His reported killing by a white police officer was immediately followed by a wave of riots during which neighborhoods in several major cities were devastated. Stores were looted, buildings were burned and people were murdered as mayors and other local public officials chose to let the rioters run wild, whip up racial conflict and protect the criminals rather than the citizens being brutalized. The riots quickly appeared to have nothing to do with Floyd's death and everything to do with groups seeking to overthrow America.

In the past, members of the radical organization Antifa had committed acts of violence, but never before had been able to sow terror throughout major cities. This time, they could and they did.

In addition, the Marxist movement Black Lives Matter (BLM), which seemed to have disappeared since the election of President Donald J. Trump -- who, incidentally, did more for the black and Hispanic minority communities in three years than anyone had done for decades -- suddenly reappeared, well-funded and well-organized, at the heart of the riots. BLM received further support from the mayors of several major cities and gained even more popularity while attacking first the statues of former slave-owners, such as George Washington, and then those of the escaped slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. In Washington, DC and New York City, "Black Lives Matter" was painted on avenues in huge yellow letters – in New York by the mayor himself.

This may have been the first time in US history that a Marxist movement received corporate support: Amazon, Microsoft, Nabisco, Gatorade, Deckers and other large American firms donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, now a major beneficiary of US corporate largesse. Many colleges and universities also joined in backing the movement. The trustees of Princeton University decided to remove Woodrow Wilson's name from the university's school of public policy. They said that they had examined the "long and damaging history of racism in America" and that Wilson's "racist thinking and policies make him an inappropriate namesake for a school or college". Calls to "#CancelYale" surged across social media, alleging that Yale's namesake, Elihu Yale, was a slave-owner and slave-trader, and that the university must change its name, as well. Yale University President, Peter Salovey, however, said that would not be done, explaining that Yale was "relatively unexceptional in his own time."