When George Floyd died under the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin five years ago, the outrage was swift and widespread. Republicans and Democrats, police chiefs and civil rights activists, media houses and corporate executives all agreed: it was horrific.“It’s police brutality, obviously,” said conservative commentator Ben Shapiro at the time.Today, that consensus lies in ruins. A growing cohort of MAGA influencers and right-wing pundits is not only questioning Chauvin’s guilt — they’re actively calling for his pardon. What began as a bipartisan moment of reckoning has been transformed into a cautionary tale for conservatives about “woke” overreach, racial politics, and media distortion.As the fifth anniversary of Floyd’s death approaches, here are three ways the MAGA movement has flipped the narrative — turning a symbol of police brutality into an emblem of right-wing grievance.
1. From “Police Brutality” to “Political Scapegoat”
In 2020, even staunch conservatives condemned what they saw on that infamous video. But five years later, many on the right are arguing that Derek Chauvin is the real victim — railroaded by an overzealous justice system and a media-fuelled panic over race.Ben Shapiro has led the charge, dedicating multiple podcast episodes to what he calls “The Case for Derek Chauvin.” He now claims that Floyd did not die from asphyxiation, but from a mix of drugs, heart disease, and possibly even a rare tumour. He has started an online petition for a pardon, garnering nearly 80,000 signatures.Joining him are Trump loyalists like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Charlie Kirk, Christopher Rufo and Jack Posobiec. “It was a lie and it was always a lie,” Posobiec declared to an applauding crowd, claiming America cannot heal until Chauvin is freed.While Trump himself has not committed to a pardon — saying in March he’s “not considering it at this time” — the campaign is being framed as a loyalty test for his war on “wokeness.”
2. BLM Framed as the Real Threat
What many remember as a moment of multiracial protest against police abuse is now being repackaged by the right as the origin of social decay — a moment when the country “lost its mind.”Conservatives point to images of looting, arson and vandalism during the 2020 protests as evidence of national hysteria. But more importantly, they blame the Floyd protests for everything from diversity quotas in corporations to “woke indoctrination” in schools. In this revisionist framing, BLM is not a movement for justice — it is the spark that ignited a left-wing cultural revolution.Commentators like Candace Owens and Liz Collin have produced documentaries — “The Greatest Lie Ever Sold” and “The Fall of Minneapolis” — pushing the view that Floyd’s death was misrepresented, and that the real consequence was a dangerous shift in American values. Even Kanye West, once a supporter of criminal justice reform, echoed this narrative, saying in 2022 that Floyd died of a drug overdose.
3. Turning Conspiracy Into Currency
As with the Capitol riots of January 6, 2021 — which Trump later called a “beautiful day” — the George Floyd story has been pulled into the broader MAGA playbook of reframing events through repetition, doubt, and selective “evidence.”Within days of Floyd’s death, conspiracy theories spread across platforms like YouTube and Telegram. Some claimed Floyd faked his death and was still alive. Others accused George Soros of secretly funding the protests. Even more serious claims emerged: that the trial was a “sham,” that the jury was pressured, and that the media ignored key facts — such as one of the arresting officers being Black.Medical experts at Chauvin’s trial did dispute the degree to which Floyd’s drug use or medical condition contributed to his death, but the jury concluded that Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck was the decisive factor. Yet that nuance has been erased in right-wing spaces, where snippets of autopsy reports and body cam footage are repurposed to push alternative narratives.As Esosa Osa of the disinformation watchdog Onyx Impact explained, “Repetition and amplification equals truth for our brains. This is how bad actors can hack the media.”
A Symbolic Battle, a Tactical Move
Even if Trump were to pardon Chauvin — which he can only do for federal charges — it would not free him from his 22.5-year state sentence. But that’s beside the point. The call for a pardon is largely symbolic — a political rallying cry for conservatives who view the Floyd protests as the genesis of America’s “woke” collapse.Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara has pushed back strongly. “We all knew what we saw, and we all knew it was wrong,” he wrote in The Minnesota Star Tribune, accusing right-wing figures of trying to erase hard-won reforms.But as with many cultural battles in America’s polarised media landscape, truth may matter less than which story gets told more often.And in the right-wing echo chamber, George Floyd’s death is no longer a tragedy — it’s a myth in need of debunking.