Yesterday, the press breathlessly trumpeted that a suspect had been found in the case of the “Umbrella Man,” who was recorded on video smashing the windows of an AutoZone on May 27, the second day of the George Floyd riots.

According to an affidavit (which is still unproven, without even an arrest to support it), Umbrella Man is a member of the Aryan Cowboy Brotherhood, a minor prison and motorcycle gang.

The potential arrest of a man who may have broken some windows was deemed worthy of coverage by The Washington Post, CNN, and The New York Times. Even international outlets like the BBC and National Post were very interested in Minneapolis’s broken-windows investigation. It’s not because any of them suddenly care about law and order. Neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post ever dedicated a single news article to retired police officer David Dorn, murdered in St. Louis while defending a friend’s store from looters.

David Dorn

There is only one reason for their boundless enthusiasm. It’s an effort to set a narrative. This line in The New York Times is typical:

Erika Christensen, an arson investigator with the Minneapolis police, wrote in the affidavit that the vandalism “created an atmosphere of hostility and tension” two days after Mr. Floyd’s death. It unleashed a chain reaction of arson and looting in the Twin Cities, she wrote, after protests had been relatively peaceful.

Just about every article includes something like the line above. All of them have the same purpose: Promoting the idea that Umbrella Man is directly responsible for the George Floyd riots. By extension, the right and its supporters (i.e., you) are to blame for all the murder and destruction of the last month. The left and its voters, which actually committed the arson and looting, are blameless.

This story is fake, not because Umbrella Man has been falsely identified, but because it doesn’t matter. The riots in Minneapolis were not started by one man with an umbrella. They were started by left-wing agitators who attacked a police precinct, smashing windows and damaging cop cars:

At about 6 p.m., the protest turned into a march towards the 3rd Precinct, where it is believed that the officers worked. A much smaller group than the initial protest started vandalizing the building, shattering a window and spray painting squad cars.

That local news report was from May 26th, the very first day of agitation over George Floyd, and an entire day before Umbrella Man smashed a single window. The George Floyd riots were never “peaceful.” They involved destruction rioting, and yes, smashed windows from the very beginning. All over Minneapolis and in cities across the country, the story was the same: “Peaceful” protesters gave cover to violent opportunists, while politicians abandoned their own citizens and attacked their own police departments to placate them. Blaming Umbrella Man for the riots is worse than a cop-out: It’s an act of political defamation, blaming the ideological opponents of rioting for destruction the left spent weeks giddily defending.

The press made its feelings clear weeks ago. On June 2nd, New York Times race hustler Nikole Hannah-Jones lectured CBS News viewers that destroying public property was not a form of violence:

That very same day, the paper’s “news” division reported on “the violence that marred the peaceful protests” of the previous weekend.

Now, two months later, the press’s lies are obvious. Rather than admit the truth, they’re trying to cover it with another lie.

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