Black Lives Matter: “We Are Trained Marxists” – Part I

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that more than two-thirds of Americans support the Black Lives Matter movement. The high level of backing raises the question of how much the public knows about BLM.

On the surface, BLM presents itself as a grassroots movement dedicated to the noble tasks of fighting racism and police brutality. A deeper dive shows that BLM is a Marxist revolutionary movement aimed at transforming the United States — and the entire world — into a communist dystopia.

This is the first of a two-part series, which reveals:

• BLM’s founders openly admit to being Marxist ideologues. Their self-confessed mentors include former members of the Weather Underground, a radical “leftwing” terrorist group that sought to bring a communist revolution to the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. BLM is friendly with Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, whose socialist policies have brought economic collapse and untold misery to millions of people there.
• BLM states that it wants to abolish: the nuclear family; police and prisons; heteronormativity; and capitalism. BLM and groups associated with it are demanding a moratorium on rent, mortgages and utilities, and reparations for a long list of grievances. BLM leaders have threatened to “burn down the system” if their demands are not met. They are also training militias based on the militant Black Panther movement of the 1960s.
• BLM, which is not registered as a non-profit organization for tax purposes, has raised tens of millions of dollars in donations. BLM’s finances are opaque. BLM’s donations are collected by ActBlue, a fundraising platform linked to the Democratic Party and causes associated with it. Indeed, BLM leaders have confirmed that their immediate goal is to remove U.S. President Donald J. Trump from office.
• Most importantly, the main premise of BLM is based on a lie — namely that the United States is “at war” with African Americans. Blacks are not being systematically targeted by whites. Fifty years after the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, more than three in four Americans, including most whites and blacks, agreed that real progress has been made in getting rid of racial discrimination. Scholars have noted that BLM’s inability to produce solid empirical evidence of systemic racism explains why its leaders continue to “broaden and deepen” the indictment to include the entire American social and political order.

BLM in its Own Words

“We actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia [Garza] in particular, we’re trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. We are super versed on ideological theories.” — BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors, July 22, 2015.

“If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it. All right? And I could be speaking figuratively. I could be speaking literally. It’s a matter of interpretation…. I just want black liberation and black sovereignty, by any means necessary.” — BLM activist Hank Newsome, June 25, 2020.

“Stay in the streets! The system is throwing every diversionary and de-mobilizing tactic at us. We are fighting to end policing and prisons as a system which necessitates fighting white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchal imperialism. Vet your comrades and stay focused.” — BLM Chicago, Twitter, June 16, 2020.

“There’s no such thing as ‘blue lives.’ There is no hue of a blue life. Being a police officer is an occupation. It’s a job. ‘All lives matter’— it’s like saying the sky is blue. I haven’t heard how police are on the right side of history.” — BLM co-founder Alicia Garza, ktvu.com, March 30, 2018.

“It’s hundreds of years of generational oppression and trauma and infrastructural racism that impacts our bodies and makes our bodies more vulnerable to something like a COVID-19.” — BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors, Hollywood Reporter, June 2, 2020.

“We say #DefundThePolice and #DefundDepOfCorrections because they work in tandem. The rise of mass incarceration occurred alongside the rise of militarized and mass policing. They must be abolished as a system.” — BLM Chicago, June 13, 2020.

“We are anti-capitalist. We believe and understand that Black people will never achieve liberation under the current global racialized capitalist system.” — Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), of which BLM is a part, June 5, 2020.

“‘All Lives Matter,’ is little more than a racist dog whistle that attempts to both delegitimize centuries of claims of global anti-Black oppression and position those who exhibit tremendous pride in their Blackness as enemies of the state. Well, we are enemies of any racist, sexist, classist, xenophobic state that sanctions brutality and murder against marginalized people who deserve to live as free people.” — Feminista Jones, BLM activist.

“We stand with Palestinian civil society in calling for targeted sanctions in line with international law against Israel’s colonial, apartheid regime.” — BLM UK, June 28, 2020.

“We are an ABOLITIONIST movement. We do not believe in reforming the police, the state or the prison industrial complex.” — BLM UK, June 21, 2020.

“Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been. In the Bible, when the family of Jesus wanted to hide, and blend in, guess where they went? EGYPT! Not Denmark. Tear them down.” — BLM leader Shaun King, June 22, 2020.

“We are living in political moment where for the first time in a long time we are talking about alternatives to capitalism.” — Alicia Garza, BLM co-founder, March 2015.

“Anti-racism is anti-capitalist, and vice versa. There are no two ways around it. To be an anti-racist must demand a complete rejection of business as usual. An end to racism demands transformation of the global political-economic setup.” — Joshua Virasami, BLM UK, June 8, 2020.

Brief History

Black Lives Matter began in July 2013, when George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old neighborhood watch coordinator of Hispanic-German descent, was acquitted of homicide charges in the 2012 fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old black high school student, in Sanford, Florida.

Alicia Garza, a black woman from Oakland, California, posted to Facebook what she described as a “love letter to black folks.” She wrote: “I continue to be surprised at how little black lives matter. Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.” Patrisse Cullors, a black woman from Los Angeles, California, then put Garza’s Facebook post on Twitter, with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. After seeing the hashtag, Opal Tometi, a first-generation Nigerian American woman from Phoenix, Arizona, partnered with Garza and Cullors to establish an internet presence. Tometi purchased the domain name and built BLM’s digital platform, including social media accounts, where they encouraged people to tell their stories.

The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter gained national attention in August 2014, after the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, by Darren Wilson, a white police officer. The hashtag was ubiquitous during riots in November 2014, when a grand jury decided not to indict Wilson. By 2018, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter had been tweeted over 30 million times.

Since its beginnings seven years ago, Black Lives Matter has grown into a movement with nearly 40 chapters and thousands of activists in the United States, Canada and Great Britain. What began as an effort to seek justice for black people has become far more expansive — and more radical — in its demands.

What’s the Agenda?

BLM’s worldview is based on a mix of far-left theoretical frameworks, including critical race theory and intersectional theory. Critical race theory posits that racism is systemic, based on a system of white supremacy and therefore a permanent feature of American life. Intersectional theory asserts that people are often disadvantaged by multiple sources of oppression: their race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, and other identity markers.

Black Lives Matter and other purveyors of critical race theory and intersectional theory reject individual accountability for behavior, criminal or otherwise, because, according to them, blacks are systemic and permanent victims of racism. Such racism, according to BLM, can only be defeated by completely dismantling the American economic, political and social system and rebuilding it from scratch — according to Marxist principles.

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