atlanta Archives

Saturday

30 May 2020

End the lockdown. Stop the riots

From our US edition

These riots are not just about pent up frustration over police brutality and the murder of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. In part, they’re about a population being locked up for three months while 40 million people lose their employment.Politicians like New York City mayor Bill de Blasio cracked down on Jewish funerals and schools. They remained silent last night as hundreds of people joined protests which turned into riots in Brooklyn, injuring police officers and resulting in the arrest of several members of the Blac Block anarchist group, antifa.Mayors in Atlanta and Minneapolis condemned the violent crowds which had gathered by the hundreds to turn on corporate businesses and small businesses alike and even the CNN headquarters building.

Dominic Green

Antifa’s white privilege

From our US edition

There is no right to burn down your neighborhood, but it’s always an option. Freedom means choice, and real freedom must include the choice of self-destruction — but not destroying someone else’s neighborhood. Especially not when the neighborhood is mostly black and poor. That is what the privileged whites of antifa are doing by instigating disorder and destruction in Minneapolis’s 3rd precinct and elsewhere. Cost-free kicks at black people’s expense: the height of white privilege. Race is the American sickness, and though everyone is sick of it, no one has the cure. The murder of George Floyd and the fact that it took riots before his killer was charged, confirms, should anyone still need confirmation, that Americans are still not equal before the law.

Daniel McCarthy

The roots of riot

From our US edition

That LEGO set or Louis Vuitton bag you’ve always wanted can be yours free if you just wait for the next black suspect to die in police custody. That’s the lesson so far from the riots in Minneapolis, Portland, Atlanta and elsewhere following the death of George Floyd. Arson and luxury looting are not the most obvious ways of fighting racism or police brutality, but at this point riots are a ritual. ‘Antifa’ means bourgeois bolshevism — college-educated mock revolutionaries performing to a predictable script. This is the most sterile rebellion any country has ever seen. Far from terrifying the establishment, it reflects exactly what is taught in schools and preached over the airwaves and in respectable op-eds.

Sunday

15 December 2019

Jack Hunter

Richard Jewell was a victim of ‘fake news’

From our US edition

Few things enrage journalists more than when President Trump accuses the media of creating ‘fake news’ or calls them the ‘enemy of the people’.Reporters and pundits understandably take it as a threat — not only to themselves but also to the First Amendment and the bedrock notion that a free press is necessary for a free society. Some have interpreted Trump’s remarks as emerging fascism or even wondered if they could end up in jail for criticizing this administration (though the media curiously didn’t make as much of a stink when President Obama was trampling reporters’ constitutional rights).Yet to date, no journalists have been locked up. No fascist measures have been taken against the press.

Wednesday

20 November 2019

Matt McDonald

The myth of Mayor Pete

From our US edition

What is it about Mayor Pete Buttigieg that's going to most appeal to the people of Atlanta? Is it the years he spent in consultancy on the McKinsey payroll? Perhaps it's the large donations he's secured from a few Silicon Valley donors — because we know how much the new left loves billionaires. And in a heavily African American city, his unspeakable whiteness, Harvard degree and subtle homosexuality should go over a treat. There are several reasons why Buttigieg shouldn't be the candidate to beat tonight — he shouldn't even be a threat. Yet he heads to the Oprah Winfrey stage at Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta tonight as the talking-point-in-chief. The mayor's recent rise can be attributed to a few factors.