The Start of a Long, Hot Summer?

Last year, Alternative Right editor Richard Spencer wrote about an emerging pattern in black crime which he referred to as “Race Riots 2.0.” He noted that blacks no longer seemed content to riot in their own neighborhoods as they did during the Los Angeles Riots of 1992, but were bent on giving whites a direct taste of diversity.

Mr. Spencer was prescient. This spring has seen many reports of mass “teen” robberies, roving mobs of “youths,” and chaotic “urban” uprisings. Young blacks often organize with the help of social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook. The resulting groups are not only raiding department stores for sneakers, they are disrupting family vacations, attacking passersby, and straining the ability of many major cities to maintain order.

Just the past two months have seen “youth” activities in the following settings:

Vacation destinations

Families hoping to spend a pleasant day at the beach or an amusement park got more excitement than they had hoped for as bands of blacks raided popular destinations and intimated their guests. (Memorial Day weekend was particularly chaotic, as detailed here by Jim Goad.)

·  At Long Beach, New York, “a beach melee involving hundreds of people” broke out just before the beach closed around 6:00 p.m. It took police three hours to gain control of the situation.

·  At the lakefront in Chicago, authorities had to close the beach on Memorial Day, citing “hot weather” (even though the temperature only reached 88 degrees that day). WLS Radio told a different story, referring to listeners’ complaints of a “large gangbanger element” and of young blacks pushing people off their bikes. Amy Schwartz, a witness of the chaos, said she saw a woman being beaten by a gang, and reported people “being rude and abusive and throwing trash around and defecating.” She called 911 and told authorities “there’s nothing but animals covering this beach today.”

·  At Carson Beach in Boston, “more than 1,000 youths . . . used social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to plan unruly gatherings on the beach on three of the past four nights,” according to the Boston Globe. “Fights broke out among rival gang members . . . triggering a massive law enforcement response from at least five agencies to stem the violence.” The paper noted that police measures “resembled crowd-control tactics reserved for major sporting victories.”

·  At the Alabama Adventure Theme Park in Bessemer, a witness described chaos on the scale of a “borderline riot,” with many fights breaking out and guests leaving as sheriff’s deputies and ambulances made their way in. A YouTube video from the park that day shows what was happening.

·  In Decatur, Alabama, Point Mallard Water Park was forced to shut down early due to a series of fights that police said mostly involved girls.

·  At Nashville’s Wave Country, nearly two dozen police had to be brought in to quell disturbances before the park finally closed two hours early. One visitor complained that “hundreds of people were just jumping over the fence. Almost trampled my kids. I just didn’t feel safe.”

·  In Cleveland, the Coventry Street Arts Fair was plagued by “a crowd of unruly teenagers” who, according to witnesses, were “starting fights, screaming and throwing punches in the crowded streets.” Though the media did not mention race, various Tweets reveal what everyone suspected.

Explicitly-black events

Blacks who enjoy attending large gatherings with other blacks have had a disappointing start to the summer, as many events that are geared to them have gone wrong. In some cases, the authorities have begun to wonder whether such events should even be held in the future, and some municipalities have taken preventative measures to keep them from happening in the first place.

·  At Myrtle Beach, “Black Bike Week” (euphemistically referred to as the “Atlanta Beach Bikefest” in this article) was marred by crime. During an 8-hour period, police received reports of “five armed robberies, a stabbing, a shooting and an incident involving a shotgun being pointed at a security guard.” This article was frank about the color of crime during Black Bike Week. None of this stopped the NAACP from suing businesses that closed during the weekend or otherwise tried to avoid the crime wave.

·  At Miami Beach, similar trouble broke out during “Urban Beach Week,” when three police officers and four bystanders were shot in a firefight that resulted in the death of a gunman. When bullets were not flying, “stripping and dancing in the perpetually congested traffic was . . . frequent” and “women stuck in traffic simply climbed on top of their cars and gyrated for onlookers.” Homosexual Hispanic activist Herb Sosa said the city was “nothing short of a warzone” and called for an end to “Urban Beach Week.” Many city leaders were echoing his call.

·  In Washington, D.C. this past weekend, the 19th annual “Caribbean Carnival” went awry after one man was shot fatally and three others were wounded. There was a stabbing just a few blocks away. At nearby Howard University, a massive brawl broke out, apparently between students of the historically black university.

Cynics are beginning to wonder if a large-scale black gathering can actually be put on without violence. At last year’s Indiana Black Expo in Indianapolis, ten young black men were shot. For this year’s “celebration,” to be held from July 7 through 17, vast preventative measures are being taken, including some 500 patrolling police officers who will enforce a curfew for underage participants. A detailed “Action Plan” has also been created and is designed to prevent the violence of past years.

Group attacks

The summer months bring free time, which some blacks choose to spend attacking random (often white) victims.

·  In Columbia, SC, eight black teens attacked 18-year-old Carter Strange as he was jogging home from a friend’s house, and beat him so badly his mother barely recognized him. Mr. Strange has a cracked skull and hemorrhaging that required surgery. He also needed facial reconstruction surgery to repair his broken nose and the broken bones around his eyes.

·  In Chicago, a “group of about 15 to 20 youths” carried out a string of random muggings, first attacking a 68-year-old man smoking a cigar on a bench, then knocking a 34-year-old man to the ground and beating him. The same group beat a 42-year-old man from Japan and stole his iPod.

·  Elsewhere in Chicago, in two separate incidents, some 15 young blacks boarded Transit Authority buses and attacked and robbed passengers. A student who was hit on the back of the head with a bottle had to be taken for help in an ambulance.

·  In Philadelphia this past weekend, an editor for the Onion and a group of her friends were assaulted by a “large group of teens.” She was hospitalized for a broken leg, and two of her friends sought treatment for facial injuries. Police report that she was “jumped” by some 30 to 40 young men who punched and kicked her repeatedly.

·  In St. Louis, black teenagers have taken up a game they call “Knockout King,” which involves sucker-punching strangers. “Jason,” who plays the game, says the boys “walk to where a lot of people be at and hit ’em. If one of the homeboys didn’t knock him out, then the other would come. Whoever knock him out would be king.” Eight of the ten victims interviewed in the article linked to above were white.

The Internet and cell phones have made it easy for blacks to gather suddenly for dubious purposes. Many have started gathering in largely white areas, and this has attracted attention. As one Chicago journalist put it after a bout of “flash mob” attacks, “If this kind of violent behavior had occurred in a predominantly black neighborhood, it wouldn’t have even made the nightly news.” Perhaps. Many “mainstream” news organizations still do not cover these incidents.

When they do report on mob violence, many news sources mask the race of the perpetrators (for example, referring to “Black Bike Week” as “Atlanta Beach Bikefest”), and many readers and commenters are angry about it. A number of newspapers received so much criticism for failing to mention race that they felt compelled to justify themselves (see here, here, here, and here). 

When the Drudge Report highlighted some of this summer’s incidents, Salon writer Alex Pareene accused Matt Drudge of running a “race war awareness campaign”–even though Mr. Drudge mentioned race only once.

These incidents are different from traditional “race riots.” The mass violence of the 1960s through the 1990s was usually in response to specific events; most commonly a police shooting. Blacks then rioted in their own neighborhoods.

So far, the current rash of violence is less destructive. Mobs have not taken to burning down buildings and cleaning out whole blocks of stores, as they did during the worst incidents in the past. But there is a unnerving quality to “flash mobs” that gather on a whim–often on what seems to be an anti-white whim. Some incidents seem to be deliberate attempts to jolt whites in precisely those parts of town where blacks are seldom seen, and where whites usually gather with no fear of crime. Where this anti-white animus will lead is anyone’s guess.

Our rulers continue to pretend that rampaging “youths” can be of any race, so mainstream journalists insist that race is not relevant to their stories. Readers know better, and demand the facts. Either news sources will have to start censoring or ignoring their commenters–and lose what little credibility they have left–or write the truth.