Konstantin Kisin

The response to Floyd's death wasn't merely emotional.

It was ideological and it was systematic.

Forces across the country underwent mandatory diversity and anti-racism training.

The principle drilled into offices explicitly or implicitly was that accusations of racism must be taken with the utmost seriousness, that the historic failure of institutions to believe minority victims of racism was the original sin and it needed atoning for.

Racism is bad.

Attempting to address it is good.

The problem is what happens when you apply it without judgment in the real world.

You train officers to weight an allegation of racism so heavily that it overrides the evidence in front of their eyes.

You produce exactly the outcome we saw in Southampton.

A man bleeding to death on the pavement begging for help, being told by officers who should be saving his life,

They don't think he's been stabbed.

What is particularly striking about this case is the way it mirrors almost exactly the injustice that movement was supposedly designed to prevent.

George Floyd died saying, I can't breathe, while a police officer knelt on his neck.

Henry Novak died saying, I can't breathe, while police officers knelt on his back and handcuffed him.

The British establishment that wept for Floyd has been conspicuously quiet about Novak.

The politicians who marched through London streets in 2020 have not rushed to the cameras.

The corporations that changed their logos and funded diversity initiatives have not issued statements.

This is not an accident or even a surprise.

It's the logical consequence of an ideology that does not actually oppose racism.

It simply reassigns its acceptable targets.