The Roots of BLM
The chaos engulfing the country right now has many tentacles. In my view, the 44th president fomented a race war, very cleverly, and we are now reaping that rotten harvest.
A few years ago, I attended a series of conferences, each sponsored by evangelical organizations. At each event, there was a lot of talk of “Black Lives Matters.” Speakers wore t-shirts supporting “BLM,” and they whipped-up the mostly-student-attendees crowd with talk of “white supremacy” and “white colonialism.” Each targeted institutions of the United States.
Very interestingly, the speakers and the entire venue had a distinctly anti-Israel vibe.
Fast-forward to right now. Most of you by now have heard of “Black Lives Matters” and the organization’s distaste for the seemingly obvious and rational “All Lives Matter” mantra.
Who is BLM?
The deepest roots of the group are found in the Black Liberation Theology movement that extends globally. From South America to Europe, this particular “theology” seeks to appropriate Bible verses dealing with Jewish history and make them their own, in modern contexts. For example, the Exodus is really today about blacks’ emergence from slavery (ironically, Muslim countries enslave blacks today; no one says a word).
Palestinian leaders, including religious leaders like those at Bethlehem Bible College, latched onto Liberation Theology and sought to drive a wedge between Americans by highlighting alleged injustices suffered by blacks in America. Even political leaders such Condoleezza Rice have bought-into it to some degree.
In reality, as BLM leaders have stated, the group is Marxist in orientation and ideology. BLM seeks to dupe minorities into believing they care about their issues. In fact, they care nothing about blacks, but attach themselves to causes in order to further broader goals, such as attempted coups and civil unrest.
My friends at CAMERA understand the issues:
“When legitimate grievances are co-opted and hijacked by opportunists seeking support for their own causes — under the guise of intersectionality — problems will inevitably arise. The callous murder of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, by a Minneapolis policeman, Dennis Chauvin, sparked grassroots outrage and widespread protests against police brutality and racial injustice in the U.S. — under the general banner #BlackLivesMatter. But the justifiable anger and protests were quickly exploited by Israel-hating opportunists as a vehicle with which to demonize the Jewish state thousands of miles away.
“Within days of the killing, a cartoon posted on Fatah’s Facebook page depicted a white American police officer (Chauvin) kneeling on the neck of an African-American victim (Floyd) side by side with an Israeli soldier similarly kneeling on the neck of a kaffiyeh-draped Palestinian, the aggressors embracing one another. The caption was #BlackLivesMatter. The same cartoon subsequently ran in the official PA newspaper, Al Hayat Al-Jadida. “
The cartoon depicts an IDF soldier kneeling on the neck of a Palestinian, while an American police officer kneels on the neck of a black man.
The goal? The few can foment violence and civil unrest, then swoop in to offer solutions, thus consolidating power. All totalitarians have done this and do it today.
Finally, we see very specific instances of this blending of Palestinian and American radicals’ goals:
“The latching-on of Palestinian grievances in Israel to African-American charges of racism in the U.S. was already in progress in 2014, when Palestinian activists tweeted their support for those protesting the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and linked their cause to those protesting the police action.
“Conspiracy theories regarding Israeli police training were promulgated by anti-Israel agitators even earlier. In 2009, the radical anti-Zionist website, Electronic Intifada, ran an article by an anti-Israel propagandist entitled ‘Israel’s export of occupation police tactics.’
“But the more serious collaboration between anti-Israel activists and anti-policing activists in the U.S. came about through the joint efforts of Dream Defenders, a group affiliated with the decentralized, loosely-structured Black Lives Matter movement and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).
“Dream Defenders was founded in reaction to the killing in Florida of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African-American high school student by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer of mixed race, following a physical altercation. Dream Defenders activism was originally focused on repealing Florida’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ Law which they believed resulted in Martin’s killing. The group was founded by three alumni of Florida state universities in Tallahassee, one of whom was Ahmad Abuznaid, a Palestinian-American who tried to create a nexus between his group’s ostensible demands and Palestinian grievances. In April 2014, he spoke at an event sponsored by the BDS group, Students for Justice in Palestine, at his alma mater. His topic was ‘The Freedom Struggle From Florida to Palestine: A Look at Racial Oppression in America and Israel.’”
Sinister forces are attaching themselves to the real plight of those who suffer unjust actions by a few law enforcement members. This then helps them claim there is “systemic racism” in America.
But don’t take your eye off the focus: BLM, Palestinian activism, and many others are simply wings on the totalitarian bird.