Five years Black Lives Matter: 3 ways Maga changed the story around George Floyd's death World news

When George Floyd died in front of the knee of the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin five years ago, the outrage was quick and widespread. Republicans and democrats, police chiefs and civil rights activists, media houses and management managers agreed: it was terrible.“It is obviously the brutality of the police,” said conservative commentator Ben Shapiro at that time.Today this consensus is in ruins. A growing cohort of Maga influencers and right-wing experts in question not only actively ask Chauvin's guilt in question. What began as a cross -party moment of billing was transformed into a warning story about “wok” tension, racial policy and media distortion for conservatives.On the fifth anniversary of Floyd's death, three options are approaching how the Maga movement has turned the narrative-a symbol of police brutality into an emblem of the right-wing complaint.

1. From “police brutality” to “political scapegoat”

In 2020 even convinced conservatives condemned what they saw in this notorious video. But five years later, many argue on the right that Derek Chauvin is the real victim, which leads from a overzealous judicial system and a panic generated in the media.Ben Shapiro cited the indictment and dedicated several podcast episodes for the “the case for Derek Chauvin”. He now claims that Floyd has not died of suffocation, but in a mixture of drugs, heart disease and possibly even a rare tumor. He started an online petition for a forgiveness that received almost 80,000 signatures.Trump -Loyalists such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Charlie Kirk, Christopher Rufo and Jack Posobiec are to him. “It was a lie and it was always a lie,” said Posobiec to an applauding crowd and claimed that America cannot heal until Chauvin is freed.While Trump himself did not commit himself to a forgiveness – in March he says he “does not think about it at that time” – the campaign is classified as a loyality test for his war against “wokess”.

2. Blm framed as a true threat

What many are reminiscent of multirassic protest against police abuse is now being re -packed by law as the origin of social expiration – a moment when the country “lost the mind”.Conservatives refer to pictures of looting, arson and vandalism during the protests of 2020 as evidence of national hysteria. However, it is even more important that you blame the Floyd protests for everything, from diversity quotas in companies to “growth of indoctrination” in schools. In this revisionist framework, BLM is not a movement for justice-the spark is the spark that lit a left-wing cultural revolution.Commentators such as Candace Owens and Liz Collin have produced documentaries – “the biggest lie ever sold” and “The case of Minneapolis” – which urged the view that Floyd's death was misrepresented and that the real episode was a dangerous shift in American values. Even Kanye West, once a supporter of the reform of the criminal justice, repeated this story and said in 2022 that Floyd had died of drugs.

3 .. transform conspiracy into currency

As with the Capitol riots of January 6, 2021, which Trump later referred to as a “beautiful day” -the George Floyd story was drawn into the broader Maga Playbook of the refreshment of events by repeating, doubts and selective “evidence”.Within a few days after the death of Floyd, conspiracy theories spread on platforms such as YouTube and Telegram. Some claimed that Floyd was missing his death and still lived. Other accused George Soros of secretly financing the protests. Even more serious claims arose: The procedure was a “appearance” that the jury was put under pressure and that the media ignored important facts – like one of the arrest officials who were black.Medical experts in Chauvin's attempt contested the extent to which Floyd's drug use or illness contributed to his death, but the jury came to the conclusion that Chauvin's knee on Floyd's neck was the decisive factor. However, this nuance was deleted in right rooms, in which excerpts from autopsy spokes and body cam film material are implemented for alternative stories.As Esosa OSA explained to the disinformation monitor: “Repetition and reinforcement are for our brain of truth. This way, the actors can chop the media.”

A symbolic struggle, a tactical move

Even if Trump can only do Chauvin-what for federal costs-he would not free him from his 22.5-year-old state imprisonment. But that's irrelevant. The demand for a pardon is largely symbolic -a political rally scream for conservatives who consider the Floyd protests as the origin of the “wokes” participation of America.The chief of police from Minneapolis, Brian O'Hara, has pushed back. “We all knew what we saw and we all knew that it was wrong,” he wrote in the Minnesota Star Tribune and accused the right figures to delete hard -fought.But as with many cultural battles in the polarized media landscape of America, the truth can be less important than the story, which is told more often.And in the right-wing echo chamber, George Floyd's death is not a tragedy more-it is a myth, the forces.