Thread by @Noahpinion

The George Floyd protests were not a civil war.

It's important to remember this fact, because remembering it may help us avoid an *actual* civil war in 2024-5.

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I spent hours today going through the details of every single one of the 25 killings associated with the Floyd protests, and concluded that maybe half of them could be construed as violence between pro-BLM and anti-BLM people.

That half includes all killings of cops (of which there were none, though one retired ex-cop was killed during a robbery), and killings by cops (of which there were four).

I don't want to minimize those deaths at all. Each one was a tragedy.

But with 20 million people protesting, that's a 0.000125% death rate.

And it's equivalent to about 1/2 of one average day of murders in America...over three months of protests.

What's more, there was violence reported in only 220 of the 2620 protests reported over those three months. And that violence includes looting (which is usually opportunistic and not part of protests) and even the most minor property damage.

Now, I do believe we ought to be sympathetic to people whose property was destroyed or stolen during the protests. We should not memory-hole that, or tell people to shut up about it.

But it just isn't a civil war.

And here's why that's important.

If we want to prevent a real civil war in 2024-5, we need to disabuse people of the notion that we're already in one.

(end)

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