Scenes from Delaney Hall (2)
The next time you see a headline talking about “another night of violent protests,” consider what it does: it primes you to think, in the absence of any evidence or argument, that the protesters were responsible for whatever violence took place, even if law enforcement happened to be responsible for all of it. The phrase “violent protest” implies not that the protests involved violence by unspecified parties, but that the protesters themselves were the main source of the violence.
An officer from Enforcement and Removal Operations, Delaney Hall, Newark, New Jersey; May 27, 2026 (photo: Irfan Khawaja)
I’ve read dozens of articles on, and seen dozens of videos of, Delaney Hall–and been there. Nothing I’ve read or seen even begins to prove that the protesters either initiated the violence there, or were responsible for the bulk of it. When a news item fails to resolve a contested question on the merits, the headline serves to break the tie regardless of the merits. That’s how myths are created, and how falsehood is generated from what sounds like careful agnosticism. Instead of speaking of “violent protests,” why not speak of “another night of violent law enforcement actions”? Because the person writing the headline can’t afford to let you think that way. If you did, you might conclude that law enforcement is the crux of the problem. And that’s not the conclusion you’re supposed to reach.
Policy of Truth 
Even when they say the authorities did it, they use polite circumlocutions. My favourite is “an officer-involved shooting.”
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Almost all news reporting on violence consists either of circumlocutions, metaphors, or sensationalized fixations. So we’re told that “violence erupted” somewhere rather than being told that it took place, but that it’s unknown who initiated it. That one move would probably deflate 90% of news stories on the topic.
In the Delaney Hall case, news reports love to fixate on the one protester who allegedly bit an officer. The obvious suggestion is that protesters are savagely feral animals lashing out mindlessly at the representatives of rational order. We’re not told what induced the person to bite the officer, and not told the obvious: that a single bite by a single protesters, however fascinating, isn’t representative of the thirteen days the protests have lasted.
Every one of these tactics was used at Gaza Solidarity Encampment, and almost all of the myths promulgated about it have held since 2024. Peoples’ appetite for falsehoods about activists seems insatiable. People who have never attended a protest somehow become experts on the subject, and those who have are somehow obliged to play second fiddle to them.
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