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Here’s how it was supposed to work. A Hispanic version of BLM operating out of California, funded by government money, would kickstart a national movement and catapult Newsom into the White House. But the plan isn’t working because the public isn’t invested in the riots.
The BLM riots formed a movement, but illegal aliens waving Mexican flags and Antifa setting Waymos on fire isn’t resonating with Americans the way George Floyd’s golden coffin did.
“I can’t breathe” market tests better than “I can’t illegally cross the border and commit crimes.”
Like California’s trillion dollar train to nowhere, it was a good idea on paper in Sacramento. Newsom polls better with Hispanics than any other group. Dem power in California is based on illegal aliens. Who better to take on Trump over illegal aliens than Gov. Gavin Newsom?
Replay the 2020 BLM riots to shut down immigration enforcement, make the country look out of control, condemn Trump and touch off a new social justice movement to win in 2026 and 2028.
But there were plenty of warnings that it was a bad idea.
Hispanics had already shown a limited appetite for open borders and mass migration. California Democrats had built their entire election strategy on the idea that Hispanics hated and feared immigration enforcement, but polls showed that they were even more tired of open borders.
Racist white liberals assumed that Hispanics (and any other minority group) were interchangeable with black people. And that the same BLM strategy could be replayed with them. But Hispanics never had much interest in occupying a professional victimhood role on the lower rung of an affirmative action hierarchy. They don’t see themselves as liberals see them.
BLM was a fake group built up by the Ford Foundation and others with ‘front-women’ who controlled nothing and focused on talking about themselves, striking Hollywood deals and buying mansions, but the name alone had a great deal of power in invoking white guilt. But Americans just don’t feel guilty about immigration the same way they do about race.
The weaponization of race with black people is effective because of guilt over slavery, segregation and racism, and then the triumphant tokenization of the civil rights movement, Hispanics never had that mythic power to make Americans feel ashamed and invested in them.
Nor do they want it.
The Ford Foundation and other radical groups built up a Hispanic nationalist movement.
Hispanic nationalists of the La Raza variety see America as a tribal enemy that is occupying the territory of their planned homeland for the master race. They don’t want civil rights, they want to escalate the conflict into open warfare. And that is exactly what happened in Los Angeles.
But most Hispanics in America feel little investment in their brand of nationalism or anti-Americanism. There is much less appetite for street violence or protests. Americanized Hispanics don’t see themselves as outsiders and more recent immigrants or migrants don’t see how protests would help them. Those who take part in the riots are a small minority with leftist or racialist politics who don’t represent a larger base willing to mobilize in the upcoming election.
And so the larger ‘army’ that showed up for the BLM riots isn’t showing up for the LA riots.
The people on the streets are mostly still the same leftist activists who show up for everything and La Raza types, along with an assortment of street thugs of various races there for the looting.
What it isn’t is a national movement.
Newsom’s rioters never found a ‘George Floyd’ movement and where BLM had been slowly built up in the national consciousness since Ferguson, the open borders movement did too much too soon. Few Americans believe that countries having borders is immoral the way that racism is. The Left rushed to sell Americans on a moral position they don’t agree with.
And one that directly harms their interests.
Before 2020, crime was not a huge concern and this enabled leftists and libertarians affiliated with the Koch network to mainstream pro-crime policies among Democrats and Republicans. But after 2020’s record crime wave, the willingness to tolerate pro-crime policies disappeared.
Open borders and mass migration were a huge issue in the election. The odds that the Left would be able to pull a ‘BLM’ over mass migration were next to none. Much as George Floyd’s drug overdose death would not have touched off outrage once crime was sky high, immigration enforcement, no matter the incident, is not touching off public outrage the way it might have.
The Democrats are knocking on a closed door and they’re still not getting the message.
And they’re victims of their own successes. After four years of non-stop anti-Trump riots, the public is sick and tired of the whole thing. Their outrage meters are overloaded. Leftists couldn’t mount much in the way of protests after Trump’s victory, his inauguration or any of his events: major media outlets lack the viewers and readers that they used to have during his first term.
Outrage fatigue among liberals is real and the riots will only make it worse.
If Gov. Newsom thought the riots would take him to the White House, he was sadly mistaken. They showed once again that California is dysfunctional, that its leaders are either complicit or inept and that the last thing they would ever want to do is turn over the country to one of them.
Finally, the 2020 riots worked because they made the country seem to be out of control. The spectacle of rioters overrunning cities and attacking the White House did not help Trump, paradoxically it helped Biden, because people wanted someone to control the chaos. Trump had the correct instincts to confront the rioters, but he was hobbled by Milley and others.
This time around, President Trump is directly confronting the rioters and that will pay off.
Including among Hispanic voters.