By Justas Stankevičius:
Insights, USA, Justas Stankevičius, Foreign Policy
Black Lives Matter is a self-described progressive movement that claims to fight against systemic racism and for black rights in the US and the West. However, this “struggle” usually takes the form of riots, open hostility to the market economy, to the established order of Western countries and, of course, to the police authorities. This movement manipulates society as if one group deserves privileges only because of the color of its skin and not because of its efforts. Today’s Black Lives Matter struggle for black rights is as effective as the previous century’s struggle of the Communist parties for the welfare of the working class, during which the ordinary people were the most exploited by brutal totalitarian systems. The parallel between the Communist Party and Black Lives Matter is not accidental, let alone exaggerated. The founders and key figures of this movement consider themselves Marxists.
Alicia Garza: “We are trained Marxists”
In a 2015 interview, the founder of Black Lives Matter stated that she and those around her are “trained Marxists”. The official website for Movement for Black Lives declares “We are against capitalism” and goes on to state a belief and understanding that “Black people will never achieve liberation under the current global racialized capitalist system“. Not only does the movement fail to explain why it believes that the rights of racial minorities would be better represented in a Marxist society, the movement clearly shows its hypocrisy by accepting huge donations from a goodly number of iconic capitalist corporations. For example, the movement’s leaders, who openly declare themselves Marxists, accept support from mainstream capitalist organizations such as Apple, which has had numerous scandals over poor working conditions in Chinese factories.
What are the leaders of the movement doing with the donations?
According to Tyree Conyers-Page of the United States Department of Justice, a person running one of the official Black Lives Matter pages created a Facebook account “Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta” in order to misappropriate $450,000 in donations. Despite the fact that donors did not intend their donations to go to the private individual, this money was deliberately not declared and thus not taxed. Of course, it’s likely that this choice of action may have been influenced by the movement’s philosophy against all authorities.
Meanwhile, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, the self-described “Marxist” Chair of the Black Lives Matter Prison Reform Team, spent nearly $26,000 on private meetings at a luxury beach resort in Malibu, California in 2019. In addition, this true Marxist, who fights against capitalism, has bought as many as 4 houses in the U.S. worth a total of $3.2 million. It is a curious detail that Facebook has banned the sharing of a New York Post article about the real estate purchases in the U.S. by the co-founder of Black Lives Matter. Such financial obfuscation has existed before. A 2020 report from the Daily Caller New Foundation (principally a web-based news organization), states that the BLM Global Network, between July 2017 and June 2019, spent $4.5 million on consultants, travel and donations to its employees.
The movement is also working with the Chinese Communist Party (more details here). In other words, Black Lives Matter works with all sides that have something to offer to their economic well-being.
Ideological cynicism
“The Black Lives Matter movement does not raise objectively relevant questions about the politics of the war on drugs, which is sending many black people to prison and into substance abuse. This is due to an ideological cynicism that operates in areas that are profitable: the movement, which calls itself Marxist, openly accepts donations from large corporations (a list of some of them is here) that are in no way compatible with the movement’s stated ideology.
We can ask relevant questions of those in Lithuania who are sympathetic to this movement. One example of those so inclined is Aušrinė Armonaitė, founder and current chairman of the Freedom Party. Firstly, how is it that the Black Lives Matter movement receives so much capitalist-backed funding if there is strong systemic racism in the country and if black people are oppressed by Western culture? Secondly, where is the perspective of classical Marxism (class struggle)? From the perspective of the class struggle, it is not forbidden for both whites and blacks to unite in the struggle against Wall Street. Instead, the movement’s representatives invoke the Marxist theory of post-colonialism to show that they themselves have a great deal of hatred for whites (“All lives matter” social experiment).
Finally, and most ironically, the Black Lives Matter movement was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize this year. Does burning cities, tearing down infostructures really create peace and harmony?
What’s next?
The tremendously large amount of money donated to the BLM movement will make it possible to set up NGOs, bribe politicians to pass favourable laws, fund media channels to spread its “truths”, and hire rioters/provocateurs to provide pretexts for the movement to pursue its political goals (e.g., cutting police funding, etc.). Unfortunately, all of this will give the Black Lives Matter movement a significant presence in the power dynamics.
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