Remembering William Norman Grigg and Questioning the Narrative of the Riots

I do not know how many people who visit LewRockwell.com look for the writings of authors who are no longer with us; one of the contributors of some of the most powerful articles to LewRockwell.com was the late William Norman Grigg who wrote frequently on police violence and also the reprehensible and corrupt behavior of law enforcement and government. However, although black, he did not limit his outrage only to those victims who were black; he wrote about all victims, for example Brittany Irish in “We Have a ‘Duty’ to Submit; They Have No Duty to Protect”, or the story of an unacknowledged hero, David Santoro—not a police officer—in “Your ‘Duty’ to Protect and Serve the Police.” Grigg was color blind in that I believe, being a Christian, he saw that there are numerous victims of police abuse of power who are not just black Americans, and he was appalled by violent police conduct against all American victims and didn’t focus on the their race; rather, he realized the problem was systemic.

I wonder what he would have written about the violence in response to the murder (as I agree with Fred Reed on this) of George Floyd by a policeman (with other officers as bystanders, doing nothing to save Floyd’s life). However, today Bill Sardi provided a comment that Lew Rockwell posted on his Political Theater blog that raises questions that I suspect will go unanswered:

“So suddenly a cop suffocates a black man in the street with an unknown party filming, and the cop is not bothered by the filming, and the cops abandon their headquarters (looked pretty cleansed of papers, etc.) and the cops certainly have intel and would know by infiltration that ANTIFA and BLACK LIVES MATTER are sending saboteurs to Minneapolis.  The George Floyd fiasco then becomes center stage.  Take our minds and eyes off of the COVID-lie.”

Of course, we are seeing violence and destruction perpetrated by not just African-Americans but also white Americans, some identified as ANTIFA. Zerohedge posted “The George Floyd Protests – 20 Unanswered Questions” but I think there are answers; many will not like them. Yet I will discuss them all the same.

The Vigilant Citizen posted on May 31^st 2020 an article that elaborates on Sardi’s concerns: “George Floyd Riots Infiltrated by Extremist Groups and Agents Provocateurs.”

It begins, “The death of George Floyd was as horrific as it was charged with symbolism. A police officer, who is supposed to ‘protect and serve,’ presses his knee on the neck of an unarmed civilian for eight long minutes. Before losing consciousness, Floyd pleads with the officer, saying ‘mama’ and ‘I can’t breathe.’

“Floyd was being arrested for using a fake $20 bill to pay for a pack of cigarettes. He ended up being suffocated to death in a scene that can be likened to a public execution. Because, despite the fact that multiple cameras were filming him, officer Derek Chauvin never let up. It is almost as if he wanted this to become viral.”

If there were a proper investigation, by “journalists” or law enforcement, shouldn’t cell phone locations, phone calls, texts, emails and financial records of all the police officers be scrutinized? In this surveillance state with widespread use of smartphones isn’t identification of those violent perpetrators, both black and white, and advance warning available to government authorities? I hardly think this will ever happen.

The Vigilant Citizen article ends with the following:

“As protests spread across 30 cities, it is obvious that shady yet heavily organized groups have traveled to strategic places to incite violence. A classic role of agents provocateur is to justify police-state measures such as curfews, lockdowns, and the deployment of the military.

“But there is more to this. While the Left blames the extreme-right and the Right blames the extreme-left, one important fact remains: Both ‘extremes’ ultimately work for the same elite. They are both used to sow hate and division in the country while destroying it from within. They want a race war, they want class war and they want political war. They want anything that weakens the United States in order to put it under the control of outside globalist forces.

“A telling clue that this is all sanctioned by the elite: Mass media’s implicit approval of the organized riots. What happened to the shaming of people for not respecting social distancing? For weeks, mass media blasted people who peacefully protested for the right to go back to work because of COVID. Now that out-of-towners show up in black communities to destroy their local businesses, mass media is nearly praising them. The difference? The rioters are doing the elite’s bidding.

“As a conclusion, I will leave you with a Reddit post that got censored its agenda-friendly mods.”

The Vigilant Citizen article is worth reading in its entirety. However, I too suspect that despite the fact that both African-American rioters and white ANTIFA members believe in the use of violence, they and we are being manipulated to serve an agenda to sow fear and division, and the point is not so much to “get Trump” but to continue to enforce control of populations by fear and keep building an environment of totalitarian control by the “state” which they also control. Yet I don’t think if we blame on the left the usual suspects like Rothschilds and George Soros, or the right Adelson, the Koch brothers or Paul Singer, or other unknown billionaires, we have the true answer.

My perspective is Christian—in the traditional sense, a perspective that I didn’t always have, thinking of the world more in terms of “scientism” and materialism. Over years, I lost faith in Darwin by finally understanding how mediocre the “theory” is; I realized that Christianity provides an alternative view on what human beings are: beings created by God for a higher purpose that now have lost their way and most are in rebellion against Him. And I also understood, as I wrote about in “The Hideous Strength” that Catholic J.R.R. Tolkien and Protestant C.S. Lewis understood after experiencing the horror and evil in the First World War that there is a sinister power that uses lies and violence and rules this world now; that power is the devil.

And without the shield of Christian faith, or at least not a heretical faith but a faith that understands through the grace of God, through Jesus Christ’s defeat of satan on the cross, and the transformation—which is continual and extremely difficult and a constant battle—of our current nature, to deny self-destructive and destructive behavior such as hatred and violence, and to use the strength given to us to truly love our enemies as we understand the evils they do, including violence, destroy and hurt them more than us, if we are their victims, because their actions are sin that further sever them from God and His Grace.

We who were secular think of sin as taboo, but it is nothing of the sort. From the definition of sin by Achimandrite George in this glossary posted at this link:

“Sin (hamartia): In Christianity,  hamartia means ‘estrangement from God,’ or more accurately  ‘failure to achieve one’s destiny,’ correspondingly the verb harmartanein means ‘to fall short of ones destiny’ – the original meaning was ‘to miss the mark.’ These words were later translated as ‘sin,’ ‘to sin.’ The primary objective of human life is to unite with God; so any action or even thought that estranges us from God is a sin. As St. Paul tells us, ‘The sting of death is sin.’ (1 Corinthians 16:56); sin has no legalistic dimension, it is simply estrangement from Life.”

And the answer to sin is true repentance; also from the glossary, it is defined:

“Repentance (metanoia): Repentance means: a change of heart, a change of mind – its literal meaning is a change of nous  (i.e.  meta-nous).  Repentance is more than regret or contrition; it requires a fundamental change of life. Christ tells us that the path for approaching the Kingdom of God is repentance.  A more accurate translation of Matthew 4:17, is ‘Keep repenting for the Kingdom is at hand’; in other words, not once but continually. We must continually redirect ourselves, until we achieve life’s objective–union with God–as such repentance is a mystery. Repentance is not legalistic; i.e. if a penance is given during confession by the spiritual confessor, this will be purely for therapeutic reasons, whose aim is to clear the nous and the heart from sin.”

[The definition of nous is given in the glossary but see this Orthodox Wiki entry here, also on sin here.]

I discussed the importance of the Parable of the Prodigal son on LewRockwell.com to Christians; the obvious sinner was the son who went to “a far country” and squandered his fortune with riotous living and prostitutes but repented and returned to his Father; but the elder son, who followed ritual and law, then the Pharisees and now he could be anyone who follows the formality of worship but lacks crucial change in heart through repentance and love, and just as the obvious sinner this person is also estranged from God by pride — a less obvious sin.

From the Roman Catholic site, New Advent, quoting Saint John Chrysostom from “Concerning Lowliness of Mind”, regarding the sin of pride Saint John wrote:

“When lately we made mention of the Pharisee and the publican, and hypothetically yoked two chariots out of virtue and vice; we pointed out each truth, how great is the gain of humbleness of mind, and how great the damage of pride. For this, even when conjoined with righteousness and fastings and tithes, fell behind; while that, even when yoked with sin, out-stripped the Pharisee’s pair, even although the charioteer it had was a poor one. For what was worse than the publican? But all the same since he made his soul contrite, and called himself a sinner; which indeed he was; he surpassed the Pharisee, who had both fastings to tell of and tithes; and was removed from any vice. On account of what, and through what? Because even if he was removed from greed of gain and robbery, he had rooted over his soul the mother of all evils— vain-glory and pride. On this account [Saint] Paul also exhorts and says, ‘Let each one prove his own work; and then he will have his ground of boasting for himself, and not for the other’. Whereas he publicly came forward as an accuser of the whole world; and said that he himself was better than all living men. And yet even if he had set himself before ten only, or if five, or if two, or if one, not even was this endurable; but as it was, he not only set himself before the whole world, but also accused all men…”

I believe the parable applies now because perhaps an earlier incident of white police violence that resulted in the death of an innocent was defused by the truly Christian response of the victim’s brother, which you can see below, where he discusses the love of Jesus Christ and repentance; he does not hate the woman who murdered his brother. He realizes his brother is saved by his faith and without repentance, the woman will be lost; he forgives someone who had done evil. To those without such faith, his actions are incomprehensible. That this man did what he did attests more to the truth of Jesus Christ than any words or any professed proof or refutation by “science” can or ever will.

The YouTube video is here:

“I forgive you”: Botham Jean‘s brother hugs Amber Guyger after she gets 10 years in prison

If only there were more people in the world like Brandt Jean, especially now!

Sadly, this understanding, this inner strength and love of God and the sinner who killed his brother, this representation of the power of Christian faith and forgiveness is not present in most people, irrespective of denomination; what I would call true Christian faith is weak in America now. In fact, RT posted this article on June 1^st, where “repentance” is not offered to God for the sins of the individuals involved; instead, “WATCH white people BEG FORGIVENESS from their black neighbors in prayer ceremony.”

From the article: “A multiracial crowd gathered in Houston on Sunday to pray for the family of Floyd, who was choked to death by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota last week. During the prayer service, the whites in attendance dropped to their knees before their black counterparts, with one man asking for ‘forgiveness from our black brothers and sisters for years and years of racism.’”

To me, this is an inversion of true Christian faith and understanding, and will only make things worse. There is nothing new in what happened to George Floyd; the response was more violent than usual because I believe it is being controlled by people who themselves are controlled by a lower power.

I hope, therefore, readers of LewRockwell.com either re-discover or discover the writing of William Norman Grigg.

For those who do understand realize that those manipulated to commit violence, who give in to the worst passions, are destroying far more than property, liberty and human life. They are destroying themselves. Of course, I condemn the use of violence, as William Norman Grigg would have done. But there is a greater evil at work than just the use of power by the “oligarchy” or “occult elite” as Vigilant Citizen calls them. We who consider ourselves Christians must understand this and fight back with righteous conduct; and we ourselves must repent our sins continually—and kneel before God, not men.

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