More severe police injuries and deaths on that one day of rampaging Trumpers than in five years of Anti-Police protests. https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1354857106818658306

You can tell a lot about the stance of a angry crowd by whether they come with shields or pitchforks.

If people protesting police brutality for years had wanted to use their large numbers to attack, maim and kill police, they damn well could have.

But they came to resist police.

Which is completely different.

Why did the police suffer more at the hands of those who claimed to support them and waved their flags than at the hands of those who think they should be defunded or abolished?

Because one group is literally arguing for human dignity and the other glorifies violence.

The people who uncritically support police brutality are those who believe that instrumental violence should be a standard tool in response to those standing opposed to you.

Once you accept that... WHO is standing opposed to you doesn't matter much.

Those against police brutality are those who feel that if violence is to be used at all, it should be a tool of last resort, and levied defensively first and offensively last.

This stark difference in approaches to violence is not trivial.

In addition, when protesters have been at their most amped, (excluding police and supremacist agitator actions) the rage has been directed at targeted property, not grievous harm to individuals.

This is different than violent rage consuming anything in its path.

When clashes with anti-Brutality protesters and police have happened, they are inevitably the result of police corralling and escalating.

The clashes are characterized by protesters attempting to stand ground against police assault.

Physical contact is generally unarmed

Those who enagaged in insurrection at the Capitol were seeking violence.

They came with an intent to intimidate, to kidnap, to kill, to destroy and to use violence to force a specific political outcome during a governmental process.

This is nothing like anti-Brutality protest.

This is not to say that anti-Brutality protestors would never have attempted to occupy a government building.

They TOTALLY would.

But once inside, they'd sit around singing and making speeches until someone in Congress agreed to come and speak to them and hear them out.

It's not a mystery or some sort of news bias that no real equivalency exists between right wing terrorism and anti-Police protest.

They're two wholly different ideologies with completely different core values.

You have to do a lot of cynical acrobatics to say they're the same.

We routinely fall into the trap of thinking that if two things are polarized that they are ALSO mirror images of each other.

This doesn't pan out.

Anti-police protestors and BlueLivesMatter people aren't mirror images. They don't use the same tactics to reach different goals.

This sort of false equivalency has always been on display... for instance the positioning of the Black Panthers as the Black version of the KKK.

Similarly, Antifascism is seen as the mirror image of fascism, but none of this makes sense.

This idea that people on opposite sides must have the converse position in every way is why people think that Black people who oppose white supremacists merely want to do what white supremacists do, but in reverse.

It's illogical and ridiculous.

But comforting.

People who are pro-Police brutality want cops to be able to shoot citizens at will.

People who are anti-Police brutality do not want citizens to be able to shoot cops at will.

They want nobody shooting people.

Black people who opposed the KKK weren't fighting for the right to burn crosses in white people's yards and to prevent them from reading and education and success and happiness and life.

They wanted to be left the hell alone and given what they were due.

Antifascists don't want to be able to do fascist stuff but for the Left.

They think fascism is a toxic, doomed ideology that only leads to atrocity.

They want nothing to do with it, but will defend their communities from those who try to violently impose fascism within them.