Research Report: #BlackLivesMatter more about radical social upheaval than “Black Lives”
Using Black Lives Matter movement to redefine the American experience into anti-Capitalist upheaval
If you think the Black Lives Matter movement is just or even primarily about “Black Lives,” then you don’t understand the movement.
A new research report, based on detailed interviews with those active in the movement, demonstrates that the organized movement is a vehicle for a radical leftist anti-Capitalist agenda, using “Black Lives” as the hook.
The research is by Anne Sorock of The Frontier Lab using a “deep values” methodology. Several years ago Anne was a regular contributor to Legal Insurrection, but that has fallen off as she devoted herself The Frontier Lab.
Deep values research is something pioneered by Dr. Brian Wansink at the Food & Brand Lab at Cornell University. Anne received her MBA at Cornell and worked with that group. Deep values research seeks to understand not just what consumers like or want, but what deeply held values lead to such decisions.
At The Frontier Lab, Anne applies those research methods to politics.
We have highlighted previously her analysis of why people decide to become politically active, Occupy movement participants’ motivations, and why Republicans won’t call themselves Republican, among others. Anne also years ago interviewed Legal Insurrection readers to understand the deep values of why people visit Legal Insurrection. (Perhaps I’ll share those findings with you in a later post.)
Now Anne has researched the Black Lives Matter movement, and released a report, Black Lives Matter – The Privileged and the Oppressed (full embed at bottom of post).
While the report details the methodology, I asked Anne to explain the methodology in light of likely criticism that people should not give credence to a white woman writing about blacks. She responded by detailing that her information and data come from active participants in the movement themselves:
We began our process by seeking out high-intensity supporters of Black Lives Matter
through two channels: an online survey targeting young Americans aged 18-34 about
their involvement with, and enthusiasm for, the Black Lives Matter movement. We
were seeking those with high-intensity support for Black Lives Matter and who had
been involved with the organization either as an organizer or activist – attended an
event, been to a meeting, joined a Facebook support group, etc.We used this survey instrument to identify and then contact 47 strong supporters of Black Lives Matter whom we probed at-length about the meaningful underlying reasons for attachment in 30- to60-minute telephone interviews and written questionnaires.
The interviews employ the“Laddering” in-depth interview market-research methodology. We also advertised a separate screener survey on the Facebook pages of Black Lives Matter and the Black Youth Project (a separate but affiliated organization) to recruit more interviewees.
Recognizing that most people will not want to wade through a lengthy report, I asked Anne for her 3 Big Takeaways, here’s what she listed:
- Black Lives Matter is a vehicle for consolidating decades of unfulfilled and disparate goals of the left “Oppression” and “privilege” are the updated terms to described the “Haves” and the “have-nots” Privilege restricts free speech in a subtler but more powerful way than use of force
- Despite positioning itself as counter to the “system,” they simply want to take the system over for their own ends Activists who are not black are termed “allies,” refer to themselves as such, and admit to reacting to a culture of fear, driven primarily by the fear of being ostracized from the left’s cultural community, “Allies” reported that their motivation for joining, in addition to avoiding community exclusion, was to promote their own “oppression” by tethering it to that of the black community.
- Operatives shared that one of their greatest fears was activists perceiving that the movement was not driven by black leadership but instead “the same old” Civil-Rights-era types with a diversity of backgrounds. They feel it is important to distinguish the movement from the “failed” Civil Rights era movements, which did not achieve the operatives of BLM’s goal: “radical social upheaval.”
The Report itself lists 10 key insights:
- Black Lives Matters core message is built upon, depends upon, and has as its ultimate goal, the larger retelling of the American story as one of oppression and racism.
- The police, as representatives of the state, must be messaged as exemplifying the Black Lives Matter framing by being themselves oppressive and racist.
- Black Lives Matter frames their cause as one against a systemic problem and necessarily utterly rejects the one bad apple counterargument BLM relies upon the elevation and equating of other underprivileged groups to a status just as oppressed as Black America in order to build a narrative of an America divided into the Oppressed and the Privileged. For this reason causes such as undocumented workers, LGBTQ, and womens reproductive rights, are recruited and welcomed into the Allies category of supporters (see below).
- Supporters of BLM, for the most part, have moved on from desiring to silence dissent through amending free-speech laws; instead, Black Lives Matter (1) pressures authorities to do it for them, (2) creates an atmosphere of intimidation through threats of violence and shows of force, and (3) incorporates a culture of self-censorship in which those with privilege have a lesser voice than the oppressed.
- While social-media and cameras are utilized uniquely and effectively to communicate with and recruit new supporters, it is the framework of organizing learned from past attempts and overarching magnanarrative that in reality gives Black Lives Matter its edge.
- There are three distinct segments of supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement, each with their own emotional pathways to a deeply felt connection: Activists, Allies, and Operatives.
- These mental maps explain current reasons for support as well as provide strategic pathways for weakening that same support.
- Common across all segments is the emotion of fear of being ostracized from the lefts cultural community.
- The specificity of the cause injustice toward the Black community is both central to its appeal and also a window into an Achilles-heel weakness of the movements core positioning.
- The movement is at a critical juncture in its lifecycle, with maximum cultural influence but having failed to transition this influence into policy impact.
In the Report, Anne addresses the motivations of “allies” and confirms that many non-blacks participate as a way of virtue signalling:
The Black Lives Matter Allies segment hopes to make amends for a sense of privilege and accompanying guilt through their involvement with Black Lives Matter. Allies told us one of most fulfilling aspects of their connection to Black Lives Matter was that it afforded them the opportunity to demonstrate to their peers that they were actively pursuing good. It is important that they demonstrate their solidarity with Black protesters and in doing so make amends for their culpability as unfairly privileged members of society.
The most important aspect to me, and one I see play out on campuses, is what Anne calls RETELLING THE AMERICAN STORY, an attempt portray the American experience as irreversibly negative:
Black Lives Matter’s core message is built upon, depends upon, and has as its ultimate goal, the larger retelling of the American story as one of oppression and racism. There are two narratives that describe the foundational story of America, and they diverge both in how they view the past and the path they offer for the future.
The first is that America’s story is an attempt to match the institution of government with the premise that all men are created equal – that the system equalizes us and unites us through the law (Constitution) and that, despite failures to always deliver on this promise, the spirit of the country has been a departure from other cultures’ impediments to advancement. The second presents a different view: an America of competing groups that should not place their faith in the law (or a promise of equal treatment), for the system—the governing structures rooted in the Constitution—are designed to preserve elites’ power and preclude the rest of society from achieving equal status.
The second story, the story of division and systemic injustice, is the foundation for the Marxist “Haves and Have-Nots” class division, and reveals the philosophical underpinnings of the Black Lives Matter movement are deeply entwined with far-left Marxist ideology.
Anne also details the passive-aggressive, and sometimes aggressive, methods to silence dissent:
First, Black Lives Matter has created an atmosphere where forces more emotionally compelling than “truth-seeking” encourage fealty through the threatened stigma of being an outsider, and discourage diversity of opinion. Through our research, we found that both the Activists and the Allies were united by the fear of being ostracized from the left’s cultural community and clung to the community they were provided by publicly supporting Black Lives Matter.
Black Lives Matter frequently uses shows of force – either by seeking them from university administrators or through aggressive demonstrations – to silence dissent, as well. Activists recounted to us that they found it appropriate to ask administrators to step in and stop perceived “hate speech,” although they considered themselves to be supporters of free speech.
Finally, by portraying criticism of their cause as an attempt tostifle their speech, they in effect demand freedom from criticism.
That last point is what I have documented in the anti-Israel movement, which has thoroughly infiltrated and hijacked Black Lives Matter groups. Groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and the (dishonestly named) Jewish Voice for Peace, claim that there speech is being stifled when harsh criticism is made of their positions and actions.
Anne also found that Black Lives Matters key activists previously were involved in other leftist movements:
When The Frontier Lab spoke with Operatives in the Black Lives Matter movement, they revealed that they had all been involved with other leftist movements, including Occupy Wall Street, but found that their involvement with Black Lives Matter was far more rewarding due to its success in the media and ability to create a sustainable and more widespread perception of moral authority. Operatives’ prior association with Occupy Wall Street reveals that they goals are not particular to the Black Community but to the Marxist ideals instead.
With this in mind, we need to see the Black Lives Matter movement as a leftist, anti-Capitalist movement using Black Lives as the vehicle.
———————-
Black Lives Matter: The Privileged and the Oppressed
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Comments
You can find dozen of websites that claim Martin Luther King, Jr. was a communist. Conservatives have tried to discredit every other person of prominence who spoke up for civil rights. Even if you are right about BLM, haven’t conservatives cried wolf a tad too many times?
I can probably find you a bunch of site that say that Dr Martin Luther King Jr was a Republican and a bunch of Progressives who would say otherwise.
Is sophistry all you’ve got?
Oh, Kettle, thou art black.
I can find several dozen blog posts that prove unequivocally that you are a blithering moron, and they’re all on this site. Go away troll, you’re tiresome.
You missed the point. Blog posts rarely prove anything. You are a case in point.
Wolf! Wolf!
The neighbors aren’t listening.
In short, your argument is “shut up”. The problem is that the right has been right, at least domestically, most of the time since the founding of the Republican Party over a century and a half ago. Slavery was bad. Jim Crow was bad. Lynching uppity Blacks was bad. Segregation was bad. Welfare in most cases is bad. Fatherless child rearing is bad. Heck, ObamaCare was bad, as well as pay-to-play for government advantages and profit is bad. Dividing the country along racial, ethnic, etc lines for political power is bad. Etc. telling us to Shut Up isn’t going to change the reality that the left and the Dem Party have been wrong for the last two centuries, much more often than not.
I didn’t say ‘shut up’. I said you should stop ‘crying wolf’. Do I need to explain the parable?
The republican party is not your grandfather’s republican party. So stop taking credit for what the republican party once was. Trump belongs with Lincoln? I’ll bet even you don’t believe that.
If “Speaking out as a conservative” == “crying wolf”, then “stop crying wolf” == “stop speaking out as a conservative”.
As for your MLK comment, you can find dozens of sites that claim guns cause crime (not just used in crime, but actually cause crime); that Obamacare increases consumer choice and lowers premiums; that ISIS/ISIL is not a serious threat, even in Iraq and Syria; that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi ideology were God’s greatest gift to humanity; that socialism works; that Apple products never get viruses or malware; that air conditioners are the greatest existential threat facing mankind.
Just because dozens of sites claim it, doesn’t make it true.
“The problem with quotes found on the Internet is that they’re not always accurate.” — Abraham Lincoln, 1864 (hey, dozens of sites post this, it must be true!)
I am not telling you what to do – just what the consequences are of 60+ years of trying to discredit the civil rights movement. J. Edgar Hoover tried to discredit MLK. History treats MLK a lot better than Hoover. MLK has a holiday and Hoover is a joke in a dress.
It gets to the point where people who are not invested in your point of view stop listening.
BLM has a site where they claim that it is a myth that they don’t care about black on black killings. They list 10 other myths, but you can search the web as well as I can.
I never said that what I find on the internet is true. I was implying exactly the opposite.
The rest of your stuff is off-topic.
OnlyRightDissentAllowed
The worst of nasty trolls!
Please do us a favor and go back to Huff and puff!
You can’t stand one different voice in your bubble? Then do as Ragspiere suggests. Mark me thumbs down and move on; unless the very text on your pure site is so offensive that you can’t stand it.
I am not a troll. I am not looking for a reaction. I, usually, present a reasoned argument and provide facts and citations. I fail some of the time. Sometimes I learn from a return post and I alter my thinking. Sometimes I get responses like yours that are worthless.
Rarely, if ever, is anyone willing to admit I am right on some point. There is a saying that ‘Even a broken clock is right twice a day’. If your mind is really dull, you will jump on that and miss the point.
Yesterday someone posted a bunch of assertions about election fraud in Milwaukee based on a completely bogus report. He claimed the Justice Department, the FBI, the US Attorney and the local District Attorney took part in the investigation. Each and every one of the above disclaimed the report. An official version was never released. The unofficial version listed all of the above on the 1st page as if they supported the report. It took all of 2 minutes to find the disclaimer. I wasn’t looking for a disclaimer. I was looking for the official version which doesn’t exist.
If that is the level of discourse that makes you happy, perhaps you are right. If you wish to base your thinking on self-affirming garbage, I can’t stop you. I can point out that it is garbage – as is plenty of liberal BS.
My point was that after trying to discredit every other black leader for the last 50 years, a large part of the population isn’t listening anymore. If you want to ignore that, I am sorry I destroyed your peace of mind. Not really.
The part I really, and I do mean really, couldn’t understand (even if I twisted my brain) was the call in the BLM “demands” for “reproductive justice”.
Normally, the average Lefty would imply that “reproductive justice” was free abortion, but given that most abortions are already performed on Black women, I’m puzzled exactly what really is “reproductive justice” (from a BLM point of view) ?
Fewer Black abortions or more Black abortions ?
It would seem as simple as Black Lives Matter … or they don’t.
It’s just another buzz-phrase they were told to repeat.
They all follow der Leader, but conservatives all think for themselves?
“Black Lives Matter” is the short version of the movement’s name. The long version is “Black Lives Matter When Black Deaths Can Be Exploited In Pursuit of Progressive Objectives,” but that’s unwieldy. So “Black Lives Matter” it is.
Bill – not to be unappreciative of your LI, but do you make money on Scribd? If you do, I might consider paying the price to get the app, just like I paid for awhile to WaPo so I could get unlimited access to the Voloch Conspiracy. Otherwise, could you just make the PDFs available for these things? I much prefer just downloading them, because handling PDFs has become routine and generic across platforms. To me, posting articles like this on Scribd is like linking to articles behind a paywall. It doesn’t seem to be a problem for those who have paid to read behind that paywall, but for many of us, we have to pick and choose what we pay for and what we subscribe to online (currently, I have well over a hundred online accounts, and need a spreadsheet to keep track).
I found the article here:
http://thefrontierlab.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/TFL_Black-Lives-Matter_Part-1.pdf
I don’t make money from Scribd. I wasn’t even aware it charged for downloads until another reader recently mentioned it. I think you can sign up for a free Scribd account that allows you free downloads. I could start uploading pdf’s to our server and providing links, but that will use use up disk space and will not allow an embed. But, I’ll consider it for important pdf’s.
I think that this is important to understand. I think that the movement is dangerous for several reasons. First, it is dangerous to Blacks because it justifies Black violence, and esp Black violence against cops, when Black violence is already many times higher than violence by any other demographic in our country. And the primary victims of Black violence is other Blacks. As most here at LI know, esp from the postings of Andrew Branca, the poster boys of BLM (Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown) probably deserved to either die, or spend long stretches in prison. They just picked armed victims to assault. We are currently watching a lot of the First 48, and most of the murder victims and inevitably their killers are Black. It is heart rending to see the families (mostly the women and children) react to the deaths of their loved ones. Most of the victims seem to be unmarried with multiple children. I think that we will see that the Ferguson Affect is real, and that the place where the murder rate will turn out to be increasing is in inner city poor Black community nixies, and pretty well nowhere else.
I think part of the absurdity here is that the BLM movement leaders, allies, enablers, and just fellow travelers are inevitably Democrats, or at least will vote Democrat, because that is the party at the root of their problems. For better than 200 years, from the inception of that party, it has oppressed Blacks. First slavery, then Jim Crow, the KKK, and lynchings, and for the last half century, welfare dependency. The boys go wild in the inner city Black communities because the women there are subsidized to have Baby Daddies, instead of husbands.
Another part of this is the illiberality of the entire movement and associated movements. Excuses are made why Free Expression should be reserved for the left alone, and competing speech suppressed as Hate Speech. We are divided so that one group can be played of another, as they all compete for government largess. Except that the majority is told that they don’t deserve to compete here because of one type of privilege or another. Except many of them, and their ancestors p, were the ones fighting this for the last century and a half. Plus America’s confidence in itself, it’s exceptionalism, is a good part of why it is great. These leftists (led by anti-colonialist Barack Obama) are trying to destroy this for their own personal gain and profit.
I guess you didn’t notice that the parties switched sides when Nixon developed the ‘Southern Strategy’. Equating the current Democratic Party with the evils on your list is like claiming that Paul the Apostle should been known for persecuting Christians.
Free speech can be hate speech. They are not mutually exclusive.
Free speech can be objectively determined because it is about a process. Hate speech is subjective and because it is about content which is why “hate speech” is a type of “thought crime” as described by Orwell.
Free speech should never be restricted except in a few narrow situations like shouting “fire” in a theater. “Hate speech” is a vague concept used for political intimidation and control. “Free speech can be hate speech” is an assertion that cannot be objectively evaluated (it is not on an is/is not scale). It requires a political test.
They are two different concepts.
And it should be noted that shouting “Fire!” is perfectly legal, protected speech … if there is a fire.
The whole, “You can’t yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater,” thing is a misnomer. SCOTUS did not mandate that you can’t legally alert the people around you of an emergency situation, if that situation happens to be a fire in a crowded theater. Yes, you can, and when it’s justified it’s still protected speech.
Please leave Orwell out of this. Part of why I have chosen to comment here is that most of what I read is double-speak. For instance, claiming that modern democrats are somehow connected to the KKK. That is double-speak.
Who is restricting your free speech? If you are referring to a few college campuses, be advised that they don’t like Bill Maher or Jerry Seinfeld, either. I think their behavior is deplorable. So we have no argument. BTW, Ann Coulter has made a living speaking at college campuses and saying stupid and insulting things about liberals. I don’t care if you agree with her. That is not the point. We are speaking about hate speech. Coulter is truly hateful (although she does it with a smile). Actually I think she is a performer who figured out the more outrageous her speech and writing are the more money she makes.
Other than that, I am sorry if someone labels your speech hate. But are they stopping you? I am certainly not trying to stop you. I was trying to point out the futility of trying to discredit BLM.
It seems to me that conservatives have their own way of labeling speech they do not like. They call it ‘politically correct’ speech. I would think that deciding what is politically correct is equally subjective.
While America is not the most perfect country on the planet, I would strongly recommend that those in the BLM movement go spend a decent amount of time in other countries and earn their history. IF they go to the Middle East they will discover that not only are blacks strongly discriminated against, but many countries will not even allow some LGBT people into their country. Go to China, Russia or any of a many other countries and you will disappear should you say the wrong thing or worship the wrong religion. Go to South America and they can learn about real corruption and poverty.
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As far as histories go, it was the black chieftains in Africa that sold the blacks into slavery and it is may Muslims who continue to support slavery today. It was the Germans who had Hitler, the Spanish who had the inquisition, and so forth.
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Yeah, America may not be perfect, but it is far far better than a huge number of the alternatives – if not all of them. But then again, when you are basing your entire life off the grievance industry, evidently no country will ever be good enough.
Are you justifying alleged injustice in this country by saying it worse elsewhere? As long as we are better than China and Russia, we have no obligation to improve?
The fact that African chieftains sold slaves means that buying them was OK? The treatment of Native Americans doesn’t warrant a place in your list? The social effects of Jim Crow and DE-facto segregation in the north didn’t warp the culture of African-Americans?
You are sure that they don’t have legitimate grievances? Don’t people have to have grievances in order to build any industry? Isn’t there a conservative grievance industry? Isn’t Donald Trump a grievance candidate? Why would you need to ‘Take the Country Back’ if you weren’t aggrieved that the country was taken from you?
Wait, I’m confused. You just said that it was silly to mention what Democrats did in the past because obviously that wasn’t who they are anymore, and now you’re claiming that we should all be painted as guilty for something that happened over 200 years ago (buying slaves from Africa).
Which is it?
Oh, and BTW, the “southern strategy” BS has been debunked more time than the moon landing hoax nonsense. Using that term and expecting educated people to take you seriously is akin to forecasting the stock market with tarot cards.
LOL, yes the “southern strategy” has been debunked. LOL. I am sure there are scholarly works that argue that. As a result of your comment, I read a RedState article that argues that before replying. It is nicely fitted to the facts. No thinking person would claim there weren’t other factors or that it happened overnight. But the thesis ignores the elephant in the room (pun intended). To believe it, you have to claim that politicians don’t take advantage of opportunities and that the republican party gained power without embracing white supremacy. Interesting that the parties changed, but the levers of power remained in pretty much the same hands.
Yes, you are confused. Not strong on reading comprehension, eh? I didn’t mention slavery.
I did responded to Cleetus’s statement: “As far as histories go, it was the black chieftains in Africa that sold the blacks into slavery” by pointing out that if they were selling, somebody was buying. If you want to argue about that, take it up with Cleetus.
Getting back to the actual article: Cleetus called BLM a part of the ‘grievance industry’, I was curious if one could have a grievance industry without grievances? Even conservatives think blacks have grievances – they just offer different solutions. They also claim that liberal leaders are conspiratorial enough to maintain the misery for political gain. I have often wondered the same about conservatives. But discussing that would require a bunch of additional scholarly articles.
I also wondered if Trump wasn’t running on grievances? His whole shtick is to stoke the grievances and promise that he will magically fix them. If you guys had chosen anyone besides Trump or Cruz, you could have beaten Hillary like a drum.
Oh yes, the highwater marks of the Republican party since the “southern strategy” were Reagan, 1994 and to a lesser extent W. All 3 were know for their commitment to “white supremacy”.
And as for reading comprehension, Chester, you are the one that said the buying of slaves from African chieftains was a big deal because it was just as bad as the selling. I actually agree, but it was abolished in 1808. At the same time you claim that far more recent acts of the Democrat party should be discounted. So we should be gravely concerned by the one, yet ignore the other. That’s awfully…..convenient.
@Weirddave
1st, I want to thank you for a thoughtful exchange. There have been others, but most just dismiss me as a troll.
No, neither Reagan, nor Bush were avowed racists. But they were benign and comfortable with the status quo. The status quo, to this day, remains white supremacy in the old confederacy. Yes, there are cracks here and there.
RCP has an interesting article where they break down the change by congressional district. Clearly you are right that the switch was gradual. They didn’t all switch like Strom Thurmond. But the article goes on to say that those who remained democrats formed a coalition with the segregationist republicans and had no need to switch. Many southern whites remained registered democrats until recently, but they vote republican.
But let me give you an example from my own life. In the early 90’s, I moved to upstate NY. I met a libertarian at my work location. He was pro-carry. NY has pretty strict state laws. At the meetings there was a lot of talk about how both guns and drugs needing to be legalized. I could see the point. They were universally in favor of choice, even if they personally would not have an abortion. They told me that there were libertarians who believe life began a contraception and were pro-life as a logical conclusion. But they said they were rare. None attended the meetings I was at. The Libertarian Party has stayed there and they have no power.
But the conservative movement joined guns, abortion, and states rights (which is a euphemism). How this coalition developed is for the academics. But the coalition is not necessarily natural. How is it that virtually every contributor and commentator on this and other conservative sites supports all three? Please don’t reply (assuming this is to be continued) that they are not all the same. I know that there are differences. But those are the issues on which they will vote. I have mentioned Gary Johnson and they dismiss him.
Getting back to your specific points: Slavery did not end when importation ended. You know that. There were more slaves in this country at the time of the Civil War and the value of a slave had grown. There was an internal trade. Getting sold down the river was a real concern.
Some experts have argued that the way to end the drug war is to treat addicts so there is no demand. Ditto for slavery – no buyers; no market. While there is still slavery in Africa and other places, it is not organized the way it was when they were commodities. Besides, the damage to black culture didn’t stop with the end of slavery.
Lastly, no matter how you twist and turn, the current democratic party is only vaguely related to the early party. If the south evolved to republican; the north evolved to democratic. The modern democratic party is probably more related to the Rockefeller Republicans. He was governor of NY for 14 years.
BTW, I think you could make a strong argument that the north isn’t that different. The segregation is de-facto. I recently read that NYC schools are still segregated. But that makes a stronger case for BLM or some perhaps less tarnished organization (assuming the claims here have merit). (paraphrasing) BLM, on there website, say they are taking up the mantle of a moribund civil rights movement. You might also want to look at the true history of another group that was disparaged by the right – The Black Panthers. They weren’t thugs.
“The treatment of Native Americans doesn’t warrant a place in your list?”
What about it?
“The social effects of Jim Crow and DE-facto segregation in the north didn’t warp the culture of African-Americans?”
Tell me more on how Blacks were better off before Jim Crow.
Interesting and unique analysis – thanks for posting it. Most liberals that I know consider themselves to be more intelligent than your average person or at very least the recipient of some special truth that sets them apart. (Not that different from religion I guess.) After a while they surround themselves with people who believe the same thing to make them feel comfortable.
Also, liberal causes are always focused on the US, not the rest of the world. Black Lives Matter doesn’t spend much time worrying about South Sudan for example. And Christians and Republicans here are accused of homophobia even though once you get outside the US & Europe, intolerance of homosexuality is the norm. Clearly the goal isn’t helping the people who need it most.
I don’t know if liberals are more intelligent, but the demographics of this election point to them being more educated. I don’t think they have any special truth. The Enlightenment, the scientific method, logic and rationality are available to anyone. It is nothing like religion because liberalism doesn’t depend on faith, revelation and authority. The attempt claim it just another religion is sophistry.
The fact that a particular movement is focused on the US cannot be generalized. It is true the nationalism has been the flavor of the world for a considerable period of time. As such, the conditions in the US are different from anywhere else. One might call them exceptional.
Intolerance may well be the norm in most of the world, but that doesn’t excuse bigotry. Besides LGBTQ exists everywhere. It may be persecuted and forced underground; but it exists. LGBTQ is part of the norm even if your can get killed for being exposed. By now everyone knows the story of Alan Turing. Who knows what other gifts he would have given the world if he wasn’t driven to suicide after being ‘chemically’ castrated.
I haven’t noticed that christian or republicans have any special relationship with South Sudan. Isn’t Trumps motto: “America First”? Wasn’t it the UN that helped South Sudan gain its independence? Unfortunately, there is nothing to be proud of in the current situation.
BTW, I think it was a bunch of liberal do-gooders that stepped into the Darfur crisis. I am sure I could make an extensive list.
This excellent article could be retitled, “How To Undermine, Hijack and Pervert a Well-intentioned Movement for Subversive Purposes Without the Knowledge of Its Members.”
Best quote: “Finally, by portraying criticism of their cause as an attempt to stifle their speech, they in effect demand freedom from criticism.
And pay close attention to the “last point:” of how “… the anti-Israel movement…has thoroughly infiltrated and hijacked Black Lives Matter groups.”
This is important, as it is representative of the manner in which radical Islam functions, having seized and controlled the narrative so that it falsely positions the most numerous as well as the most violent and oppressive demographic group on the planet as an oppressed minority underdog. Ask anyone on the Left in the West and they will tell you with absolute certainty and starry-eyed sincerity that Muslims are an externally oppressed people. This article is an explanation of how such a false belief begins in microcosm.
OnlyRightDissentAllowed is, as always, entirely full of shiite. The Kennedys and later Lyndon Johnson were obsessed with King. Not so much J. Edgar Hoover. Nor did Hoover consider King to be a communist and never accused him of any such thing. Neither did the president nor his brother the attorney general consider King to be a a communist. But we know for a fact that a few of of King’s associates and advisers were in fact communists and had ties to the Soviet Union. The Kennedys were worried that if that information came out it would ruin any chance of civil rights legislation ever passing. They told King who those people were, and told him to get rid of them or his civil rights movement would be mortally wounded. King said he would, but still kept in touch with those men. The Kennedys knew this to be the case as they had ordered Hoover to tap their phones. So the Kennedys ordered Hoover to step up surveillance on King to find out if he had other skeletons in his closet.
He did have other things to hide. He couldn’t keep from having extramarital affairs. So Kennedy made sure to put as much daylight between him and King as possible. The the intensive surveillance and bugging his home and his associates phones wasn’t Hoover’s idea. And Hoover never had it out for King. He was disgusted with the fact the minister could keep it in his pants and was angry at King for some of his public statements implying that the FBI was too close to southern segregationists. But on the other hand, and unknown to King, Hoover would also detail agents to guard him if had specific, credible information on threats to Kings life. When King made those comments implying the FBI was too close to segregation politicians and police officials Hoover met with King to register his displeasure and told him his agents were only dealing with segregationists to the extent necessary to build civil rights cases. He also advised King to encourage southern blacks to vote, as because of those civil rights cases it was much harder for registrars to prevent blacks from voting.
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/11/what-really-happened-between-j-edgar-hoover-and-mlk-jr/248319/
“…According to the movie, Hoover persuades his reluctant boss, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to sign off on such procedures. But records from Freedom of Information Act disclosures and the pioneering research of civil rights historian David J. Garrow tell a far different, and more insightful, story.
In the summer of 1963, Hoover wasn’t the only one preoccupied with King. So was the Kennedy White House. That was because one of King’s closest advisers, Stanley David Levison, and another man who ran one of King’s offices, Jack O’Dell, were secret Communist Party operatives.
… Rather, the president feared the political fall-out that would come if it were revealed that the nation’s foremost civil rights leader had advisers with ties to the Soviet Union. In May, President Kennedy told his brother he didn’t want the minister anywhere near him. “King is so hot that it’s like Marx coming to the White House,” he says on a White House tape.
But by June, the president had grown weary of the risks King was causing him and decided to have a come-to-Jesus meeting with the minister in Washington. In the Rose Garden, he exhorted King that Levison, was, as Kennedy described him, a “Kremlin agent.” Get rid of him, demanded the president.
King looked the Kennedy in the eye and promised he would. But King merely pretended to break off contact with Levison while actually continuing to confer with him through intermediaries. The president, however, was aware of King’s back-channel communication arrangement with Levison—because his brother had already authorized wiretaps and bugs on Levison himself. Distressed, the Kennedy wondered what else King was hiding.
…Still, most people who see J. Edgar would never know that when segregationist governors such as Ross Barnett (Mississippi) and George Wallace (Alabama) campaigned against civil rights legislation by smearing Martin Luther King for supposedly being part of a “communist training school” in Tennessee and claiming that King “belonged to more communist organizations than any man in the U.S,” it was Hoover’s bureau that produced information refuting such lies… ”
Lots of lies have been told about J. Edgar Hover over decades. Many of those lies concerned his relationship with King. Hoover and King weren’t the best of friends but their relationship wasn’t as one dimensional as the lies and the liars who traffic in them would have you believe.
It’s appropriate that OnlyRightDissentAllowed would traffic in lies about J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI, and conservatives trying to smear MLK Jr. when he lectures conservatives on the supposed futility of attempting to smear the BLM movement. A movement that was founded on lies and requires lie upon lie to continue to exist.
Leftists prove on a daily basis that the truth is now hate speech.