Myths About the Protests, Debunked
Lies thrive and spread amidst chaos like mold on that orange you bought, telling yourself you were going to start eating healthier. We're in a pretty chaotic time, so it makes sense that a lot of bullshit out there needs to be cleared up.
Yes, George Floyd Is Actually Dead
This one should be fairly obvious by now, but yes, George Floyd is actually dead. A YouTube conspiracy theorist called JonXArmy posted a video where he claimed, with zero evidence, that George Floyd's death was faked. The video spread in the predictably sad, depressing conservative parts of the internet, like QAanon groups.
The JonXArmy channel has since been scrubbed of all it's content and relaunched as a whole new channel. In one of his new videos, the titular Jon explains that his raw, in-your-face style of truth-telling was too much for YouTube to handle, man, so they silenced him. He credits Sun Tzu for inspiring him as he takes his next steps toward delivering his truth bombs in a more "subtle and formless" way, like a low-key fart that poisons a city bus. After all, nobody intends on making a big splash when they baselessly claim someone at the epicenter of a massive cultural moment faked their death.
Anyway, George Floyd's body was examined by two separate medical examiners. Both declared him very much dead, with the second saying it was a homicide.
The Gnarly Tear Gas Return Serve Is Real But Didn't Happen Here
The video above is considered badass in 10 different solar systems. That video has gotten laid more than you have. You have the right to do to someone's phone what that guy did to the teargas canister whenever someone shows you a supposedly cool video that isn't this video.
Thankfully, the video is real; it just isn't from these protests. It's not even from America. It's from a 2019 protest in Lebanon. This one should have been obvious. Americans hate soccer. Imagine how astronomical the chances would have been for a cop fire a canister at one of the seven people in America who could expertly follow through on a kick like that.
Various George Soros Related Things Are All Bullshit
Look, man. No. Just no. George Soros is a corpse whose vast wealth has been keeping him alive despite the universe's best attempts to take him out. Is Soros funding the protests? Of-fucking-course not. People only think that because they're so racist, they can't believe someone cares enough about the senseless murder of a black man to burn down your cultural holy sites, like Target and a police precinct.
You can tell far-right conspiracy theorists know George's days are numbers because they've already shifted a ton of their liberal billionaire theories onto Bill Gates. Dude just wants to fight malaria, and guys with the word patriot seven times in their twitter bio think he's microchipping their fluoride or whatever.
Was The Fabled ANTIFA Rioting How-To Handbook Finally Discovered? No.
Whenever fascists congregate to indirectly announce their renewed commitment to their life-long, totally unforced celibacy, they're inevitably confronted by ANTIFA, an organization that isn't actually an organization at all. They're more like the naturally occurring phantom kicks to the ass that happen when someone, somewhere, has a "Kick Me" sign taped to their back. In the aftermath of their clashes, someone will claim a protestor dropped a supposed George Soros ANTIFA Bill Gates Illuminati rioting instruction manual.
What the picture's supposed to prove isn't exactly clear. The document isn't inflammatory. It doesn't say that every person participating must scalp at least one Nazi if they want to earn their George Soros check. It actually has some fairly sensible rules should a person get into an altercation at a demonstration. The most shocking part of the document is how it's a whole bunch of uninteresting nothing, and yet it's been popping up on social media after protests since at least 2015. The Giving Tree is more provocative than this boring thing.
Cops Are Planting Bricks To Set Up Protestors! But Maybe Not?!
This one is the muddiest of them all. The idea is that cops are planting stacks of bricks in places protests are scheduled to go down, banking on at least one chaotic person among them will chuck it through a window thus justifying the police's ensuring brutality. Or maybe, according to a now-deleted tweet from the White House's official twitter account, the bricks were placed there by ANTIFA to incite violence.
The truth, at least in the case of the White House account's hysterical lie, is that those bricks have been in front of the Chabad Jewish Center in Sherman Oaks, California, to stop any cars driven by anti-Semitic maniacs from slamming into the building.
As for all of the other piles of bricks discovered or supposedly discovered at protest sites, those are still a mystery. Both sides are pointing fingers at each other, but there's so far no (pardon the pun) concrete evidence to prove anything.
Luis can be found on Twitter and Facebook. Catch him on the "In Broad Daylight" podcast with Cracked alums Adam Tod Brown and Ian Fortey! Check out his regular contributions to Macaulay Culkin's BunnyEars.com and his "Meditation Minute" segments on the Bunny Ears podcast. Listen to the first episode on Youtube!
Top Image: Rosa Pineda/Wikimedia Commons, Oninnovation/Flickr
