U.S. riots: coronavirus epidemic can escalate into a pandemic of terror

In this case, the situation was further aggravated by the pandemic, which especially affected this country. Lawyer Yulia Nikolaeva lives in San Jose city in California, that was also affected by the riots. Here's what she thinks about this:

“Former police officer Derek Chauvin has been charged under two counts - manslaughter (up to 25 years) and death by negligence (up to 10 years). He is arrested. The other three participants in George Floyd's detention were fired from the police, but no charges were brought against them. Protests, meanwhile, spilled across the country.

The theme of the protest expanded to the general problem of unjustified police brutality and impunity, but the emphasis, of course, on the disproportionately harsh police attitude toward African Americans. A very sore subject in America. Each such murder ends in mass protests, but police officers, as a rule, are either not prosecuted at all, confining themselves to an internal audit with a conclusion on the legitimacy of the actions of the police, or they are acquitted in court. Some of these protests grew into real riots, akin to what is happening in Minneapolis. Google "Rodney King riots Los Angeles 1992". Almost 30 years have passed, but things are still there - the police regularly exceed their powers and use completely unjustified violence. Not only to blacks, but to blacks much more often. Not all such cases fall on the camera and most of them remain unknown.

I watched all the available videos of the Floyd incident. This is wildness. What the policeman did to him falls within the definition of torture. An unarmed, non-resilient man, nailed with a knee to the asphalt in the neck for 8 minutes 46 seconds. At the same time, he repeats many times that he cannot breathe. Passers-by are outraged. The policeman does not think to move. Tears only when he realized that Floyd lost consciousness. Seeing these kills on the air is unbearable. And yes, they give rise to rage. The protest, however, began quite peacefully. But as in any significant events, various marginal groups from the antifa to ordinary street hooligans took advantage of him. Provocateurs are always squeezed into events of such numbers, such is the law of the crowd..."

Russian activist Kristina Potupchik does not believe that the Trump government will end this bad tradition, recalling that these riots can significantly affect the fall presidential election:

“This happens often, but there is something unusual. First, the victim turned out to be a close friend of former NBA player Stephen Jackson, who posted a video on Instagram (this was one of the triggers of a nationwide rebellion). Secondly, Floyd’s last words “I can’t breathe” turned out to be a slogan that describes the self-awareness of the vast majority of Americans. In the literal sense of the word, it’s hard to breathe because of masks, because of sitting at home, because of the economic crisis that has befallen them, and foggy prospects. Of course, American stars immediately called for punishing those responsible for the murder.

(...)

But I do not agree with those who claim that this protest will be any different from the rest that we have seen in the United States in recent years. In 2014, the situation escalated in Ferguson, where a policeman shot dead unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown. The unrest continued for several days, and then resumed with renewed vigor, as the jury refused to indict the police officer for lack of evidence. The next year, Baltimore (Maryland) became the epicenter of the unrest, where 26-year-old Freddy Gray died as a result of injuries sustained in connection with police actions. About a hundred police officers were injured, more than 200 people were arrested. In 2016, attention was focused on the city of Charlotte. When the National Guard is connected, everything quickly returns to normal.

It will be the same this time, with the only difference that we do not yet know in whose favor. In November this year, the US presidential election is due to take place. Against the background of restrictive measures, a collapse in the economy and general fatigue, one such spark, like the murder of an African American in Minneapolis, can cost a lot to all interested parties ... "

Journalist Pavel Pryanikov believes that this is not a matter of a particular president, but of a long-standing American problem - the absence of social justice in the richest country in the world:

“Our mediocre media, like parrots, copy-paste news from the thick of the Minneapolis riot, but do not provide context. Why was such a fierce confrontation possible with pogroms, salvos of rubber bullets and gas attacks? Why armored personnel carriers and the infantry of the National Guard entered the city, and a CNN journalist is handcuffed live.

It's not about Trump or Obama (with him a similar battle broke out in the city of Ferguson, such “race riots” have been exciting the United States for more than a hundred years. This bad tradition was born at the junction of two opposing cultures - American legalism and the ghetto world. Even now when the president joined, the FBI and other services investigators are in no hurry to indict the cops laid off under public pressure.

It has always been like this - to bring the case of the killer cop to court is an incredible effort, because behind it is not only a powerful union, but the whole American system of justice, which is imprisoned for the protection of “its own people”. An ordinary person can get a life sentence even for the intent of premeditated murder, and in 2017, the cop sadist, who made the “Come and take” engraving on his rifle (a reference to the Spartans), riddled the unarmed kid kneeling on his knees - they tried to put him on for 25 years, but in the end they quietly retired for health as a victim of post-traumatic disorder. This is how American justice works, sung in countless films and TV shows.

And also in the USA there are a lot of poor. Many of them are black, living in their ghettos according to close and understandable "concepts". When such a simple person meets a lawyer with a gun on his hip - misfortune can happen. However, the racial issue is still further fanned by activists like Sean King - this is a rising star of human rights. Former friends from the progressive and LGBT parties, accuse him of gigantic waste of donations and the failure of all common undertakings. But in his social networks he has millions of people and Sean skillfully sets fire to the “rakhovs” fire - according to such activists, white supremacists and cops are conducting a holy racial war against the black community.

This is certainly not the case - there are official statistics according to which in 2019, cops in the United States killed 1,004 people: 370 of them were white, 235 were black. Of the 40 unarmed victims: 19 are white, 9 are black. It is worth adding here that in Chicago alone, every month, dozens of people become victims of clashes between gangs, but riots do not cause their death. After all, this is an “internal war”, and when representatives of two worlds meet - a black slum dweller and a lawyer called to keep him “in the stall” - then real hell begins.

Hell, caused primarily by social problems: this is why poor people, starting with protests against police brutality, switched to looting and robbery of shops. Social justice, even in such a rich and powerful country as the United States, remains as rare as the vaunted "American dream"..."

The publicist Egor Sedov is sure that there are protests “right” and “wrong”, and this division does not depend on a specific country. American events reminded him of the events in the Donbass in 2014:

"How to distinguish" their "protests in any country of the world from" not their own "? It is very simple. When the protests took place in Hong Kong (now, after the decisions of the PRC authorities, there will probably be a second wave), we did not see anything like the photo. Fights with the police - yes. But there were no such scenes of robbery, no. When the protests took place in Ukraine, when there was the Maidan, we also did not see anything similar. And how can one imagine the robbery of entrepreneurs if entrepreneurs constituted a significant part of the protesters? And in Moscow, during the Swamp or during last year's protests, this was not! And in Minneapolis, everything is somehow different ... And where have we all seen this? Donetsk, 2014. Looting the supermarket topics by the very ones who yelled "send troops!" Then the militants came to their senses, tried to put things in order, but late - but, one must think, they themselves participated quite well. Where people go beyond rights and freedoms, robbery, as a rule, does not happen. And in Minneapolis, this is what their dead bro - do not care. Trump does not care ("do not disgrace the memory of the deceased!") - but they do not care. Moreover, as they say, they rob their own, "colored" entrepreneurs. They also do not care for solidarity.

In the last photo - not Minneapolis, but Donetsk. It turns out that just today marks the sixth anniversary of the defeat of the Metro supermarket. The great victory was over private property, since it is still remembered.

Why am I all this? And the fact that not all protests should be admired. And not every suppression of them should cause rejection. Not only for this indicator. Here in Iran in 1978/79 there were massive popular protests. Against the dictatorship, by the way. I fully imagine what would happen in February 1979 on social networks, if they were then. “They won, the heroic people revolted and won, but we, but we, but we!..” Well, they protested, and won - to torture, brutal whipping, stoning, gallows and immersion into the Middle Ages...”

Network analyst Anatoly Nesmiyan brings the issue of social protests into a global context, believing that this is an inevitable crisis aftermath of a pandemic:

“It is too early to talk about large-scale protests in the United States, although the Russian press has already revived - in the end, there was an occasion to tell how bad they are. There is no particular doubt that the riots will be localized, yet.

Nevertheless, the problem really exists - the epidemic of coronavirus, which in many respects has become an epidemic of terror of incompetent authorities in dozens of countries that, with rare exceptions, have lost the ability to properly respond to emergencies due to the general degradation of governance around the globe - this epidemic is gradually turning into another one. The epidemic of mental disorders, exacerbation of mental illness and the real pandemic of psychosis across the planet. The level of aggression and the level of suicides are growing, and in all countries.

All this is superimposed on a sharply collapsed standard of living, the complete maladaptation of millions of people, and the degradation of governance. It is logical to assume that outbreaks of violence like the Minnesota events will occur randomly everywhere. Another question is that they will all be local in nature and are unlikely to end in something very serious. However, it is possible that in some special cases a spontaneous rebellion can very much contribute to someone’s purely political plans and intentions.

However, the main thing in such mental outbreaks of violence is, of course, the very fact that security is collapsing all over the planet. And as a result we see that the quantity of the calm places getting less and less..."