News Item

When two tribes go to war…

George Floyd’s death is a tragedy.

A police officer abused his power and a man died. The officer should be punished accordingly, and he has been.

But two wrongs don’t make a right. Rioters, looters, and violent protesters should also be punished accordingly, because there is no excuse for crime.

This violence has a backstory; a political narrative.

See, for several decades now, political forces which want destruction through division and violence have gained a hold on culture. They have successfully convinced an entire generation to see society as a collection of warring tribes.

The war is a war of power, not truth. That’s why it plays out in violence, suppression, no-platforming, and propaganda, not argument, dialogue and logic.

The tribes are blacks versus whites, gays versus straights, religion versus everyone, man versus woman, cis versus trans, right versus left, etc. It is breeding resentment, victimhood, hatred, and discontent. Look no further than those who have swallowed it whole – Clementine Ford, for example. It’s destroying people.

Indeed, these race riots are a case study in identity politics:

Step 1: Take one person’s sin: deadly abuse of power.

Step 2: Identify the sinner’s attributes: white, male, police officer, etc.

Step 3: identify the victim’s attributes: black, man, etc.

Step 4: Choose the contrasting attributes that have most political leverage: white vs black/racism narrative.

Step 5: Apply the sinner’s guilt to everybody with their attribute: whites are racist power-abusers.

Step 6: Don’t hold back, because you’re innocent, and they’re all guilty: rage against “whiteness” – riots, looting, destruction, abuse, hate, not against one man, one institution, or even one city, but everyone and everything that you think represents “whiteness”. Or, alternatively, sit back and justify the rioters for the same reason.

This is not about truth. It’s war and it’s about power.

It ends really, really badly. It has done so across all cultures, throughout all time. The foulest violence and the vilest hatred has come from this sort of tribal thinking time and again. From the Tutsis and the Hutus, to the gas chambers or the gulags, and the stain of slavery on America’s history.

The seeds of this start small. They start with the narrative of divided tribes; a narrative that is well and truly among us.

Women bristle at masculinity and forever push for empowerment over the men in their lives, blacks live with festering resentment over “white privilege,” the trans community believes their mental struggles are stigma-based and the whole LGBTQ world is sincerely convinced that Christians hate their guts. Now, white men are trying to get a piece of the victim pie, too, by saying they are the last remaining non-recognised victim group in family law, poverty, suicide etc.

The death of George Floyd has been another chance for political forces with an agenda to stoke the hate, fuel the warfare narrative, and convince a nation of racist tribalism (as well as all other tribalisms).

The combined activity of these political forces is tearing apart a nation. It’s getting worse, not better. It’s happening in Australia, too.

ANTIFA moved quickly. Organised, responsive, and agenda-driven, bussed into Minneapolis to kick-start riots. Opportunistic looters joined them, not to mourn Floyd, but to gratuitously steal and destroy.

And it’s contagious. The whole nation has joined them. It’s a powder keg waiting to blow. When tribes are in a battle that’s lasted for generations, and there is no such thing as unifying truth to help you resolve things, your only answer is violence and power struggle.

Meanwhile, the statistics are clear. 4% of black homicide victims are killed by cops. 12% of white homicide victims are killed by cops. A police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black man than an unarmed black man is to be killed by a cop. I could go on all day with the data.

Sadly, an entire generation is primed and ready, because they believe in the identity politics creed. Thanks schools, thanks universities, thanks media, and thanks government who fund it all.

The idea that one man’s sin is a collective sin is dangerous. Individuals are responsible for their actions and should be individually punished, whether that be abuse of power or looting or anything else. The real issue is that a police officer abused his power – it has happened before, to both black and white victims. He has been punished severely for doing wrong, as he should be.

One of the sadder aspects of this is I doubt whether Floyd would have wanted it. He seems to have been quite an amazing Christian convert with a heart for ministry.

Christians, please do not drink the tribal kool-aid. It’s destroying us. It’s a vehicle for terrible hatred and the entrapment of victimhood. It’s about power, not truth.

Fortunately, our hope is not in the kingdom of this world, but in the kingdom of God which cannot be shaken.

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