BLM Protestors Treated More Harshly Than Capitol Stormers
The Claim
The response to Capitol storming favors BLM Protest response.
News posted on
Emerging story
Dinesh D’Souza, a far-right political commentator and conspiracy theorist Tweeted on January 6th, after the US capitol was stormed by domestic terrorists, that “the media is now enlarging images of protestors so they can be identified and prosecuted. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t remember them doing this when Antifa and BLM were unleashing their orgy of terror and violence. Law and order demand a single standard of enforcement.”
One Twitter user responded claiming there were 14,000 arrests corresponding to the Black Lives Matter protests.
Many people responded by pushing another conspiracy theory, claiming that the people who stormed the capitol were members of ANTIFA and BLM.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s investigation found the claim that authorities and media are going after the people who stormed the Capitol harder than they went after people involved in the BLM protests to be fake.
According to Forbes, “just 52 people were arrested in Washington D.C. Wednesday after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol and interrupted Congress certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s win.”
This summer in Washington DC during protests for racial justice after George Floyd was killed in police custody, Hundreds of people were arrested for “unrest-related” offenses over the course of a few days. On June 1 alone, more than five times the number of people were arrested than on the day the Capitol was stormed, with 289 people booked.
According to the Metropolitan Police Department, “between May 30 and June 2, 2020, the height of the racial justice protests, 427 "unrest-related" arrests were made in D.C., including 24 juveniles.” According to the Washington Post, more than 14,000 people nationwide were arrested during these protests.
According to Rep. Marcia Fudge, a Democrat from Ohio, there’s “no question… (that) there is a double standard” between how police treated Black Lives Matter protesters last summer and the pro-Trump supporters this week. But this double standard isn’t in the way Dinesh D’Souza has claimed.
