George Floyd Death Anniversary: How Black Lives Matter destroyed Democrats—and made America apathetic to dissent | World News

With the benefit of hindsight—and hindsight is always immensely beneficial—one can say that when Derek Chauvin decided to press his knee into George Floyd’s neck, he not only committed an act of brutality that shocked the world but inadvertently triggered a political chain reaction that broke the Democratic Party as we know it and made America apathetic to dissent, thanks to the faltering Black Lives Matter movement.

For those who need a trip down memory lane, on May 25, 2020, a white police officer in Minneapolis knelt on the neck of a Black man for over nine agonising minutes because a store clerk alleged he had used a counterfeit $20 bill at a convenience store. The horrifying footage, showing Floyd pleading for his life, calling for his mother, and then going still, became an enduring political image of our time, igniting both America and the world.

BLACK LIVES MATTER GOES MAINSTREAM

Millions took to the streets as it became the largest civil rights protest in American history.From Andheri to Amsterdam, activists across the world, who wouldn’t be able to name a single victim of police brutality in their own cities—even with a gun to their head—made placards for George Floyd. Black Lives Matter became a rallying call of global justice against racial injustice, police brutality, and every form of tyranny.America, which till 2008 held the record for the highest percentage of individuals incarcerated (it’s now number five behind El Salvador, Cuba, Rwanda, and Turkmenistan), looked like it would have to reckon with its history of police brutality and intolerance—and the movement that was at the heart of this reckoning was Black Lives Matter.The movement had been around since 2013, but in 2020, it became the litmus test of political morality. Corporates wrote “Black Lives Matter” on their social media profiles. Sports teams and celebrities said it with pride. Even Mitt Romney joined a march, and it appeared that Black Lives Matter was an absolute vote-winner, a chance for Democrats to finally be on the right side of history and wash their racist past of supporting slavery.Statues of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and even Frederick Douglass were defaced or toppled in a frenzy that felt more therapeutic than political. Meanwhile, murals of George Floyd sprang up across the world—not as a symbol of state brutality, but elevated as a near-messianic icon. Yet Floyd was not Malcolm X, nor was he Martin Luther King Jr. He was not a philosopher of resistance or a tactician of civil disobedience. He was just a man caught in the wrong moment, a victim of America’s original sin whose tragic death was contorted into sainthood by a movement too thirsty for symbols and too shallow for substance.BLM became the moral edifice of the post-Obama era, as Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer kneeled in kente cloths to show they were listening and learning.“Defund the police” went from fringe activist language to main theme song. Voices of concern that suggested putting all eggs in this basket could portend troubling times were silenced, among them House Majority Whip James Clyburn, who forewarned that BLM could do as much damage as “Burn, baby, burn” during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

The Black Lives Matter Blacklist

The Dems were also not helped by the internal scandals of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which raised $90 million in 2020, of which only one-third reached local chapters or other charitable causes. Most was instead used for self-enrichment and self-adducent through consulting fees, salaries, and questionable real estate purchases.Co-founder Patrisse Cullors faced public scrutiny after purchasing four properties worth over $3 million. One, a $6 million mansion in Los Angeles, was described as a “creative campus” but appeared more suited to influencer content creation than grassroots organising. $1.6 million was paid to her brother for security services, and $2.1 million went to a board member’s consulting firm. And in 2024, when BLMGNF sued the Tides Foundation for mismanagement of $33 million in donations, it further clouded the narrative.Families of victims whose names powered the movement were among the harshest critics. Breonna Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, accused BLM of profiting from her daughter’s death. Samaria Rice, mother of Tamir Rice, called the group “a fraud.”

How the GOP Turned BLM Into a Weapon

As the Democrats coped with the fallout of the Black Lives Matter movement, the Republicans—always making up in message discipline what they lack in moral urgency—branded themselves the party of rule of law, order, security, and anti-wokeness, while placing their bets on an ex-con and reality TV star best known for wheeling and dealing.Cities with BLM protests like San Francisco, Portland, and Chicago were painted as lawless dystopias where rioters could walk out with any shopping item they needed. Despite the fact that most police budgets grew or remained intact, and that violent crime rates were actually down, perception became reality.

In 2022, Republicans had spent over $50 million on crime-related ads, with over half targeting BLM or “defund the police” talking points. It was at the heart of Marco Rubio’s re-election to the Senate, as he managed to make his Democratic opponent Val Demings—a former police chief who explicitly called “defunding” crazy—still fend off the attack. The GOP’s framing was ruthlessly effective: Democrats were lifeless, cowardly, and captive to radicals.BLM also became a dog whistle—then a bullhorn—for the Republican cultural offensive that painted Democrats as out-of-touch priests and priestesses of elite academia.For anxious middle Americans, BLM was the main course of liberal overreach, with sides of trans-obsession in schools and sports, Critical Race Theory in classrooms, drag shows, gender pronouns, cancel culture, and ESG mandates.

BLM FUELS TRUMP MANIA

Interestingly, Trump’s popularity dipped in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests, helping swing voters towards the Dems. The aftereffect handed the GOP the initiative.By 2023–24, with Trump staging his comeback, Republicans had tied BLM to everything from crime and inflation to classroom politics. Trump’s “law and order” brand benefited from the perception—if not the reality—of rising urban crime. While FBI data showed violent crime declined in 2022 and 2023 after a 2020 spike, the public felt otherwise: Gallup found 63% of Americans in 2023 believed crime was a “very” or “extremely serious” problem.Perception had overtaken data, and the GOP was quick to exploit it.What the numbers say is this: while BLM initially sparked a wave of sympathy and demands for change, the long arc of public opinion—and electoral data—suggests a backlash that cut deep into Democratic coalitions. Trump’s approval dipped during the height of protests, but by 2024, his support among young Black men and Latino men under 45 had significantly risen, doubling in some cases from 2020 levels. Asian-American support for Democrats slipped by 7 percentage points.Meanwhile, Gallup showed crime concerns hitting a two-decade high, with 77% of Americans believing crime had worsened.FBI data showed crime falling, but perception had become political reality. Democrats, divided over identity politics and slogans like “defund the police,” found themselves losing support from working-class, suburban, and minority voters who had once formed their backbone. In the final tally, these shifts didn’t just help Trump win—they redrew the battleground map, helping Trump become the first Republican since George Bush in 2004 to win the popular vote.

A DEMOCRATIC ALBATROSS

BLM’s impact on Harris’s 2024 campaign was especially acute. Harris, once seen as a future-facing icon of multiracial America, was dragged down by her past support for bail funds during the protests and her association with reformist messaging. Her lifeless interviews and townhalls, often with vacillating accents punctuated with a laughter track, didn’t really assuage voters.When the DNC moved to coronate her as nominee following Biden’s exit, BLM activists publicly objected, demanding a “virtual snap primary,” accusing the party elites of ignoring grassroots voices. Harris failed to explain whether she was pro- or anti-BLM or how her campaign would be any different from Biden’s, and Trump, on the other hand, used every opportunity to use BLM’s legacy to call out Dems for the disorder and chaos.The cultural reckoning that began with Floyd’s murder had, five years later, helped bring Donald Trump back to the White House—where he and his merry band of Peter Principle apostles returned.

APATHETIC TO DISSENT

The first African-American Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall, had argued that democracy couldn’t flourish amid fear, not when one played ostrich. Liberty could never bloom amid hate, and justice could never take root amid rage.He had said in 1992: “We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust. We must dissent from a nation that has buried its head in the sand, waiting in vain for the needs of its poor, its elderly, and its sick to disappear and just blow away. We must dissent from a government that has left its young without jobs, education or hope. We must dissent from the poverty of vision and the absence of moral leadership.We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.”Sadly, Black Lives Matter didn’t just become an albatross around the Democratic Party’s neck. It also ended up making Americans so cynical that instead of dissenting from apathy, they ended up becoming apathetic to dissent.Also read: George Floyd Death Anniversary: How Black Lives Matter destroyed Democrats—and made America apathetic to dissent