On Thursday, Lt. Michael Byrd disclosed to NBC News’ Lester Holt that he was the Capitol Police officer who fatally shot Ashli Babbitt on Jan. 6. Byrd, who is Black, immediately became the target of racism and death threats from the right-wing extremists who thrive in fact-free social media echo chambers. Those racist rants exposed not only the violent mindset that has been growing over the past few years, but also a hateful hypocrisy.
The messagingplatform Telegram is popular with those seeking to avoid the public scrutiny of more widely used public apps because of its privacy and end-to-end encryption features. Users called Byrd racial slurs and described him as a dead man walking. One poster asked: “Why isn’t he hang (sic) yet?” Lynching references were rampant. “He should swing for treason,” read another comment.
Far from anomalies, these are a mere sampling of the hatred sparked by one single chat link. It was a thread in which spelling and grammar didn’t matter but hate seemed a prerequisite.
Even on a more mainstream platform like Twitter, the reaction was bigoted. Syndicated columnist and author Ann Coulter posted an article about Byrd’s NBC interview and remarked, “I guess now we know why the government (Trump and Biden) wouldn’t tell us who shot Ashli Babbitt!” Matt Walsh, a popular podcaster who describes himself as a “theocratic fascist” in his Twitter profile wrote, “Make this a white cop shooting a BLM rioter and the whole country would be on fire right now.”
The racist vitriol hurled at Byrd online echoed the slurs hurled at his police colleagues on Jan. 6.
The racist vitriol hurled at Byrd online echoed the slurs that were hurled at his police colleagues on Jan. 6. Testifying before Congress at the end of last month, Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn said members of the mob taunted him with racial slurs on multiple occasions. Other officers reported being attacked by rioters holding “Blue Lives Matter” flags.
The hypocrisy here becomes even more vivid when the reaction to Byrd’s use of force is contrasted with the far right’s shameful defense of white former police officer Derek Chauvin, convicted in April of killing George Floyd. Fox News hosts, including Tucker Carlson, portrayed Chauvin, not Floyd, as the real victim. Carlson had no such sympathy for Byrd, maintaining that he had “executed” Babbitt.
On the government-run Russian TV show called “60 Minutes” (no relation to the U.S. program), host Olga Skabeeva claimed that “the policeman got away with it because he is Black — and Blacks are permitted to kill white people.”
This, of course, is as insulting as it is untrue. Byrd was cleared of any wrongdoing in two separate investigations.
This, of course, is as insulting as it is untrue. Byrd was cleared of any wrongdoing in two separate investigations. The Justice Department and the Washington Metropolitan Police Department investigated Byrd’s actions for any violation of federal law, including violating Babbitt’s civil rights; they found no such violations. And Byrd’s Capitol Police Department determined that his actions were within its deadly force policy. That policy states that “an officer may use deadly force only when the officer reasonably believes that action is in the defense of human life, including the officer’s own life, or in the defense of any person in immediate danger of serious physical injury.”







