Skip to main content
The killing of George Floyd is part of a broader pattern of state violence
Police violence is bound up with the class system and the place black people occupy in our class system is in turn bound up with our history, says NICK WRIGHT
A mourner at George Floyd’s funeral service on Tuesday, a mural to the murdered man in Pittsburgh, Cynthia Jarrett (standing), who died during a police search of her north London home in 1985 and an upturned car in the aftermath of the Tottenham riots after her death

HOW should we understand the events in the United States? And in our own country?

Over 10,000 people have been arrested in the US during protests against police racism and violence. 

When such events simultaneously occur across dozens of cities then any analysis which attributes the cause of such disorder to a conspiracy by “antifa” or any other imaginary category of subversives itself is fantasy. 

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage. Photo: Danny Lawson/PA Wire
Immigration / 24 April 2025
24 April 2025

The left must avoid shouting ‘racist’ and explain that the socialist alternative would benefit all 

ANGER GROWS: Protesters demonstrate in Dover against migrant
Features / 10 April 2025
10 April 2025
The left must confront both far-right bigotry and the undeniable problems the exploitation of migrant workers by the ruling class creates — but there are few lessons from the global left on how to strike this balance, laments NICK WRIGHT
FACING THE RIGHT:
Anti-racist protesters
in Walthamstow, 202
Features / 27 March 2025
27 March 2025
Xenophobic hysteria over the statistically insignificant number of small-boat crossings deliberately conceals how capitalism manipulates population flows for profit — if we can explain that, we’ll beat the right, argues NICK WRIGHT
PREMONITION OF DISASTER: Anonymous photographer, Fallen Stat
Book Review / 18 March 2025
18 March 2025
NICK WRIGHT delicately unpicks the eloquent writings on art of an intellectual pessimist who wears his Marxism lightly
Similar stories
GUILTY PARTIES: Rembrandt Van Rijn (1606-1669), Syndics of t
Book Review / 4 February 2025
4 February 2025
CAROLINE FOWLER explains how the slave trade helped establish the ‘golden age’ of Dutch painting and where to find its hidden traces
Peter Kennard, (L) The Gamble, 1986; (R) Protest and Survive
Exhibition Review / 23 August 2024
23 August 2024
JAN WOOLF applauds art that has not only documented the anti-war and anti-capitalist movement but been an integral part of it 
Protestors outside the Grand Pavilion in Porthcawl, where Ma
Book Review / 22 July 2024
22 July 2024
STEVE ANDREW hails a moving and insightful collection of photographs and accounts that document the response of communities in Wales both as class and nation
(L) Chilean academic and photographer Luis Bustamante; (R) C
Exhibition Review / 11 July 2024
11 July 2024
Co-curator TOM WHITE introduces a father-and-son exhibition of photography documenting the experience and political engagement of Chilean exiles