Now that the ICE protests are entering their second week I've seen a lot of people online making allusions to the 2020 protests and calling it "the summer of love."
Who calls it the "summer of love" except for terminally online right wingers?
I've not met anyone who participated in George Floyd protests who calls it that. Haven't met many centrists or non-politically aligned people who call it that either.
It's a facetious way of denigrating the protests and signaling which side of the issue you're on, and it's seemingly ubiquitous in it's usage online right now.
The pandemic era is being retconned so hard right now it's ridicuolous. From COVID to the George Floyd protests to J6.
Were there riots during the summer of 2020? Yes.
Was the whole affair this out of control, violent, chaotic "summer of love" that right-leaning hyper-online folks make it out to be? Goodness no.
Now that there is a potentially burgeoning protest movement they're retconning 2020 and using it to paint ... whatever this year turns out to be to be something "worse."
Meanwhile the Natinoal Guard and the fucking Marines are being trotted out ... why? Because some Waymos were burnt out near a Home Depot and the federal building in L.A.? Because the combined forces of the LAPD, LACSD,and CHP couldn't control some ... six city blocks?
It blows my mind how small these riots are in L.A., how disproportionate the response is, and how out of touch the online discourse is right now. There clearly are terminally online groups or politcally motivated groups out there that have been chomping at the bit to identify a protest movement and move to rhetorically skew the playing field to cover for the President's actions.
Just like the President, these groups don't want to see peace They don't want to see deescalation. They wan't to see the President cause a confligration. Something they can hold up as a sign that the left is radical, unhinged, and untrustworthy.
They're itching to see blood in the streets.
They were disappointed there wasn't a more forceful, violent response to the George Floyd protests and now they're just playing cover for the President until he can inflame the situation to a point where troops fire on civilians.
What is someone in the middle supposed to do in this situation? Sit back while the military hits the streets? More than the ICE protests, the premature, militarized response is a reason to get out into the streets to say "the situation doesn't call for this, get out of our cities." But it's clear the administration actively wants more people out in the streets ... wants conflict ... wants the situation to deteriorate to a point where some trigger-happy 20 year old kills a civilian or two or three ...
So now protesting the militarized response, the ICE raids, or whatever there is to protest this summer is a loaded proposition. Because this President, his supporters, and these hyper-online right leaning groups clearly want violence.
When they talk about the "summer of love" just remember what they want to see is a "summer of blood."