‘Black Lives Matter’ Isn’t Just An Anti-Racism Slogan It’s A Leftist Political Movement–Here’s The 411

Many people are now shouting “Black Lives Matter” as they march in solidarity to end racism, but do they know that this is a much larger political movement?

We were all disgusted as we watched George Floyd’s life end on video as a member of law enforcement pushed his knee on the prone man’s neck. There isn’t one person that I have encountered in my day-to-day life or online that supports Derek Chauvin in this incident.

Hundreds of thousands of people were outraged and took their outrage to the streets to protest what we have been told is systemic racism against African Americans in the United States. The statistics, however, do not back up that claim.

Still, the hurt and outrage is real–statistics do not reflect the feelings within the black community which should not be glossed-over or dismissed. We do need to hear each other. Unfortunately, part of the problem is that the media sensationalizes and pushes the narrative that African Americans are targetted for violence by police despite facts showing that is not the case. The media’s slogan seems to be, “All the narrative that’s fit to print.”

But now that the narrative is out there, and it’s pervasive, and individual African Americans of all political stripes say that they do feel targeted by police, the outrage over the situation has exploded and the Black Lives Matter movement has come to the forefront.

But who and what exactly are they?

Black Lives Matter began as a hashtag on social media in 2013 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin. It was founded by three women, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi. BLM has now become an international human rights organization that focuses on combating violence and systemic racism against blacks. It’s a 501(c)(3) charity that has received millions in funding from far-left organizations like the Ford Foundation and George Soros’s Open Society Foundation.

Although it bills itself as a movement based around racial justice and opposition to police brutality, there is much more to what they believe.

Much of it is what you’d expect from a left-wing black identitarian movement.

One thing that critics often note is that Black Lives Matter doesn’t seem to be terribly concerned about black-on-black crime, and hasn’t done much in places where that is rampant like Chicago and Baltimore. They certainly don’t mention the black lives that are snuffed out by abortion year after year. Black Lives Matter only seems to care about are black lives when there’s an altercation with a white cop.

Here are some screenshots of their “What We Believe” page.

The black identitarian roots are at the core, which is no surprise for an organization named Black Lives Matter.

We are unapologetically Black in our positioning. In affirming that Black Lives Matter, we need not qualify our position. To love and desire freedom and justice for ourselves is a prerequisite for wanting the same for others.

We see ourselves as part of the global Black family, and we are aware of the different ways we are impacted or privileged as Black people who exist in different parts of the world.

Here’s where it starts to get interesting, and it’s exposed as not just an organization that is committed to dealing with police brutality and racism, but also about intersectional identity politics.

We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work.

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).

BLM is a black identitarian neo-Marxist organization rooted in modern intersectional feminism. The founders have made it clear that BLM is not just any Black liberation movement, it’s different in that it seeks to “center the leadership” of Black women, queer and trans people rather than heterosexual, cisgender black men who were leaders of other movements.

From their “Herstory” page:

They’re protesting the killing of (mostly) heterosexual cis-gender black men and leveraging that for fundraising, but those guys can take a backseat in their movement because they’re overrepresented in other Black Liberation movements.

We know that BLM has been making a push to “defund the police”–it’s a featured tab on their website. “We demand acknowledgment and accountability for the devaluation and dehumanization of Black life at the hands of the police. We call for radical, sustainable solutions that affirm the prosperity of Black lives,” states the website. The website continues, “We call for an end to the systemic racism that allows this culture of corruption to go unchecked and our lives to be taken. We call for a national defunding of police. We demand investment in our communities and the resources to ensure Black people not only survive, but thrive.”

BLM also has a “get out the vote” campaign called WhatMatters2020, and coincidentally, the issues that matter are all the same as the ones viewed as important by the left.

In this TEDTalks interview, the founders make it clear that they are avowed leftists. Opal Tometi says that there is “criminalization” of the “existence” of Blacks. No, that’s not a thing that happens.

They cover these issues from a black lens:

• feminism/female leaders
• climate change
• justice
• the gender pay gap
• immigrants
• illegal aliens

This is a leftist organization with leftist political aims posing as an anti-racism civil rights organization. It leverages the outrage over the deaths of black men while telling them that they should allow black women, queer, and trans women to take the lead. And finally, it is a black identitarian movement, which is purposely antithetical to the message of the great Civil Rights leader, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

BLM as an organization clearly states its purpose is to tie blackness to far-left policies which further entrenches the idea that politics and race are inseparable. That’s just not true.

Black lives do matter, but pushing this organization to the forefront will further divide our politics, and that hurts everyone.