The death of George Floyd was able to allow a movement to break through that it was not new.

It had been around for many decades, but it happened at a time during the lockdowns when people's

attention was really available.

He became something, a meme and a symbol of a kind of everlasting white supremacy that became

very expedient for people whose lives tended to look nothing

like George Floyd's to use and to manipulate.

Democrats and Republicans in America should have been able to come together and say,

we can't have people burning down our cities.

You know, it wasn't just Minneapolis at all.

Kenosha, Wisconsin, where the fiery but mostly peaceful protest, Kairan was, I mean,

that was an insane kind of uprising that went on, you know, people's car lots were burned,

millions of dollars of dam, billions of damage nationwide.

Hello, welcome back to the Brendan O'Neill Show with me, Brendan O'Neill, and my special guest this week, Thomas Chatterton Williams.

Thomas, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

It's wonderful to have you on.

I really want to talk to you about your new book, which is causing a bit of a stir.

I think it's safe to say. I've read some of the reviews. I've seen some of the response.

Some of it good. Some of it great. Some of it slightly critical. We can get into a bit of that as well.

I thought it was excellent. It's called Summer of Our Discontent, the Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse,

great Shakespearean title. For a book that actually touches on, you know, kind of Shakespearean themes in the size of them,

in a nutshell, your book is about the George Floyd moment and the fallout from it.

...