Joe Biden Says Capitol Hill Rioters Were Treated ‘Very Differently’ From Black Lives Matter Protesters
President-elect Joe Biden used a Thursday speech to address law enforcement’s treatment of the Capitol Hill rioters on Wednesday, NBC News reported.
The Democrat referred to a text conversation he had with his granddaughter, who suggested that Black Lives Matter protesters were treated differently over the summer from Wednesday’s rioters.
“No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn’t have been treated very, very differently from the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol,” he recalled her saying.
“We all know that’s true. And it’s unacceptable. Totally unacceptable,” he added.
Biden pushed back on the use of the word “protesters” to address Donald Trump’s supporters who stormed the Capitol and likened them to riotous domestic terrorists.
According to Natasha Lennard, the contrast between arrests at the Capitol riots and BLM protests shows U.S. law enforcement’s priorities. In an article for The Intercept, the journalist noted that D.C. police arrested 289 people in one night and 736 people in over a week back in June following the death of George Floyd. Conversely, just 14 arrests were made approximately four hours after the Capitol was breached. By the end of the night, a reported 52 people were arrested.
“This is what it looks like when the police have no interest in repressing a movement. Given the essentially racist nature of U.S. policing, no one should be surprised that even extremely militant anti-authoritarian activity perpetrated for a white supremacist cause is not deemed a target of U.S. law enforcement’s vast and violent repressive capacities.”
In another piece from The Intercept, Ryan Devereaux noted that the attack on the Capitol was openly planned and touted by the president himself. Despite America’s vast spending on surveillance and intelligence, the columnist alleged that the country’s police appeared to permit the mob’s storming of the Capitol.
Mike German, a former FBI agent specializing in counterterrorism, pushed for a “serious inquiry” into the breakdown in tactical and intelligence procedure that allowed the rioters — some armed — to breach the building. He also claimed that the threat of far-right and white supremacist violence has been steadily deprioritized since the September 11 attacks — despite an explosion of activity in the community following Barack Obama’s election.
As reported by The Inquisitr, a viral video from the riots seemed to show a police officer pose with a Trump supporter who appeared to be part of the group of rioters that stormed the Capitol. Although the video sparked theories on whether the officer was in support of the riots, the video did not make it clear whether he was intentionally taking a photo with the Trump supporter.
