What Does ‘Peaceful’ Mean?

As I keep saying, it’s all about The Narrative™. 

One of the most famous images to emerge from the 2020 George Floyd riots is the CNN chyron that described the riots as “mostly peaceful.” It was so absurd that it helped break the Pravda Media as much as it defined the moment itself. 

It was as if the country were watching two different screens: the “based on real events” docudrama that the media and Democrats were trying to make us believe was real, and the actual events as they took place in real-time. Half the country saw the docudrama, which portrayed the rioters as “mostly peaceful” civil rights heroes, and the other half saw Antifa rioters who were looting, burning down their own cities, and eventually trying to take over the central cities by creating “occupation zones.” 

You either saw the “Summer of Love,” or anarchists trying to “decolonize America” and replace our liberal democracy with a communist hellscape. 

Online: https://t.co/b3S5B4XFSV

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 10, 2025

They are trying to do it again, describing the Los Angeles riots–coming to a city near you as soon as this week–as peaceful protests against a fascist state trying to suppress the expression of legitimate grievances against an evil Nazi emperor sitting in Washington. 

Which brings up the question: what, exactly, does “peaceful” mean? Here in the land of the First Amendment everybody has the right to peaceably assemble, right? 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What you think of the riots depends mainly on what “peaceably assemble” means. 

This fossilized, rust bucket is nuts.

pic.twitter.com/2EtkWdgUng

— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) June 10, 2025

The Democrats keep asserting that the violence is a result of government oppression, and many of them outright deny that there is any violence at all. The local ABC station even claimed that protesters were just having fun watching cars burn, not actually doing anything wrong at all. As they threw concrete, stones, frozen water bottles, and other implements of destruction at police right on camera, Pravda and the Democrats were insisting that this was all First Amendment protected activity–peaceable assembly. 

“Just a bunch of people having fun watching cars burn” is a real line uttered by a real “news” anchor on TV as he argued that law enforcement should just leave them alone to have fun.

I promise you don’t hate the media enough. pic.twitter.com/656Oo8YI8F

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) June 9, 2025

The election of Karen Bass in 2022 was a stark reminder that people in Deep Blue cities are still watching the docudrama version of reality–the one that accepts the Leftist idea that what we are watching is legitimate, peaceful protest. The basis of this belief was encapsulated in the common refrain in 2020–destroying property is not violence. 

🔥HOLY SMOKES—@SecDef Pete Hegseth just dropped the HAMMER on on Democrat Betty McCollum!

MCCOLLUM: “We’re both from Minnesota. I was in the Twin Cities during the riots that followed the murder of George Floyd. Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets for days…At… pic.twitter.com/sbuKUE8xgr

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 10, 2025

How many times were we told that “it’s all insured” (it was not), and that vandalism and looting were legitimate expressions of understandable rage. This idea is tied to the anticapitalist ideology that is foundational to the Left, as is the belief that even killing “bad” people is perfectly alright. 

Luigi Mangione, anyone? 

You know who would disagree with the absurd assertion from Taylor Lorenz that Luigi Mangione is a “morally good man”?

Brian Thompson’s wife and two kids.
pic.twitter.com/w3dEFoZ1JQ

— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) April 13, 2025

You see exactly the same ideological distinction in the pro-Hamas riots, which again, we are told, are “peaceful protests.” Occupying buildings, destroying property, and harassing people for being Jews is not peaceful by any normal standard, but a significant chunk of the Democratic Party is sympathetic nonetheless. 

Critical Theory is all about redefining language and deploying the new definition of words as weapons in the larger ideological battle. If you change the meaning of words, you can change the range of what is acceptable. 

The assault on common sense is intentional–it is a strategy–and while it does not work on working-class people, it is very appealing to people who have absorbed Critical Theory either in school or from the Pravda Media. 

The ideological battle line really is right there: who gets to define the meaning of words. Is Luigi Mangione a “morally good man?” Are the riots in Los Angeles “peaceful?” Is the war in Gaza “genocide?” Are men who claim to be women really women? 

These are not small things. It is not an act of respect to accept what others claim to believe; it is a battle over the nature of reality, our societies, and ultimate controls society. 

The “peaceful” George Floyd riots led to burned out blocks of our cities, immense destruction, the hollowing out of some downtowns, and a massive spike of crime that took years subside, and hasn’t in many cases.

It’s important that we don’t concede an inch on the redefinition of words because the most powerful tool the left has–they learned this when their attempts to incite an actual revolution in the United States during the Great Depression–is control over The Narrative. Their goal since the 50s has been advancing that goal, and it has been working. 

Of course, as the riots themselves show, the battle for Western Culture is not only taking place in the verbal realm. But that is where it all starts.