Why We Should All Be Troubled By Europe’s Violent Weekend

Two revealing falsehoods have been foisted on a taciturn populace. One, that the raging mob violence has really anything to do about George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, or opposition to police brutality. Two, the rioters and looters, largely spearheaded by Antifa, are similar to the heroes who landed on in the beaches of Normandy under a hail of heavy machinegun fire. It’s a stirring version of alternate history. And it may even win Pulitzer Prize one day. But both these arguments were exposed as baseless, however, by the recent days of mayhem and violence across Europe.

What we’re currently witnessing across the West, is a power-grab led by dangerous anarchists.

In Brussels, Belgium, hardly a notorious hub of militarized police, protesters rampaged through the city, trashing and looting in the name of Black Lives Matter. In France, riots took place for an alleged killing from back in 2016. In Scotland, a statue of Sir Robert Peel, the founder of British policing, was defaced by actual communists, who proceed to tag it with “ACAB” (All Cops Are Bastards) in graffiti.

In London, Antifa thugs made a poor attempt to set fire to a British flag on the war memorial Cenotaph. A large number of radical leftists stood under the statue of Sir Winston Churchill in the parliament square chanting “Churchill was a racist”, as leftist historians and socialist journalists encouraged them on Twitter. Later, police cleared away men and women who had come to defend Churchill’s statue, in effect allowing protestors to vandalize it later. And in Bristol, police stood by as a statue of Edward Colston was toppled and thrown into Avon river, stating afterward that not intervening was a “tactical decision” to “prevent further disorder.”