Conservatives Fearmonger About America Being On Fire, Avoid Engaging Seriously On Police Brutality

If you watch Fox News or other conservative media, you might think America’s cities are engulfed in flames right now. They are not.

We’ve seen it before. In the wake of the insurrection, conservative media and Republicans alike attempted to distract from conversations about who and what might have incited the attempted-coup by handwringing over the amorphous “antifa” and falsely equating the violent storming of the U.S. Capitol to Black Lives Matter protests over the summer.

Now, on the heels of the guilty verdict that a jury in George Floyd’s cases announced Tuesday for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, conservatives are employing a similar tactic — pushing the idea of an America up-in-flames to avoid engaging seriously on another issue: the issue of police brutality as a symptom of systemic racism.