The myth of the Boston Tea Party
By Jonathan Turley, opinion contributor — 07/04/20 10:01 AM EDT
As the country celebrates Independence Day, many of us will view monuments that have been toppled, defaced or entombed in protective fencing. Businesses throughout the country have been vandalized or boarded up, creating a surreal landscape for many this holiday.
Most protesters did not engage in rioting or looting. Yet the only thing more maddening than the random destruction is an increasingly common media rationalization that today’s rioters are the new Boston Tea Party patriots continuing a long tradition of property damage as a form of political speech. These rioters have as much in common with the Boston Tea Party as the antifa movement has with the Anti-Federalists.
The rationalization is not new. After violence and looting in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, leading Black Lives Matter figure DeRay McKesson was hired by Yale University to lecture on “Transformative Leadership.†McKesson’s lecture included reading about how looting is a “righteous tactic,†and he defended property damage as a tradition dating to the Boston Tea Party. Many in the media have raised the analogy, including CNN’s Don Lemon, who recently chastised anyone “judging†the looting and rioting because “our country was started because, this is how, the Boston Tea Party. Rioting. This is how this country started.â€
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https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/505849-the-myth-of-the-boston-tea-party
