Five police officers were brutally murdered on Thursday night in Dallas during a Black Lives Matter protest. Though unrelated to this incident, it’s worth looking back at examples of media outlets urging violence or explaining it away. On June 6, 2016, The Huffington Post published a screed entitled, "Sorry Liberals, A Violent Response To Trump Is As Logical As Any."
In it, writer Jesse Benn chided fellow liberals, saying, "They ignore the history of successful violent insurrection in the US, instead favoring the elementary school version of history in which nonviolence is the only means of struggle that’s ever achieved a thing." Benn continued, "Whether you would personally engage in violent conduct matters little to your ability to understand where it comes from."
Media Research Center President Brent Bozell responded to this, condemning, "I find it stunning because [Benn] doesn't really qualify what kind of violence he is talking about. If violence is the logical response to Donald Trump, a form of violence is assassination."
On June 3, Vox editor Emmett Rensin praised violence in San Jose, declaring, "Advice: If Trump comes to your town, start a riot." Rensin was later suspended by Vox editor-in-chief Ezra Klein.
On April 27, 2015, CNN analyst Marc Lamont Hill defended violent riots in Baltimore as "uprisings" against "police terrorism."
"No, there shouldn’t be calm tonight. Black people are dying in the streets. They’ve been dying in the streets for months, years, decades, centuries....I’m not calling these people rioters. I’m calling these uprisings, and I think it’s an important distinction to make. This is not a riot. There have been uprisings in major cities and smaller cities around this country for the last year because of the state violence that’s been waged against black female and male bodies forever....Part of what it means to say black lives matter, is to assert our right to have rage – righteous rage, and righteous indignation in the face of state violence and extrajudicial killing. Freddie Gray is dead. That’s why the city is burning and let’s make that clear. The city is not burning because of these protesters. The city is burning because the police killed Freddie Gray and that’s a distinction we have to make....We can’t pathologize people who, after decades and centuries of police terrorism, have decided to respond in this way."
— CNN’s Marc Lamont Hill on CNN Tonight, April 27.
