Far-Right Backlash During the Black Lives Matter Protests
Background Information:
On May 25 th 2020, a store employee called the police on George Floyd, a 46-
year-old unarmed black man, under the suspicion that he was attempting to make
a purchase with a counterfeit $20 bill. Floyd was detained by the police and
according to the report, he remained compliant until the officers tried to put him
into the car. He then ‘stiffened up, fell to the ground, and told the officers that he was claustrophobic and not trying to resist’ . 112 Police officer, Derek Chauvin,
proceeded to kneel on his neck for 9 minutes, whilst bodycam footage shows
Floyd in distress, stating that he could not breathe over 20 times and begging ‘Please, please, please… you’re going to kill me’. 113 Roughly 6 minutes in, Floyd
became unresponsive and was later pronounced dead at the hospital.
The event was recorded by passersby, and footage was uploaded to social
media where it went viral, leading to the eruption of the 2020 Black Lives Matter
movement across the globe. According to the Social Media Analytics Centre at
the University of Connecticut, hashtags such as #BlackLivesMatter, and other
references of the like, were mentioned over 80 million times on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Reddit. 114
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