Radley Balko goes long against a George Floyd conspiracy documentary

March 3, 2024 3:08 PM

The Fall of Minneapolis (IMDb), a right-wing conspiracist documentary arguing that Derek Chauvin was innocent of wrongdoing against George Floyd, has recently gained some traction in more “respectable” conservative circles.
Long-time police reporter Radley Balko (mefi’s own) has written a three-part critique of the documentary breaking down the film’s inaccuracies, the naïvely positive coverage it received in Bari Weiss’s The Free Press, and the various corporate and social systems that work to protect police racism and violence: “The Retconning of George Floyd” · “The Autopsy” · “The Great Flattening”

In a bonus part two-point-five, Balko acknowledges the positive impacts that parts one and two have had: “An Update”

posted by Going To Maine (22 comments total)

(This is like 30k words, but I think it’s a really good revisit of a story that is still relevant.)
posted by Going To Maine at 3:14 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]

I'd been following Balko for years, and love that he's doing this. Speaking of going long, the fascist culture warriors have been milking the George Floyd story with their bullshit for years, and there's little reason the believe it'll change their fuckheadedness. But Balko's been a source to go to for the straight story, for people who might have gotten the bullshit and accepted it on good faith.
posted by 2N2222 at 3:23 PM on March 3 [8 favorites]

the naïvely positive coverage it received in Bari Weiss’s The Free Press

You meant to say cynically tendentious coverage, surely
posted by chavenet at 3:35 PM on March 3 [10 favorites]

This is amazing work; and Balko is a gem - I read most of it.

Is there an executive summary somewhere that can be worked into talking points? Because most people that both i) need persuading and ii) are persuadable about the key points and thesis, ain't gonna read 30k workds.
posted by lalochezia at 4:08 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]

Really looking forward to reading this thru asap, thanks for the post
posted by djseafood at 4:26 PM on March 3

I read most of this when it hit my mailbox. It's great stuff. I feel like I learn a lot from every one of his newsletters I read.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 6:57 PM on March 3

gained some traction in more “respectable” conservative circles

Every time I see this phrasing pop up, it's just a reminder to move whatever "respectable" names from their current place in my head, and put them in the "batshit insane conspiracy theorists poisoning society" box where they belong.

Tl/dr: if someone is giving credence to things like this, they aren't "respectable."
posted by Ghidorah at 7:54 PM on March 3 [11 favorites]

This is entirely frustrating and completely expected with it's awfulness.
(And worth it to read!)
posted by djseafood at 8:11 PM on March 3

I read the first part, and it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I get, to some extent, why these details are treated as important (they matter to the legal system we've got), but it really shouldn't matter what the MPD training manuals say. if you kneel on a man's neck until he loses consciousness and keep kneeling on him for another three minutes, you are trying to kill him. The official policy could be that officers must keep their weight on a suspect's neck for at least nine minutes in all cases, and that would still be true.
posted by eruonna at 8:42 PM on March 3 [4 favorites]

For a member since May 17, 2005 with a total of nine comments to his name, and after reading those nine comments, I would say Radney Balko is a mefi's own mefi's own. Talk about punching above one's weight. In a word: Wow.
posted by y2karl at 8:58 PM on March 3 [2 favorites]

I read the first part, and it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I get, to some extent, why these details are treated as important (they matter to the legal system we've got), but it really shouldn't matter what the MPD training manuals say. if you kneel on a man's neck until he loses consciousness and keep kneeling on him for another three minutes, you are trying to kill him. The official policy could be that officers must keep their weight on a suspect’s neck for at least nine minutes in all cases, and that would still be true.

It’s v. true that none of this should matter (& morally I don’t think it does), but the first bit is so much about tearing down specific claims made by the documentary and by Hughes. It’s gotta get into those vexing weeds.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:45 PM on March 3 [4 favorites]

Just to underline a thing I don't think has been underlined-- a good personal solution to unusually bad police and judges is to move away, but that takes money. The regime of excessively fining people meant it was draining the resources they needed to get away.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:56 AM on March 4 [2 favorites]

So many potential hot takes here....

Speaking of going long, the fascist culture warriors have been milking the George Floyd story with their bullshit for years, and there's little reason the believe it'll change their fuckheadedness.

This is 100% true. There's a cell of far-right shitheads in the Twin Cities exurbs who have made this sort of thing a cottage industry, they're intentionally disgusting individuals, and they're in on the right-wing money grift, so they have extra reason to cling to their positions. "AlphaNews" is just the latest manifestation. For the most part, decent people here have done a fairly good job of beating them back, but unfortunately, it's like an invasive weed, you have to keep uprooting it when it turns up. It's sad that time has to be spent on this--and I don't like that the narrative sometimes has to get turned to the far-right framing in order to combat it--but I'm very appreciative that this important counter-work is being done.

I've personally had to engage in debunking on this subject with people I know, one on one. There was a misinformation campaign being handed around a couple of years ago, that there's a recrudescence of it now is depressing, but not totally surprising.

I still follow Minneapolis Twitter a bit, there was a flameout just last week where Liz Collin, one of the primary right-wing instigators mentioned in the article, burned some of the last remaining cordial relationships she still had with local non-far-right media. She used to work for the CBS-owned TV station here, so she had people in her contacts list.

Which is also why you need someone like Balko who can say things plainly and clearly like "Both of these claims are false". I've gotten the impression that we've had local journalists protecting a bad apple in the profession...much like police officers will protect a bad apple in the profession.
posted by gimonca at 4:17 AM on March 4 [7 favorites]

Oh, and to quote from the third article, regarding bad apples:

The proper question isn’t “How many cops in this department are bad?” it’s “Is this police department capable of detecting and removing the clearly rotten apples?”
posted by gimonca at 4:26 AM on March 4 [12 favorites]

All Cops Are Badapples
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:08 AM on March 4 [11 favorites]

Every time I see this phrasing pop up, it's just a reminder to move whatever "respectable" names from their current place in my head, and put them in the "batshit insane conspiracy theorists poisoning society" box where they belong.

“batshit insane conspiracy theorists poisoning society who write/wrote for the New York Times/WaPo/Atlantic”, generally.
posted by Artw at 5:08 AM on March 4 [3 favorites]

I think this is really great, and thoughtful, and thorough, and well-presented and it is incredibly depressing to me that it will absolutely not convince my father in law of anything no matter how good it is.
posted by an octopus IRL at 5:57 AM on March 4 [2 favorites]

we should be looking at these situations, more and more, as training exercises

this is what we can expect from The Law:

Next, Officer J. Alexander Kueng then told Chauvin that he couldn’t find Floyd’s pulse. Onlookers continued to plead with Chauvin to remove his knee.

“Bro, he’s not fucking moving,” one said. “Get the fuck off him. What are you doing? He’s dying,” said another. And then still another, “He’s not even fucking moving. Get off his fucking neck, bro. Get off of his neck.”

Chauvin ignored all of them. After Floyd went limp, Chauvin kept his weight on him for another three minutes.

did you draw the correct lesson from this?

I suppose 15 years ago they would have wanted this to be swept away out of sight, but that's not good enough now. Trying to resurrect this murderous bastard and rub our faces in his name. Kyle Rittenhouse, etc: they'd use words like 'regrettable' 15 years ago but today it's celebrated
posted by elkevelvet at 7:11 AM on March 4 [5 favorites]

I still follow Minneapolis Twitter a bit, there was a flameout just last week where Liz Collin, one of the primary right-wing instigators mentioned in the article, burned some of the last remaining cordial relationships she still had with local non-far-right media. She used to work for the CBS-owned TV station here, so she had people in her contacts list.

Burying the lede a bit — Liz Collin is married to Bob Kroll. No conflict of interest there reporting on the MPD, nosiree…
posted by nathan_teske at 7:51 AM on March 4 [2 favorites]

Is there an executive summary somewhere that can be worked into talking points? Because most people that both i) need persuading and ii) are persuadable about the key points and thesis, ain't gonna read 30k workds.

And yet these people will watch 90 minute videos…

It’s exhausting
posted by TomFrog at 8:51 AM on March 4 [4 favorites]

Maybe the video of the Glenn Loury and John McWhorter update admitting that they were wrong to believe in these lies (linked in this post) explains in a shorter form what Balko painstakingly argues.

This explanation of WHY is good:

As I mentioned in the first installment, the public outrage and protests over George Floyd’s death moved public opinion in a way we’ve never seen before. It also sparked real, substantive reforms. Cities and, in some cases, entire states passed policies prohibiting no-knock raids and chokeholds, creating police misconduct databases, mandating deescalation training, requiring body cameras, and funding programs to replace police officers responding to people in crisis with mental health professionals. (Despite the ongoing joke among police advocates about “sending a counselor” to deal with dangerous people, these programs have been enormously successful.)

But we’re now seeing a push to roll back many of these reforms. There has been some pushback even from progressive politicians and city councils, but it’s mostly been in red states, where conservative lawmakers have passed extreme legislation curtailing the right to protest, limiting criminal and civil liability for people who run over protesters, restricting public and media access to body camera footage, barring police agencies from releasing the names of officers who kill people or are accused of misconduct, and blocking public access to police personnel files

If I can, I'll return to these posts and try to come up with an executive summary version. Or has Balko tweeted out a pithier version? I'm too furious to read more about this right now though.
posted by spamandkimchi at 7:00 PM on March 4

I don't think McWhorter admitted he was wrong, he just said it was reasonable to bring attention to the movie. Loury said (much to his credit for admitting his mistake) that he was so angry about the rioting over Floyd that he didn't keep track over the facts of Floyd's death.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 11:30 PM on March 4