A while back, I was reading Revolution in the Air, a book on the history of the New Left, and I noticed an annoying linguistic tic. The author repeatedly used words like "rebellion" and "uprising" to describe race riots. For instance:
How could it be otherwise, when they saw such juxtapositions as SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture) arriving as an honored guest in Cuba in the midst of the bloodiest urban rebellion yet, the July 1967 uprising in Detroit during which forty-one people were killed.
and
Of these, the Miami Rebellion [in 1980], had the biggest impact. ... More generally, the rebellion—the most economically devastating social uprising to that point in US history—was rooted in longstanding grievances on every level, and it was repressed with white vigilante violence, police abuse and murder.
Et cetera.
Now, it's not too surprising to read that usage in a book about the New Left written from the perspective of someone sympathetic to their aims. White leftists love romanticizing violence by minorities in the United States because it makes them feel as though they've been part of The International Struggle by proxy. Where it is surprising to see this usage is in mainstream news outlets ostensibly assigned to cover violence like we saw this weekend in Milwaukee in a neutral way.
Here's how the Associated Press wrote up the riots in Milwaukee:
The uprising that broke out Saturday evening didn't subside until after midnight, after Mayor Tom Barrett and other city leaders appeared at a news conference to plead for calm. ...
The mayor said the uprising was driven by social media messages instructing people to congregate in the area.
Yes, this was a classic "uprising" and definitely not a "riot," what with the trashing of local businesses and looting of their goods. I'm sure that burning down the BP station was a real blow for social justice and equality! I'm sure that when the sister of the lifelong criminal—a lifelong criminal was shot by police after he ran during a traffic stop and who was armed with a handgun and who had a rap sheet as long as my leg—calls for those involved with the "uprising" to "take that sh*t to the suburbs. Burn that sh*t down. We need our weave. I don’t wear it, but we need it" she is doing it to throw off the yoke of oppression!
When you use the word "uprising" to describe "lawless violence aimed at private businesses that are relieved of their goods and burned to the ground," you're romanticizing naked thuggery. A true uprising involves a fight against an oppressive regime—the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, for instance. A city that has been controlled by the Democratic Party for more than a century—a party supported by 90 percent of the group that is doing the rioting, it is probably worth noting—isn't quite the same as a city under the totalitarian rule of invading Nazis looking to liquidate the locals.
The natural response here from the left is to say that "riot" is just as ideological a term as "uprising." And maybe it is. But maybe, just maybe, we should be a bit more careful about which brands of political violence we choose to romanticize. Actual freedom fighters bear little relation to those who burn down their own cities and liberate stores of their property when a scumbag is killed by the police.
Update: Again, what's happening in Milwaukee is not an "uprising" against an imperial, overbearing force. It's a straight-up race riot:
Quit romanticizing this sort of behavior.