn’t much make a difference what percent of people are partaking. It’s the fact that it’s happening at all that’s the problem.
And if they think 10% isn’t much, wait until they hear about the coronavirus death rate.
