Maurice Appelbaum claims in his January 21 article “Thoughts on the Capitol Insurrection and the BLM Movement,” that it is “disingenuous and misleading” to highlight the 7% of Antifa/BLM protests that were violent even though that encompasses nearly 570 violent demonstrations according to a Princeton University report. He further argues that the violence was “largely directed at commercial stores” as if this makes it OK. Tell that to the thousands of small business owners across the country whose livelihoods were destroyed and who suffered severe financial losses either because they did not have insurance or sufficient insurance. In Minneapolis alone, almost 1,500 businesses were “heavily damaged in the riots.”

The Princeton University report also finds nine deaths directly attributable to the Antifa/BLM protests, but that does not count a marked increase in shootings of police (up 28% as of July 2020) or, according to the Council on Criminal Justice, a 42% and 34% increase in homicides during the summer and fall, respectively, in 21 U.S. cities. Clearly, the protests were responsible for a sizable uptick in violent behavior.

Appelbaum’s second point is the usual laundry list of leftist racial grievances, none of which are backed up by statistics. Unfortunately, black males, particularly between the ages of 17 and 30, account for a large percentage of violent crimes. According to FBI statistics, blacks committed at least 40% of U.S. murders in 2019 (there is an Unknown category for locales that do not report perpetrator information) despite comprising just 13.4% of the population. This leads to greater interaction with police.

While there is no excuse for breaching the Capitol, the vast majority of protesters were peaceful. I would also argue that the motley group of cranks and kooks who went into the Capitol had a zero percent chance of changing anything. To call this a serious insurrection is itself disingenuous. Appelbaum says there is nothing true about the protesters’ election claims. However, without a thorough investigation or commission, as law professor Jonathan Turley has called for, neither I nor Appelbaum can know with certainty whether there were serious, or even minor, irregularities in the election.

Finally, while I was not a fan of President Trump definitively saying that there was fraud, he did not encourage the Capitol incursion, and said that protestors should “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” While Appelbaum is entitled to his opinions, facts do not back up his claims.