Five years of Black Lives Matter: 3 methods MAGA modified the narrative round George Floyd’s dying | World News – OXBIG NEWS NETWORK

When George Floyd died underneath the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin 5 years in the past, the outrage was swift and widespread. Republicans and Democrats, police chiefs and civil rights activists, media homes and company executives all agreed: it was horrific.“It’s police brutality, obviously,” mentioned conservative commentator Ben Shapiro on the time.Today, that consensus lies in ruins. A rising cohort of MAGA influencers and right-wing pundits isn’t solely questioning Chauvin’s guilt — they’re actively calling for his pardon. What started as a bipartisan second of reckoning has been reworked right into a cautionary story for conservatives about “woke” overreach, racial politics, and media distortion.As the fifth anniversary of Floyd’s dying approaches, listed here are 3 ways the MAGA motion has flipped the narrative — turning an emblem of police brutality into an emblem of right-wing grievance.

1. From “Police Brutality” to “Political Scapegoat”

In 2020, even staunch conservatives condemned what they noticed on that notorious video. But 5 years later, many on the precise are arguing that Derek Chauvin is the actual sufferer — railroaded by an overzealous justice system and a media-fuelled panic over race.Ben Shapiro has led the cost, dedicating a number of podcast episodes to what he calls “The Case for Derek Chauvin.” He now claims that Floyd didn’t die from asphyxiation, however from a mixture of medicine, coronary heart illness, and probably even a uncommon tumour. He has began a web-based petition for a pardon, garnering practically 80,000 signatures.Joining him are Trump loyalists like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Charlie Kirk, Christopher Rufo and Jack Posobiec. “It was a lie and it was always a lie,” Posobiec declared to an applauding crowd, claiming America can’t heal till Chauvin is freed.While Trump himself has not dedicated to a pardon — saying in March he’s “not considering it at this time” — the marketing campaign is being framed as a loyalty check for his warfare on “wokeness.”

2. BLM Framed because the Real Threat

What many bear in mind as a second of multiracial protest in opposition to police abuse is now being repackaged by the precise because the origin of social decay — a second when the nation “lost its mind.”Conservatives level to pictures of looting, arson and vandalism in the course of the 2020 protests as proof of nationwide hysteria. But extra importantly, they blame the Floyd protests for all the pieces from range quotas in companies to “woke indoctrination” in faculties. In this revisionist framing, BLM isn’t a motion for justice — it’s the spark that ignited a left-wing cultural revolution.Commentators like Candace Owens and Liz Collin have produced documentaries — “The Greatest Lie Ever Sold” and “The Fall of Minneapolis” — pushing the view that Floyd’s dying was misrepresented, and that the actual consequence was a harmful shift in American values. Even Kanye West, as soon as a supporter of felony justice reform, echoed this narrative, saying in 2022 that Floyd died of a drug overdose.

3. Turning Conspiracy Into Currency

As with the Capitol riots of January 6, 2021 — which Trump later known as a “beautiful day” — the George Floyd story has been pulled into the broader MAGA playbook of reframing occasions via repetition, doubt, and selective “evidence.”Within days of Floyd’s dying, conspiracy theories unfold throughout platforms like YouTube and Telegram. Some claimed Floyd faked his dying and was nonetheless alive. Others accused George Soros of secretly funding the protests. Even extra critical claims emerged: that the trial was a “sham,” that the jury was pressured, and that the media ignored key details — comparable to one of many arresting officers being Black.Medical consultants at Chauvin’s trial did dispute the diploma to which Floyd’s drug use or medical situation contributed to his dying, however the jury concluded that Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck was the decisive issue. Yet that nuance has been erased in right-wing areas, the place snippets of post-mortem stories and physique cam footage are repurposed to push different narratives.As Esosa Osa of the disinformation watchdog Onyx Impact defined, “Repetition and amplification equals truth for our brains. This is how bad actors can hack the media.”

A Symbolic Battle, a Tactical Move

Even if Trump had been to pardon Chauvin — which he can solely do for federal costs — it might not free him from his 22.5-year state sentence. But that’s irrelevant. The name for a pardon is essentially symbolic — a political rallying cry for conservatives who view the Floyd protests because the genesis of America’s “woke” collapse.Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara has pushed again strongly. “We all knew what we saw, and we all knew it was wrong,” he wrote in The Minnesota Star Tribune, accusing right-wing figures of attempting to erase hard-won reforms.But as with many cultural battles in America’s polarised media panorama, fact might matter lower than which story will get informed extra typically.And within the right-wing echo chamber, George Floyd’s dying is not a tragedy — it’s a fable in want of debunking.