Remembering George Floyd
How an armed burglar inspired a wave of political fervour
People give Donald Trump a hard time over his social media musings. But however much bile, bigotry and balderdash was tapped into the American president's phone, he's never said anything as crazy as Nancy Pelosi.
A month ago the speaker of the House of Representatives and leading Democrat said – in public and with the cameras rolling – “Thank you, George Floyd, for sacrificing your life for justice.”
It's so good. So so good. In a single line the octogenarian captured the exquisite madness of the past year in race relations. If anything the Jesus analogy is a tad on the nose, even for pundits who describe wokery as a new religion.
Accusing self-identifying rationalists of religiosity is of course funny for its own sake. The problem is that many of those making these accusations are also in hock to religious bullshit, usually of the Christian sort.
The waning of faith among Britain's ruling classes is perhaps what makes the religious parallel so compelling. As GK Chesterton probably didn't say, when people stop believing in gods, anything can substitute.
Also evoking an earlier time were the many people who took the knee after Floyd's death in the manner popularised by Colin Kaepernick, an American football player, several years previously. Social media posts of pious British Liberal Democrats kneeling in their gardens were among the strangest events in a strange year.
Although the genuflecting is said to have been borrowed from American soldiers paying respect to their wardead, our foreign secretary Dominic Raab was right to note that its main association in Britain is with medieval history, marriage proposals, and getting knighted.
Some of the kneeling was for the Black Lives Matter movement in general. But commemorations also sprang up specifically around Floyd, including in areas as removed from the Minneapolis street where he died as West Belfast (where, in an ironic act of whitewashing, the multiracial police present at Floyd's killing were depicted as all white).
A further irony is that in era where statues toppled over any connection to slavery, memorials went up to a man convicted of armed robbery. As the fact-checking site Snopes says, “in 2007, authorities arrested and charged Floyd with his most serious crime: aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon.”
Along with several other men, Floyd “forced his way into the residence, placed a pistol against the complainant’s abdomen, and forced her into the living room area of the residence”, according to a police statement. The victims of the break-in included two adults and a toddler, although the complainant referenced here was not pregnant, as is sometimes claimed.
None of the above suggests Floyd deserved to die at the knee of Derek Chauvin. But being killed in politically-charged circumstances, or even by a policeman, doesn't change the moral balance of a life.
It is futile to call for more sober reflection, even at this point. Politics is about how people feel as much as the facts of any matter, and what made Floyd's death potent was a wider sense of racial injustice in America. As Bret Weinstein wrote recently, it's debatable how fair any trial of his alleged killers could be in such circumstances.
It's also debatable how similar America's problems are to Britain, which has a different history with slavery, a different ethnic mix, and a better welfare state. Even so, plenty of ethnic minorities feel hard done by in Britain, and Floyd's death resonated.
Last weekend in Brighton I spotted a plaque to Derek Carver, a Protestant martyr burned to death in nearby Lewes. Such signs testify to the fact people find it easier to identify with individuals than causes, and visible events over intangible trends. That is what makes martyrs like Floyd so compelling.
Eurovision blues. Nobody was much surprised by Britain's lacklustre performance at the recent Eurovision Song Contest. But I've wondered for a while why the music is so predictable bad ever year.
On a related note, Fraser Nelson discussed in the Spectator why the BBC is so inept at selecting our candidates. More public voting earlier on might make the difference.
Say what you want about Jeremy Corbyn, but the guy did advocate more bank holidays. With another coming up, I feel I could get used to the four-day week socialists often float too.
Jimmy