Just a few hours after a career felon named George Floyd overdosed on the streets of Minneapolis, just outside of the store he was attempting to rob, while being restrained by the officers he had physically resisted, a lengthy video of Floyd’s death appeared on every mainstream cable news station. The footage was “disturbing,” viewers were warned. But we were instructed to watch it anyway, because it supposedly amounted to clear and convincing evidence that America is unsafe for black people due to the scourge of systemic racism. Never mind the lethal level of fentanyl in Floyd’s system (which prosecutors later lied about during Derek Chauvin’s trial). Never mind the lack of any physical injury to his neck whatsoever. Focus, they told us, on the footage. It wasn’t exactly a rational argument, but it didn’t need to be. Even alleged conservatives, like Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett, explained that they had “wept” after seeing the video. That’s how powerful the video was. Or at least, that’s the way things seemed at the time to a lot of people.
What’s become very evident, in the aftermath of the Floyd hagiography, is that the footage of his overdose wasn’t actually that important to the narrative. Far more important was the footage that we weren’t allowed to see, under any circumstances. And I’m not just talking about the footage of Floyd telling the officers that he couldn’t breathe, long before he was on the ground. I’m talking about all of the videos of black career felons — violent thugs who should’ve been executed a very long time ago — murdering white people in public places for no apparent reason whatsoever. These are videos that are rarely shown to the public. When these videos are released, they’re usually edited to the point that you don’t actually see the crime itself. And mainstream media outlets ignore them entirely.
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