"There was a consensus that what happened to George Floyd was an atrocity."
Who cares? Thinking something is an atrocity accomplished precisely jack shit. Peaceful protests get ignored or mocked. Police forces continue to get more militarized. Far right politicians, like the president, encourage violence from their bully pulpit. At a certain point, people need to respond. To not respond is to encourage those who seek to abuse power.
Can you find a large episode of rioting and looting without any death toll? Even the 2011 London riots led to the deaths of five people.
The bigger issue though is that the current situation is starting to turn counterproductive. The only way to eventually fix things is with politics. Protests are politics.
But violence eventually takes a life of its own. Already now there are overwhelming evidence various third party actors are interfering. Soon this turns into an order vs chaos issue, and guess in who's favour that framing would play out?
The protests can no longer be ignored, now is the time to step back and to do whatever can be done to make this peaceful - before people forget why the protests started in the first place.