Bree Newsome, a longtime activist and Black Lives Matter supporter, is condoning rioting and looting as a ‘legitimate’ response to what she claims is ‘state violence’ against blacks and other minorities.
Newsome gained the national spotlight in 2015 for scaling the flag pole at the South Carolina Statehouse to cut down a Confederate flag and now posts her radical ideas daily on Twitter where she goes by the handle Defund & Abolish Police.
“I’m definitely in the camp of defending rioting & looting as a legitimate, politically-informed response to state violence,’ Newsome tweeted Tuesday. ‘I’ve tweeted on this topic many times & I’m always willing to engage people in good faith discussion of why I hold that position.”
“Far from making the argument people think it does, the hand-wringing over property damage & looting in situations like this only highlights how this society treats Black people as less than human,” Newsome tweeted.
“No one has difficulty understanding targeted property damage as a political act when it’s white ppl,” Newsome wrote. “Depicting Blk &/or poor ppl as mindlessly looting just to ‘take advantage’ of social unrest [fostered by actions of the police] serves a racist fantasy of Black ppl being lawless.”
“The whole function of the focus on looting is to say, ‘look— this is why we need police even if they frequently murder people'”, Newsome wrote. “Black ppl are just waiting for any opportunity to steal & the police are the only ones protecting the property.”
“That offends many people’s sensibilities b/c people are so fully indoctrinated into white supremacy that they’ve never interrogated who is allowed to damage property & why,” Newsome tweeted. “The police are simultaneously damaging property during a riot they incited but that is deemed acceptable.”
“Half of the political establishment continues to defend the actions of the 1/6 riot, arguing that the people who damaged property that day were justifiably outraged,” Newsome tweeted. “The Boston Tea Party is also framed as a justified political act. It’s only Black ppl who must protest quietly.”
The UK Daily Mail reported on Newsome’s commentary:
Her impassioned remarks come in the midst of the trial of the former police officer who killed George Floyd in Minneapolis last year, and days after another Minnesota cop fatally shot 20-year-old Daunte Wright.
Newsome is outspoken about her belief that racial injustice in policing cannot be resolved with reforms to the current system, and that police departments should be abolished, defunded and the funds redirected to community services.
Her remarks in defense of rioting and looting drew strong criticism from conservative commentators, including Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
“BLM leader Bree Newsome no longer talks about ‘peaceful protests.’ She doesn’t want those any more,” Carlson said of her recent tweets.
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