MAGA 2.0 is a backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement

Recently I wrote that MAGA 2.0 is a backlash to the MeToo movement. But there was another major event during Trump's first term that sparked a backlash: the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers and the mass protests that ensued. 

Contrary to what Trump and his supporters would have you believe, the protests were mostly peaceful. 

About 93% of racial justice protests in the US since the death of George Floyd have been peaceful and nondestructive, according to a new report.

The findings, released Thursday, contradict assumptions and claims by some that protests associated with the Black Lives Matter movement are spawning violence and destruction of property...

About 7,750 of those protests were linked to the Black Lives Matter movement, the report states. Peaceful racial justice protests took place in more than 2,440 locations across all 50 states and Washington, DC – violent demonstrations occurred in fewer than 220 locations, according to the report.

I remember tearing up when I saw this: 

Those protests were so massive and multi-racial that even a cynic like Ta-Nehisi Coates was optimistic about their potential for police reform. 

But then MAGA and right wing news went to work scaring folks with an endless focus on the few instances of violence, along with claims that Democrats wanted to defund the police (a lie). Folks like Tucker Carlson even claimed that Derek Chauvin didn't murder Floyd - it was all a lie. 

To understand how threatened MAGA folks were by the BLM movement, we need look no further than the fact that yesterday, a jury found Daniel Perry (a white ex-Marine) not guilty for the murder of a homeless Black man, Jordan Neely. Right wingers aren't just celebrating the verdict. They're claiming that "the BLM era is over." Here's Megyn Kelly:

Same thing from Chris Rufo.

Make no mistake: the Black Lives Matter era of “restorative justice” is over and the real spirit of justice is returning to America...Today’s verdict marks the end of an era. BLM, which seemed unstoppable four years ago, is finished.

Perhaps even more pernicious is the attempt to smear Jordan Neely (just as they attempted to smear George Floyd), a black man who was homeless as a result of drug addiction and mental illness.  Here's what the richest man in the world (who is also apparently the shadow president) had to say:

There are a lot of directions a conversation about all of this could go, not the least of which is a discussion about how abhorrent these people are. But let's keep this in mind as we go forward: the MeToo and BLM movements shook up the status quo of our white patriarchal culture so profoundly that we are now in the midst of a huge backlash. I have no idea where all of this ends, but I am confident that their fear indicates that those movements were powerful. In an odd way, that brings me some hope.