The tragic police shooting of French 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk and the ensuing massive riots cannot but recall the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020. Certainly, the context, history and cultures involved are different, but the destruction has been the same.
In the days after Floyd’s death, rioters destroyed stores, cars and entire city centers under the slogan “Black Lives Matter.” Not a single voice in the media or politics questioned that this was not just a reaction to a murder. Floyd’s death was a racist murder, and thus it was immediately assumed that the riots were a judgment on a society, a civilization, that was riven with “systemic racism.”
