When George Floyd died in the spring of 2020, the Left seized on his death as "proof" of police brutality, systemic racism, and the injustice of America's justice system. His death sparked riots across the country that left at least 19 dead and did $1 billion (some estimates say $2 billion) in property damage.
In July, Townhall told you about a Floyd documentary that debunked claims Officer Derek Chauvin caused Floyd's death. Hennepin County Medical Examiner Andrew Baker said there was “no physical evidence suggesting Mr. Floyd died of asphyxiation," but did find Floyd had "preexisting health conditions" including coronary artery disease and that at least one artery was 75% blocked.
That story also noted:
The toxicology report found that Floyd had 19 ng/mL of methamphetamine and 11 ng/mL of fentanyl in his system, which the memo described as “a fatal level of fentanyl under normal circumstances.” People die from just 3 ng/mL of fentanyl.
But the Left turned Floyd into a martyr. Democrats took a knee for him. Floyd had multiple funerals during a summer when many other people couldn't have any funerals for their deceased loved ones.
It was politically opportunistic and racially divisive.
So now The Atlantic, in an attempt to shame conservatives, has decided to compare the Right's reaction to the assassination of Charlie Kirk to the Left's lionization of George Floyd.
Here's more (emphasis addedE):
For many on the left, Floyd’s asphyxiation turned a flawed and desperate man into a Christ figure, someone who bore the weight of the world’s failings and, in so doing, cleared a path to fix them. In the feverish weeks since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the MAGA right is undergoing its own religious ferment, animated by a new martyr. Just as the left used Floyd’s death to justify and hasten all manner of political ends, the right is invoking Kirk’s name to advance illiberal aims and silence opponents. In death, Kirk has become a cudgel.
Some on the right had already been searching for a figure like Floyd. In August, an appalling killing nearly provided one. On a light-rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina, a Black man repeatedly stabbed the 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, whose death prompted outrage (and ample racism), particularly among conservatives. One Donald Trump–supporting tech CEO pledged $500,000 for artists to paint murals of Zarutska in cities across the country. Elon Musk immediately offered another $1 million.
They sought to make her image as ubiquitous as Floyd’s was in 2020, when murals proliferated without help from Silicon Valley. It might have worked, but hours after Musk’s announcement, Kirk was shot, and a different canonization began. Trump ordered flags at half-staff. Congress enacted a “National Day of Remembrance” for Kirk. New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan compared him to Saint Paul. According to a Turning Point USA spokesperson, the fact that the high-caliber bullet didn’t exit the activist’s body and strike any bystanders was a “miracle.”
Simply incredible.
To compare George Floyd, who had several convictions for drug charges, theft, and aggravated robbery, to either Iryna Zarutska or Charlie Kirk is as laughable as it is insulting.
Floyd served eight prison terms between 1997 and 2005, and in 2007, he was sentenced to five years for aggravated robbery. He pointed a gun at the abdomen of a pregnant woman and threatened to kill her unborn child if she didn't cooperate.
Meanwhile, Zarutska was a 23-year-old woman trying to get home from her shift at a local pizza place. She came to the US from Ukraine, so she was both an immigrant and a refugee from Putin's war -- two causes the Left claims to champion. Her only "mistake" was sitting in front of Decarlos Brown, Jr. on a train. Zarutska couldn't have known Brown had 14 prior arrests and was likely walking free because Democrats turned George Floyd into their own personal folk hero.
Charlie Kirk was doing what he -- and every other American -- had a right to do: speaking in public about politics. That included issues like guns, race, and trans ideology. For that, Tyler Robinson allegedly shot Kirk because Robinson didn't like Kirk's stance on trans issues.
The Left, having spent decades mired in the notion of "moral relativity," cannot see the difference between Floyd and Zartuska or Kirk because their politics prohibit it. Floyd was a Black man, and in the world of Leftist intersectionality, he was automatically a victim, no matter what his criminal background or the autopsy report said. Zartuska and Kirk, on the other hand, were White people and one of them had the spine to speak eloquently about conservative issues in public. This made them the oppressors, and "controversial."
In a post on X, journalist Melissa Chen wrote, "George Floyd’s death was exploited and laundered through a reality distortion field to usher in a wholesale cultural revolution." She continued, "You know very well just how much damage was sustained and lives lost as a result of BLM. And the liberties taken to usher in DEI programs and other equity-promoting schemes and enact a cancel culture that punished anyone who failed to pay sufficient fealty to views in line with critical race theory, have all now backfired."
In another post, Stephen Miller said, "George Floyd was not politically assassinated because of things he said. This is incredibly obtuse even for you, but I get it, you really want to be published in The Atlantic because it makes you and completely asinine pieces like this feel smart to the right people."
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