BLM

[Spiritof96]

No, I just don't think most people who join those groups want to read academic treatises or high-minded explainers for why they joined said group.

I mean, I saw a feature article in Harper's Magazine a few years ago written by a University of Chicago professor talking about why the underpinnings of the Tea Party movement were colonialist and racist.

I'm sure that wouldn't be received well by you or many in this thread. You'd probably roll your eyes.

A lot of academia is like that. It's reductive and doesn't get at why people make the decisions they do. I admittedly haven't talked to a ton of pro-BLM people but I really don't think they're by and large up on Marxist theory and how their movement is ruining the nuclear family or anything. I'd like to think they would shrug in bafflement at that.

Or, as I said above, they would prescribe it to an age-old trick white people have used about black uprisings in this country. It's Marxist, it's dangerous, it's radical. Invisible Man is a good read on that sort of thing.

If a person doesn't know what Marxism is and joins a movement founded by Marxists and repeats and perpetuates Marxist ideals. Does that make it somehow (not Marxist)? Spoiler the Marxist train (when successful) always ends up at the Marxist station.

BLM's message in the broadest possible terms in universally agreeable. Black lives do matter. They run unopposed on this idea. Nearly EVERYONE agrees on that point. That being the case, the details of their aims matter and it is foolish to ignore what the leadership of the organization is about.

My starting post on this correctly stated that the organization has Marxist roots and that this fact was problematic. You have since denied it was true and then in the face of the fact, pivoted to say it didn't matter while making a thinly veiled ad hominem attack as though I was just trying some old white guy "trick".

[Dwight Schrute]

BINGO! IMHO, it comes down to Character vs. Convenience. I've supported The Cats through thick & thin since "63. But if I see our administration (including team coaches) condoning athletes knelling during the National Anthem or supporting the blm movement, I will give it all up and maybe turn to Australian Sand Soccer.

Ah so cancel culture run amok.

[Joneslab]

My starting post on this correctly stated that the organization has Marxist roots and that this fact was problematic. You have since denied it was true and then in the face of the fact, pivoted to say it didn't matter while making a thinly veiled ad hominem attack as though I was just trying some old white guy "trick".

I didn't pivot.

I'm just saying the Marxism thing might be true of some but not all, and that makes a difference because it suggests how splintered the movement is. Going back to the other analogy: just because the Tea Party movement may've had racist underpinnings certainly doesn't mean that everybody who jumped on the Tea Party train was a racist.

BLM comes off to me as very personal.

[Catatonic]

A majority of Americans support BLM. It isn't Marxists or whatever your preferred boogeyman for dismissing a gigantic movement.

"I am fairly convinced these are mostly attempts to smear anti-racist activists. I think in some media, ‘Marxist’ is dog-whistle for something horrible, like ‘Nazi’, and thus enables to delegitimize/dehumanize them," Miriyam Aouragh, a lecturer at the London-based Westminster School of Media and Communication, told PolitiFact.

Black Lives Matter "is not an organization, but a fluid movement; it doesn’t actually matter if one of its founders was a liberal, Marxist, socialist or capitalist."

[Dwight Schrute]

If a person doesn't know what Marxism is and joins a movement founded by Marxists and repeats and perpetuates Marxist ideals. Does that make it somehow (not Marxist)? Spoiler the Marxist train (when successful) always ends up at the Marxist station.

BLM's message in the broadest possible terms in universally agreeable. Black lives do matter. They run unopposed on this idea. Nearly EVERYONE agrees on that point. That being the case, the details of their aims matter and it is foolish to ignore what the leadership of the organization is about.

My starting post on this correctly stated that the organization has Marxist roots and that this fact was problematic. You have since denied it was true and then in the face of the fact, pivoted to say it didn't matter while making a thinly veiled ad hominem attack as though I was just trying some old white guy "trick".

Weren't you just telling us in the political forum that it's not fair to lump all members into a group re: Trump supporters, the police, etc.

I guess ultimately I don't accept your premise that Black Lives Matter is a Marxist organization.

[Joneslab]

The genesis of the "BLM is Marxist" claim apparently comes from a statement from one of the founders of the movement. That claim blew up when a PragerU video of a black conservative went viral.

A summary of that claim, and why it might not be relevant now that the movement has expanded into a million different iterations, from Politifact.

https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/jul/21/black-lives-matter-marxist-movement/

[Westtncat]

Ok call Blm what you want. Does it matter? Blm protest have caused hundreds of millions of damages and several lives. So the defense is that's not their original intention? Let's don't pretend their are a couple of loose cannons. You can talk about intent all day but the reality of it is what matters. I have seen academics sit and talk about how good their intentions are while cities burn. It's like people are oblivious to the outcomes so they only discuss the original intent.

[Joneslab]

Ok call Blm what you want. Does it matter?

I would say it doesn't really matter. That's my whole point in response to Spirit's post.

As far as the outcomes, the outcomes are like any other protest: partly good, partly bad. I think it depends on the bad actors who infiltrate the movement as to what the outcomes are going to be. When armed militias start showing up and there are threats to burn down cities, obviously that isn't a good outcome at all and very few people--white or black--are going to be for that.

When this whole thing first started three or four months ago, there were BLM protests across Kentucky, some in 100% white towns. There was one in Corbin. That's a good outcome.

[Dwight Schrute]

Ok call Blm what you want. Does it matter? Blm protest have caused hundreds of millions of damages and several lives. So the defense is that's not their original intention? Let's don't pretend their are a couple of loose cannons. You can talk about intent all day but the reality of it is what matters. I have seen academics sit and talk about how good their intentions are while cities burn. It's like people are oblivious to the outcomes so they only discuss the original intent.

You're the one ascribing the burning cities to them. What are they supposed to do, just stop their message because people filter in and hijack their protests?

BLM leaders can only denounce the violence so much.

[justford]

Ok since we are in full blown non basketball posts, can someone answer this question. We all know each individual had the right to protest. My question is can the city/ town where the protest is being held, designate a specific place for the protest to be held? Say for instance at a local football field or fair ground or other area. Would this be violating some constitutional right? Just curious if this would help separate the protesters from the rioters.

[Joneslab]

Ok since we are in full blown non basketball posts, can someone answer this question. We all know each individual had the right to protest. My question is can the city/ town where the protest is being held, designate a specific place for the protest to be held? Say for instance at a local football field or fair ground or other area. Would this be violating some constitutional right? Just curious if this would help separate the protesters from the rioters.

I think they can, yes. I believe the City of Louisville has restricted the protests to a couple of blocks downtown.

[J.Jennings]

Pittsburgh
https://www.facebook.com/10974568703...0132298329241/

https://www.facebook.com/1485389031762998/posts/2483282991973592/

[Spiritof96]

Weren't you just telling us in the political forum that it's not fair to lump all members into a group re: Trump supporters, the police, etc.

I guess ultimately I don't accept your premise that Black Lives Matter is a Marxist organization.

I didn't lump all members into a group. I commented on the organization that is BLM and where (the organizations stated beliefs come from). Every comment I made about the organization was based on THEIR utterances or the utterances of their leadership.

I did disparage the behavior of uncritically or without investigation, embracing an organization or movement or slogans.

[Joneslab]

There's an NPR interview where the same woman who said the Marxist thing also says all white people are racist. (She also calls the group "Communist," but doesn't mean it literally--only that they are treated like Communists.)

Related, I heard an interview with a prominent black author the other day on the radio and she claimed pretty much the same thing, i.e. that all white people need to come to terms with racism so as to purge it from our consciousness.

I don't agree with that at all. But I have heard some pretty racist things from white people and I've heard those very people turn around and say, "I don't have a racist bone in my body."

[Spiritof96]

A majority of Americans support BLM.

Interesting observation... I wonder where I heard it before.

BLM's message in the broadest possible terms in universally agreeable. Black lives do matter. They run unopposed on this idea. Nearly EVERYONE agrees on that point. That being the case, the details of their aims matter and it is foolish to ignore what the leadership of the organization is about.