A Mostly Peaceful Nobel Prize

Last week, Socialist Norwegian MP Petter Eide nominated Black Lives Matter for the Nobel Peace prize to honor its “struggle against racism and racially motivated violence.” He was pleased that “BLM’s call for systemic change has spread around the world.”

Mr. Eide dismissed claims that BLM is violent: “These arguments were the same when Martin Luther King received the prize in 1964, or when [Nelson] Mandela received it in 1993. If some elements of the movement may have been violent, that is not a reason to blame the whole movement.”

Mr. Eide cited the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project’s (ALCED) study that claims 93 percent of BLM demonstrations last summer were peaceful. This minimizes the damage caused by the other 7 percent. The riots in just the first week after George Floyd’s death caused the most damage of any riots in US history: an estimated $2 billion in insured losses. The figure would be much higher if it included uninsured losses, and the riots continued for months. Violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin, for example, was relatively small scale, but caused $50 million in damages and forced at least 40 businesses to close indefinitely.

The same ALCED study liberals use to claim BLM is peaceful found that the riots also caused at least 47 deaths, and found that BLM activists were involved in 95 percent of the riots in which killers were identified. A murder wave swept the nation after the riots, probably because of harsh criticism of police and because of BLM demands to cut police budgets.

Black Lives Matter co-founder Opal Tometi ​said this about violence, that is to say, looting and arson:

I just don’t equate the loss of life and the loss of property. . . . We have had these conversations where we are conflating very different realities . . . . We are really focused on how to get our demands out and stay focused on the main thing, which is people, and we want to value our love of people over property.

Co-founder Patrisse Cullors said:

My view is White supremacists were showing up to protest and committing acts of violence and damaging property. So why blame it on Black Lives Matter? . . . Unfortunately we had to spend a lot of our time talking to the media about rioting and looting instead of having a conversation around what really is happening.

Hank Newsome, president of the Greater New York Black Lives Matter, said last June that the movement will “burn down this system. I could be speaking figuratively. I could be speaking literally. It’s a matter of interpretation.” He added that he neither condemned nor condoned rioting, but noted that violence works: “What is this country rewarding? What behavior is it listening to? Obviously not marching. But when people get aggressive and they escalate their protests, cops get fired, Republican politicians talking about police reform.”

Credit Image: © John GoodmanZUMA Wire

Last February, Mr. Newsome dismissed peaceful protests as “a tool of white supremacy.” “The white supremacists who built this country never earned anything peacefully. They did it through bullets and blood. And that’s the American way,” he told Fox News.

Black Lives Matter Chicago defended looting. “Black lives are and always will be more important than downtown corporations,” the group declared in an official statement, adding, “These corporations have ‘looted’ more from our communities than a few protesters ever could.”

Chicago BLM organizer Ariel Atkins told local media: “I don’t care if someone decides to loot a Gucci or a Macy’s or a Nike store, because that makes sure that person eats. That makes sure that person has clothes.” In a separate interview with WBEZ, Miss Atkins said BLM supports looting “100 percent. That’s reparations.” She insisted that “winning has come through revolts. Winning has come through riots.”

If Norwegian MP Petter Eide wants to know what BLM is about, he should ask the organizers.