NOT OUR ELDERS’ MOVEMENT, PART 1: MEET THE NEW BOSS
Today’s Racial Justice Juggernaut
Most people are aware that a new racial justice movement has swept the globe in recent years. The movement coalesced in America in the mid 2010s, and is popularly known the world over as Black Lives Matter. “BLM” has become the modern era’s largest global movement for socio-political change. The civil rights movement of the 1940s - 1960s was arguably of greater impact because of the monumental legal changes achieved, but the reach of the internet has allowed BLM’s influence to spread faster and farther than was possible in any bygone era. BLM has affected a widespread shift in collective consciousness, the key to success for a socio-political movement. Topics related to racial identity and racial discrimination are now at the forefront in just about every way imaginable. Granted, BLM’s activist leaders did not achieve this success overnight or in a vacuum — western populaces were primed to receive BLM’s message by several decades of activist and scholarly work by proponents of the movement’s foundational ideology, which is known as critical race theory, or “CRT”. But the movement became a true juggernaut in May 2020, after a video went viral of Black American George Floyd dying in police custody as he lay in a Minneapolis street with a white officer performing a knee hold on his neck.
Floyd’s death triggered a massive global outpouring of public grief and anger. For several years prior, the BLM leaders’ activism had been strongly focused on generating public outrage about police violence against black people, and BLM was at the centre of the protests and riots that raged in many American cities for several months after Floyd’s death. Millions of individuals began incorporating (or increasing) pro-BLM messaging on their social media profiles and in everyday life, and institutions everywhere began implementing (or increasing) programs and policies aligned with the beliefs and goals of BLM/CRT. A wave of resistance against the movement began to build at this time, also, and the pushback is still gaining momentum as people became better informed about contentious aspects of BLM and CRT. The resistance now is particularly strong against the dissemination of CRT-informed curricular materials in K-12 education, and this has resulted in several states passing legislation to ban dissemination of CRT ideology in their public school systems, on the grounds that the content and messaging is unconstitutional and discriminatory.
Critical race theory began in legal studies departments of American universities in the 1970s, but its roots stretch back to The Frankfurt School, a Marxist academic movement founded in Germany in 1923 and moved to the USA after the German school was forced to close in 1933. CRT is a “lens” now used in most academic disciplines, and its influence has spread far beyond the universities. Aspects of this ideology now dominate virtually all public institutions and most sizeable private corporations, and its proponents are being promoted to positions of power with mandates to apply CRT to organizational culture through educational programming and policy which goes by many different names, but is most commonly known as DEI, an acronym for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
In the decades following the civil rights era, the great success of CRT (and critical theory generally, which began to steadily trickle down into the general culture from academia) laid the groundwork for the great success of BLM, a movement which has propelled DEI educational programming and policy to the forefront throughout the western world. The racial justice protests and riots that raged for months during 2020, and that spread far beyond America, had a profound affected on western citizens, the majority of whom were living under pandemic lockdown restrictions and therefore free to spend countless hours glued to screens witnessing the ongoing rage, violence, and physical devastation of cities.
Millions of western citizens, including many government officials, responded to the ongoing spectacle by literally kneeling as a gesture of solidarity with/supplication to the BLM movement. Millions embraced the movement’s demands to “defund the police”, “end the war on black people”, “pay reparations”, and “dismantle white supremacy”. But millions of others recoiled, raising the alarm about deceitful and divisive messaging, lack of data to support BLM’s dramatic claims, and the socio-political dangers of the movement’s radical agenda. In the aftermath of the movement’s astronomical rise, ideological opponents have begun organizing to form reactionary resistance.
The current racial reckoning is a deep conflict with violent potentiality, so we urgently need to increase awareness and support healthy public debate about the origins, principles, and agenda of BLM/CRT/DEI. Only people with a full understanding of the revolutionary signification and implications of “taking a knee for antiracism” can properly assess whether this movement is likely to reduce racial discrimination, poverty, and violence in western societies.
A Foundation for Political Activism
Monetary donations to BLM’s lead organization, the relatively nascent Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, confirm the movement’s incredible success: in 2020, global donors gave over 90 million dollars to support BLMGN political activism. According to global philanthropy trackers, by June of 2020, an astonishing 5 billion had been pledged that year to various racial justice groups around the world. Many might be surprised to learn that BLM was not registered as a charity until August, 2020. The leadership took the stance that they would not be beholden to governmental regulations and control. The foundation not being registered as a charity meant it was subject to minimal regulatory oversight. Donations made to BLM were funnelled through other organizations with charitable status, and those organizations charged BLM a fee as “fiscal sponsors”. Communist agitator and convicted domestic terrorist Susan Rosenberg was vice chair of the board of directors for one of BLM’s primary sponsoring charities, Thousand Currents. Fiscal sponsorship agreements usually reflect shared values between the partners involved.
For years, BLM’s leadership had no qualms about stating their mission is not charitable, but purely political. Co-founder Patrisse Cullors called BLM a “power building body”, whose “target” should be “the United States Government”. BLM was not founded to disburse charity to directly improve living conditions for disadvantaged Black people. Cullors once described herself and cofounder Alicia Garza as “trained Marxists”. BLM leaders believe Black lives will only be liberated from oppression with far-left political revolution. The movement’s leaders and followers speak constantly about the need to force dramatic structural change. Their terminology clearly indicates that they see themselves as political revolutionaries.
Why, then, did BLMGN leaders eventually move to register their wildly successful political activist organization as a charity? The decision came after the rise of serious infighting and mutiny against BLMGN by many local BLM chapters, and the circulation of ugly accusations against the lead organization’s founders of fiscal mismanagement, greed, and corruption. Cullors, who was at the centre of a great deal of controversy for her lavish personal spending, resigned from BLMGN in May, 2021, but denied all charges of corruption. The militantly political, revolutionary organization she founded continues to take donations and now purports to be “leaning into” charity work. None of the original founders now remain. Two new interim leaders were appointed to steer BLMGN through this challenging transition, but each of these women also retain senior executive positions in other donations-based racial and social justice organizations, begging the question of whether this foundation that has accepted hundreds of millions in donations in recent years can possibly claim competency, accountability, and leadership integrity.
Grassroots Unity & Collective Action
The internal disunity and disintegration of BLM’s core leadership didn’t discernibly slow the momentum of the racial justice movement. BLM’s original leadership team of “trained Marxists” did an outstanding job of applying the strategies outlined in famed community organizer Saul Alinsky’s well-known guidebook Rules for Radicals, so that BLM the movement took on a life of its own, separate from BLM the organization. BLM as a movement does not rely on BLMGN; the movement is self-sustaining through the widespread embrace of CRT ideology and praxis, and the transformational power of now ubiquitous DEI programming and policy. Demonstrating DEI bona fides — which means, in essence, proving to an employer that one supports left wing revolutionary ideas — is now an absolute requirement to get and hold a job in any number of companies and industries. The requirement to support BLM/CRT/DEI is especially prominent in education settings.
Anyone wishing to counter the BLM movement by pointing out corruption and dysfunction within BLMGN and its affiliates, or the founders’ commitment to pursuing Marxist revolution, will be disappointed to find that most who identify as “antiracist” are not the least bit deterred by this knowledge. The movement is supported by millions who believe wholeheartedly that BLM/CRT/DEI represents the progress we need, and provides a blueprint for building the “structure” of a more just society.
Ideological opponents have now settled into the realization that the real battlefront is elsewhere, as the cause, if not the organization, continues to be championed by an overwhelming majority of leaders in media, education, entertainment, government, and the corporate sector. Whether knowingly or not, the bulk of the western establishment is currently throwing its support behind the campaign for radically far-left socio-political restructuring of society. You won’t likely hear the terms “Marxist uprising” or “left-wing revolution” uttered publicly by a single representative of any prominent companies or institutions, but everyone supporting the movement is repeating the claims that western society is beset with “structural racism”, “systemic oppression” and “white supremacy culture”.
Antiracism is Neoracism?
The changes related to race brought about by the civil rights movement of yesteryear (i.e. increased belief in racial equality, legislative changes, application of affirmative action) are now almost universally regarded to have contributed to the common good, but despite the groundswell of institutional support for the current movement, people today are extremely divided about the overall benefit conferred to the common good by the BLM movement. “Antiracism” programs and policies are now central in most western contexts, but surveys suggest that many people believe that racial animosity and conflict in society is actually increasing since the advent of this movement, and people are aware that crime rates have risen significantly in cities where BLM has become an active presence. Anti-discrimination legislation such as The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is now sometimes being used to oppose the praxis of this new racial justice movement.
Legal recognition and protection of racial equality was implemented decades ago in America and other western nations, which have progressed to become the planet’s most pluralistic, tolerant, and egalitarian. Western societies that were, until recently, homogeneously European in character, typically no longer feature a rigid racial caste system. Racial equality under the law and a “colourblind” approach to social harmony and peaceful coexistence have been the norm since the civil rights movement. Western nations now completely dominate the top 40 spots on indexes measuring social mobility in all nations across the globe. Despite this, the new racial justice movement dramatically challenges the status quo of progress in racial equality. ”Antiracists” argue that poorer collective outcomes in wealth, health, education, etc that exist in certain “racialized” communities are primarily, if not exclusively, the result of the system still being deeply rigged against non-white people.
The use of the term “racialized” reflects the CRT tenet that race doesn’t exist in biological terms, only as a social construct, conjured by white people to prop up systems that exploit and enslave non-white peoples. The “antiracist” position is that all western socio-political systems are essentially, irredeemably, structurally white supremacist. Attainment of a just system requires constantly seeking and exposing racism both within and without (and this includes a plethora of daily occurring “microagressions”) and forcing society to adopt policies, laws, beliefs, and cultural norms that will raise the wealth, power, and status of the least materially successful “racialized” collectives, namely black and indigenous peoples.
Today’s “antiracists” teach people that regarding racial equality and opportunity for minorities, nothing very meaningful or substantial has changed in western society since the Jim Crow era. A core tenet of the ideology is that racial group disparities are always caused by systemic racism, and to explore other causes is racist. At a conference for science teachers in 2019, for example, educators were taught that anyone who suggests demographic group outcome differences result from anything other than a “broken system” is guilty of bigotry/racism/sexism/classism. Identifying a social order as being a “broken system” is key to advancing Marxist revolution, which demands destroying existing “colourblind” liberal democratic socio-political systems/structures in order to replace them with “race conscious” socialist/communist systems/structures. Silencing anyone who challenges the “broken system” narrative is also key, because discovering truth isn’t the point of social justice praxis. Marxist revolutionaries don’t care whether or not their narratives are defensible and persuasive (generally, they are not), they simply require that these narratives are accepted, and that they serve the “higher purpose” of radical systemic change.
Critical race theory also incorporates intersectional theory, so they teach that since western civilization is not only “white supremacist”, but also oppressively “heterosexual”, “ableist”, and “patriarchal” — this is why science teachers are told, for example, that explaining group outcome differences as anything other than system failure is evidence of “racism/sexism/classism etc”. All our social systems are described as systemically prejudiced and harmful to people from all minority out-groups, not just racial ones. Like most revolutionary forces in their early days, today’s left wing agitators strive to construct a broad coalition against an “oppressive” dominant/majority group — it’s a very divisive, conflict-based collectivist ideology that externalizes blame and minimizes personal or cultural culpability for outcome disparities. Within this ideology, blame can only be placed on the dominant oppressor group — every other “group” is exempt from responsibility when/if their members fail to thrive. This is a simplistic approach to complex social problems, but it’s a classic war strategy for the simple reason that it works. Humans are wired for tribalism, and prone to externalizing blame.
According to CRT and intersectionality, social justice requires systemic destruction (they use words like “dismantling” and “deconstruction”), in order to reconstruct social, political, and economic systems to advance toward the ultimate goal of “equity” which means “equal outcomes” as opposed to “equality under the law”. Equity is the movement’s core demand. Equity will require the abolition of meritocracy, many traditional western values, liberal democracy, and other existing norms. BLM is the spearhead of the most radical, disruptive socio-political movement ever to gain significant traction in western society in the modern era. Noteworthy is the fact that in order to deflect from the movement’s extremism, the propaganda being produced to advance this ideology paints opposition (consisting largely of conservatives, libertarians, and classical liberals) as dangerous far-right fascists.
As this is a Marxist-inspired ideology that offers up race as a proxy for class, the reconstruction of western society to attain racial equity will, of course, require very significant programs to redistribute wealth and power, along with significant equalizing/corrective discrimination against dominant racial groups. This means that discrimination against the dominant racial group, which they typically call “white people” (encompassing European-heritage caucasian peoples, and to some extent “white passing” mixed race people) is seen as a net positive. But increasingly, their calls for “positive” racial discrimination also now include high-achieving racial/ethnic demographic groups not typically included in the “whites” category. These groups have their own claims to historical discrimination by white people in western nations, but as racial barriers came down, these groups seized opportunity (by building businesses, investing in real estate, focusing on educating their children to become professionals) and quickly moved up the ladder of success.
Whiteness in Different Colours
The education, career and economic success within Jewish and Asian communities (and also Indians, and some African groups such as Nigerians) is explained by critical race theorists as indicative of their “white adjacency” or “proximity to whiteness”. Rather than applauding the resourcefulness, intelligence, and hard work demonstrated by members of these communities, “antiracists” typically denigrate their achievements by describing them as if they are merely new accomplices of white supremacist oppressors — multicoloured beneficiaries of “white privilege” and exemplars of “whiteness”, who inadvertently support racial oppression due to “unconscious bias" and “internalized whiteness”. This is how “antiracists” strive to maintain the coherence of their message when confronted with clear evidence that millions of BIPoC are succeeding and thriving in America, and almost all other western nations, too.
“Antiracists” are taught to accept that society will never be just until we engage in large-scale governmental interventions to achieve socio-political racial equity, and equity requires punitive measures against (and collective sacrifices by) individuals from generally successful groups. This apparent contradiction — that racial discrimination is a requirement in “antiracist” work — perplexes many people who don’t have a firm grasp on Marxist thought, or don’t know that the “antiracist” movement is undergirded by Marxist ideology. “Antiracists” believe that to achieve a just society, we must pursue punitive policies against collectives sharing not only the same skin colour as the dominant oppressors, but also sharing certain cultural values that lead to success within the current liberal capitalist order of western civilization. And these values are constantly maligned as characteristics of “white supremacy culture”, which means that a person will be stigmatized as a racist for suggesting that members of a struggling demographic group should help themselves by assimilating to the dominant norms of a culture.
The agenda of implementing punitive measures against successful groups is championed by Ibram Kendi, a prominent leader of the “antiracists” and anticapitalists. Kendi is a professor with a doctorate in African American studies, and a bestselling author of several “antiracist” books including How To Be an Antiracist and Antiracist Baby. He’s also a very highly paid event speaker, recent recipient of a $10 million donation to his foundation from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and the recipient of a 2021 MacArthur Genius Grant worth $625k. In his speeches, Kendi often claims society needs a new racism of social justice to “fix the original sin of racism”. He believes this is only way to achieve a just society: “the only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” A core tenet of “antiracism” is that we must accept the premise that participating in an ongoing cycle of racial discrimination will somehow lead humanity toward the promised land of truly just society.
The irony here is thick, that the elite of a “systemically racist” capitalist society is throwing countless millions of dollars at the feet of a black anticapitalist scholar for doling out such advice. Western elite are allowing leaders such as Kendi to drive western jurisdictions into a conflict-ridden, litigious quagmire, as unconstitutional “antiracist” racial discrimination is everywhere being implemented via DEI programming and policy. Kendi and company would like to overcome these challenges by changing western constitutions/charters to accommodate the “antiracist” agenda.
Kendi Calls to Enshrine Communism in the Constitution
One of Kendi’s other key demands is for the USA to install a “Department of Antiracism (DOA) comprised of formally trained experts on racism . . . responsible for preclearing all local, state, and federal public policies”. In short, in the “just” society envisioned by the “antiracists”, a supreme legislative veto power will be permanently bestowed on unelected public employees with university degrees in neoMarxist critical race theory. At its very heart, the antiracist movement is collectivist and undemocratic. “Antiracist” scholars are in the limelight and becoming increasingly powerful right now, even though their analyses of root causes and possible cures for urgent social problems are worryingly simplistic and divisive. Public sympathy (for social ills and suffering in certain minority communities) is being exploited to press for radical change that is overtly Marxist/neoMarxist and based on extremely controversial unproven assumptions.
First, Kendi proposes to enshrine in the American constitution the belief that racial inequality is always evidence of racist policy. To state that the origins of racial disparity are much more complex and nuanced than this is now condemned by leftists as a “white supremacist dogwhistle”. His second proposed amendment is that racial inequity over a certain threshold should be made unconstitutional (and therefore, to be remedied with legislative action. “Antiracists” believe in forcing the transference of wealth and power from more successful to less successful people, based on racial categories. Such proposed “antiracist” amendments that would radically alter fundamental principles of western constitutions and charters will hopefully never be enacted, but we should be extremely concerned that today’s elites have conferred on someone who profers such a simplistic analysis and strident communist agenda a “genius award” and millions of dollars worth of grants, speaking contracts, and book deals.
watch Ibram X. Kendi explain his position on CRT and policies of corrective racism
Individualism as a White Trait
“Antiracism” is a collectivist ideology seeking reparations and massively scaled-up affirmative action. The movement is antithetical to equality of opportunity, meaning it’s also antithetical to individualism and free will. In an “antiracist” society, everybody is sorted into at least one racial category, and everybody is forced to accept that their racial status (in combination with other identity markers, in recognition of intersectional theory) is an important piece of information to be used by bureaucrats to determine their eligibility status for programs and services.
BLM/CRT is a movement demanding we reject “colorblindness” and return to a fulsome embrace of both collectivism and segregation, but this time to empower members of identified victim groups and disempower members of the dominant group. Social improvement is a zero sum game in this ideology. CRT teaches that the achievements in racial equality (i.e. of equality of opportunity under the law, within the existing capitalism system) were largely nonstarters, mechanisms of appeasement, and false promises that mainly served to obscure how the entire system was and still is morally deficient and designed to perpetuate white supremacy.
The fact that America is home to the vast majority of the world’s black millionaires, despite black Americans comprising just 4% of the world’s black population, suggests that American society is not structured to prevent black people from achieving success and power. Many nations do not provide wealth statistics based on race, but if we were able to count the number of highly successful black citizens in all the other western nations, the overall global picture would strongly suggest that current western socio-economic systems, which are designed according to the principles of racial equality and equality of opportunity, are working. The demand for restructuring of western systems in order to achieve “racial equity” are disingenuous — race merely functions as a proxy for class in an information war waged by anticapitalists to foment far-left revolution.
Marxist strategists understand that their revolutionary dreams will not come true without a social justice facade; the majority of westerners are living a relatively comfortable middle class existence (compared to the global average), and have no use for communist revolution as an economic imperative. But many will back reforms if they are convinced the system is inherently oppressive, because they wish to contribute to reduced suffering for members of the poorest minority populations in western contexts. Ironically, the rejection of racism by the vast majority of westerners is precisely what enables “trained Marxists” like the founders of BLM to use the existence of racial disparities to manipulate the populace in this way. “Antiracists” denigrate many traditional western virtues that commonly contribute to personal success by persons of every colour (such as “individualism”, “self-reliance”, “perfectionism”, and “protection of property and entitlements”) as oppressive traits of white supremacy culture. The racial justice movement demands that we erect new social structures (a new bureaucracy) and subordinate personal ambitions and private property (individual goals) to equity quotas and reparations (collective goals). In short, they want to give communism another try.
People pushing back against the racial justice movement complain that many of the traits and values that we believe integral to a free, prosperous, advanced society are now under attack: individual striving for personal gain, equal opportunity under the law, the primacy of the written word, hard work, immediate self-denial toward achievement of long-term goals, a sense of urgency, punctuality, objectivity, empiricism, etc. If these traits continue to be demoted, this begs the question of how a restructured “antiracist” west could possibly hope to remain globally competitive and prosperous enough to provide the immense equity-producing welfare provisions stipulated by the “antiracists”, who view an individual’s material rights to resources such as food, housing, education, etc as much more important than “procedural rights” to abstractions like liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The new "antiracist” economy will not serve minority groups if the very values that contributed so greatly to the west’s success continue to be devalued in favour of embracing a noncompetitive anti-western collectivist ideal. The underlying Marxism of the “antiracist” agenda likely spells ruin for western civilization’s long period of prosperity and stability: historically, Marxist revolutions always begin with a dream of a classless and equitable society, and devolve into a nightmare in which a dysfunctional, inhumane, and authoritarian system provides a whole lot less of everything (for everybody except the politburo) before collapsing as a failed state.
Not Like Our Elders
A multitude of new organizations have formed to fight the spread of ideology and activism informed by CRT. Reactionary protest against progressive social movements is nothing new — divided public opinion, heated debate, and counter-organizing were also prominent features of the civil rights movement during its heyday. It’s essential to note, however, that today’s racial justice movement is decidedly NOT an extension or reiteration of the prevailing ethos of the 1940s to 60s civil rights movement. Most of today’s vocal opponents to BLM/CRT, including the majority of the founders of the organizations mentioned above, have liberal beliefs and look favourably on the outcomes of the civil rights movement.
In fact, critics of BLM/CRT/DEI often display more admiration for the legacy of the civil rights movement than today’s “racial justice” activists, who are trained by their critical theorist mentors to belittle much of the change achieved as insufficient, sometimes even counterproductive. CRT presents the theory of “interest convergence” as a way to explain how documented gains by racial minorities might actually serve to consolidate and increase power for the dominant racial group. Critical race theorists outright reject many core concepts and beliefs about race relations and racial justice that have dominated western collective consciousness since the 1960s. The leaders of the “antiracist” movement do not seek “more of the same” types of reforms, or incremental improvements. Their ultimate goal is a race-conscious political revolution, which they frame as a necessary, inevitable step toward fulfilment of our human destiny, which is to construct a materially just (i.e. equitable) society.
Co-founder of BLM Toronto, Yusra Koghali, is a dedicated communist who differentiated today’s racial justice movement from the earlier movement (which is most commonly personified by the “elder” figure of Martin Luther King, Jr.) in the following way: “What wypipo don’t understand is that this is not like our elders movement. We will snatch ur edges and clap back you into ashes. We will also beat that ass becky. Run up. [sic]”
By “elders”, she likely meant MLK and his fellow activists, and “becky” is pejorative American slang used to refer to white women. In a similarly confrontational vein, she also posted the following black supremacist pseudoscience, typical of the sort believed by Nation of Islam’s followers: “whiteness is not humxness. in fact, white skin is sub-human . . . white ppl are recessive genetic defects. this is factual [sic]”. Koghali and her peers display affinity for provocative rhetoric, and leaders such as Louis Farrakhan and militant Black separatist groups such as the Black Panthers. They express closest alignment with violence-approving individuals and groups who were active but not victorious during the earlier civil rights movement, and thus not memorialized like MLK — several of these surviving communist elders are, in fact, working within this new movement.
“Antiracist” leaders typically reject the non-violent methods and transcendent, unifying spiritual messages of the conventionally hallowed elders such as Dr. King, who attracted to his movement an army of nonviolent protesters grounded in Christian principles such as the inherent dignity of the individual person and the doctrine of individual free will. Apologists for the sometimes violent and always divisive rhetoric of today’s activists claim that inflammatory, hateful speech by “antiracist” activists is acceptable and understandable, due to the severity of the individual and collective trauma that people of colour experience living in a “white supremacist” society. Hostile anti-white expressions are now widely condoned as a valid form of “punching up”, while “privileged” white people “punching down”, even if only to resist leftist vitriol and divisive messaging, is strictly verboten and considered by many to be just cause for personal and professional cancellation.
So, regardless of her noxious and inflammatory social media posts, Toronto City Council gave BLM leader Yusra Koghali a civic leadership award in 2018, which she accepted at city hall while raising a “Black power fist” for the cameras. One city councillor even publicly congratulated her for “making people uncomfortable” with her racist, extremist rhetoric — indicating that the city councillor knows how offensive this woman’s speech is, but considers it socially acceptable, a form of corrective racism that is of therapeutic value to traumatized minority groups, and a sign of progress.
Toronto council’s decision to appease and reward one of the city’s primary purveyors of militant, far-left, anti-white extremism raised some eyebrows and garnered a very small quantity of media coverage condemning the move, but no substantial public outcry or debate ensued. Toronto’s non-confrontational approach to unsavoury aspects of their local BLM chapter is not at all unusual — most people holding positions of power today (particularly those leaning left, but across the spectrum) refrain from exposing or criticizing BLM/CRT/DEI. Polite society today countenances no debate of the BLM movement’s validity or merits. Ironically, despite the new racial justice movement being led by self-declared left wing political revolutionaries, people who publicly criticize the movement are commonly labelled by purportedly mainstream journalists and politicians as “radical right wingers” and “far right extremists”.
New Black Panthers
The stridently far left revolutionary character and agenda of BLM/CRT/DEI is alarming to millions of regular observers, but completely ignored (or at best heavily minimized) by the majority of today’s chattering classes, who seem comfortable with the advancement of this radical political agenda. A prominent BLM organizer in the UK, a young woman named Sasha Johnson — the self-styled “Black Panther of Oxford” — regularly protested wearing military garb. She liked to line up her fellow activists as if they were a militia. She campaigned for extreme ideas such as the creation of a “racial offenders list” to prohibit access to employment and housing for anyone even accused of racism against a minority person (even if it was a race-based microaggression). She was captured on video screaming racial slurs at another black person who opposed her politics, she regularly called for defunding police and for political revolution, and she argued financial reparations for black people in the UK would be justified because, as she said, “capitalism holds us down.” Johnson was, by all accounts, a highly aggressive Marxist firebrand, yet she was regularly praised in the media as “empowered” and “passionate”, with little being made of her extremism. When she was shot in the head at a yard party in early 2021 (reportedly by a stray bullet fired by a young Black person in a gang-related conflict) and critically wounded, Barack Obama mourned her loss to racial justice activism, calling her a “great name” alongside several venerable civil rights icons who had recently passed away. British MP Diane Abbott suggested that Sasha was shot by political enemies due to her racial justice work, but there was absolutely no evidence of that. Four black men were eventually arrested.
Kneeling for Black Lives
Kneeling for/to BLM and “antiracism” became de rigueur for all “compassionate” individuals during the summer of 2020, and failure to supplicate to the movement is treated by many as a pubic confession of neo-Nazi/fascist beliefs. The underlying Marxism and revolutionary zeal of the movement is rarely mentioned by mainstream media or politicians, and anyone who dares to publicize such information in this era of decrying “hate facts” takes a great personal risk, as dissenters are frequently branded far-right racists and “cancelled” by leftist agitation that seeks to render political opponents unemployable and stigmatized. The Overton window has clearly shifted very far to the left, leaving little room in western socio-political discourse for those who reject the idea that Marxist restructuring is the way to improve society.
Why do people in positions of power today (such as Toronto’s mayor and councillors, and Barack Obama) ignore evidence of the militant and divisive far-left revolutionary messaging of this new racial justice movement, choosing instead to publicly affirm BLM, disparage their ideological opponents, and recommend meeting many of the movement’s demands for “antiracist” programs and policies?
Is the elite’s support for BLM a condescension born of belief that the movement is not powerful enough to actually enact or incite violence, and so a bit of appeasement will allow the storm to pass and the voter base to remain unprovoked? That seems unlikely, since this movement’s success is unprecedented, and many people have already been killed, many buildings destroyed, by this racial justice juggernaut. Just two weeks ago, a black supremacist BLM supporter (who once wrote a social media post about killing white people) drove his SUV through crowds of people at a Christmas parade in Waukesha, WI, killing six and injuring 62 others, and in an interview from jail, says he feels “demonized” in the aftermath. Violent crime rates are rising in black communities during the era of BLM, which should not be surprising, considering the inflammatory rhetoric of the movement.
Are the majority of left-leaning western leaders, just like today’s racial justice activists, Marxist revolutionaries at heart? Are westerners everywhere being led by pretend centrists who are secret far-left strategists, stealthily positioning for opportunities to make fundamental structural changes to western social systems? Some perhaps, but this is unlikely the case for most of these leaders, as most didn’t rise to prominence due to their revolutionary credentials, but rather due to displaying competence within the current system — our leaders are generally “masters of the status quo” in whatever field they work. Plus, it is difficult to make revolutionary warriors out of well-paid middle class people who own homes and cars and take nice vacations twice or thrice per year.
Some are surely motivated purely by fear of loss and a self-preservation instinct, or in other words, they are pandering for votes. But for most, the more likely reason that they support BLM is that they wish to demonstrate agreement with the idea that western society is indeed flawed, and racial inequities do exist. They believe a declaration of support for BLM/CRT/DEI will be widely perceived simply as a declaration of support for ideals of equality, fairness, and justice.
In other words, today’s leaders typically view BLM’s activism as an extension of the civil rights movement, and believe that reforming certain aspects of society according to “antiracist” demands will result in a net positive. Perhaps they calculate that the more extreme, anti-white, and militantly Marxist rhetoric will recede as reforms are enacted that are designed to increase racial equity. In short, they are allying themselves with Marxists for progressive “street cred”, and while this position has been translating to votes, it isn’t likely just an empty and cynical virtue signal. But if the causes of racial disparity are not being accurately explored and assessed due to political correctness, and are only ever attributed to racism and white supremacy, even equity reforms are not likely to have the desired effect, and the violence and suffering will continue.
Is “antiracism” truly the antidote to racism its advertised as, a revolutionary cure that will lead to greatly improved conditions of life for BIPoC people in western nations? Several spectacularly failed Marxist revolutions and social experiments in the modern era suggest not, but Marxist thinkers are known to be both radically dedicated and eternally optimistic about communism’s promise. And they’re clearly emboldened by their recent successes — the “antiracists” and their allies are currently winning the culture and information war. What most people don’t yet realize is that leftist activists are winning today due to a long game strategy that their mentors and predecessors have been formulating and refining for nearly a hundred years in American institutions of higher learning. By coddling Marxist revolutionaries in the academies and facilitating the spread of their ideology, our institutions and leaders have been playing a dangerous game that is clearly not increasing peaceful coexistence and appears to be leading us toward increasingly violent civil conflict.
Terrific article! More please.