Posted on May 8, 2020

‘Conservatives’ Make Fools of Themselves over Arbery Shooting

Robert Hampton, American Renaissance, May 8, 2020

We don’t need a trial. The two white men who shot Ahmaud Arbery are murderers. Just ask some of America’s leading conservative pundits.

We don’t know all the facts — and as Jared Taylor has pointed out, some are exculpatory — but that doesn’t stop Democrats and mainstream media from assuring us that George and Travis McMichaels are guilty. Many “conservatives” agree.

Daily Wire writer Matt Walsh tweeted this on Wednesday: “The man was going for a jog and three white guys chased him down and shot him dead. The murderers still haven’t been arrested. Outrageous. This is clearcut first degree murder and the killers should all get lethal injections.”

He later confessed it was a stupid tweet, but Mr. Walsh loves to pound his chest about bad white people. After the El Paso shooting, he said white nationalists are complicit in terrorism. His boss Ben Shapiro said the white shooters deserve murder charges and tweeted out three articles that said the same thing. All three were from “conservatives.”

One was from Never Trumper David French. He said the white men’s actions were like a lynching:

It’s also worth remembering that the long and evil history of American lynchings features countless examples of young black men hunted and killed by white gangs who claimed their victims had committed crimes. While we don’t yet know the full details about the McMichaels’ motives, their actions speak loudly enough. When white men grab guns and mount up to pursue and seize an unarmed black man in the street, they stand in the shoes of lynch mobs past.

The other articles Mr. Shapiro shared were similar. National Review writer David Harasanyi said it was murder, and Arbery was right to attack the McMichaels. HotAir pundit Allahpundit said the state must punish the McMichaels to send a message against “vigilantism.”

New York Post opinion editor Sohrab Ahmari said the shooting “harks back to some of America’s oldest and ugliest racial traditions.” He added that “the newly released footage resembles a scene from the 19th century, when sadly, it’s 2020: a pair of white men on a white pickup truck harassing a black jogger on a deserted Georgia road.”

American Conservative senior editor Rod Dreher wrote a post called, “Ahmaud Arbery, Just A Runner.” “Arbery was unarmed,” he said. “Of course. The white men claim they were trying to make a citizen’s arrest of a burglary suspect. Arbery himself was no suspect — but he was black.” Mr. Dreher added that he heard “a middle-class, Christian African-American woman” was afraid to move her family to a white community in the South:

They have been warned by sympathetic sources not to do it, because the white people who live in that community do not want blacks living there, and will enforce that violently. The friend looks at white men protesting with guns because they want to get a haircut during Covidtide, and thinks about how her family might not be able to move into a certain neighborhood because her husband and older sons might have to worry about being shot by angry white men.

This is insane, and unjust. But this is life for a lot of black people in America. We should not forget that.

This is foolishness. If a white community kept out blacks through violence, it would be the biggest story in the country, if not the world. If such a place did exist, Mr. Dreher should compare its crime figures to those of a nearby black community. He would probably find that the white community was much safer.

National Review writer Michael Brendan Dougherty tweeted: “Yeah my stomach was turning all afternoon yesterday after watching this.”

Rand Paul’s chief strategist Doug Stafford demanded his “fellow white Americans” watch this “lynching.” He says not enough whites are “demanding justice.” Conservatives should know better than to rush to judgment, let alone “demand” it. Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown should have taught them to wait for the facts. Why aren’t they waiting? Because there’s practically nothing “conservatives” crave more than expiation from the charge of “racism.” They jump at the first chance to join the lynch mob.

That’s why conservatives wax righteous over cases like this but are silent when blacks kill whites. Will these virtue queens demand justice for the white mail carrier killed by a black in Indianapolis?

In Brunswick, Georgia, where Ahmaud Arbery was shot, a black murdered a 13-month-old white baby in his stroller in 2013. Will any of these people even mention this case? No chance. Conservatives thrive on praise from liberals, and they don’t get it for telling the truth.