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> Many people wondered last summer why, for example, on the Black Lives Matter website the organization declared (and has since deleted) a “disruptive” stance o

> Many people wondered last summer why, for example, on the Black Lives Matter website the organization declared (and has since deleted) a “disruptive” stance on the nuclear family. What did that have to do with mobilizing against police violence? For a long time I was very sympathetic to BLM, I would even have considered protesting with them. It was the above that caused me to rethink my position and eventually decide that BLM was actually antagonistic to their very goal.

nullifidian 6y ago
"Just ask BLM leaders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi. In a revealing 2015 interview, Cullors said, “Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists.” That same year, Tometi was hobnobbing with Venezuela’s Marxist dictator Nicolás Maduro, of whose regime she wrote: “In these last 17 years, we have witnessed the Bolivarian Revolution champion participatory democracy and construct a fair, transparent election system recognized as among the best in the world.”"
- chumich1 6y ago
  The idea of somebody being a "trained Marxist" is very funny. Personally, I'm a 4th degree Historical Materialist and I'm training for the 2nd level Communist obstacle course
  - yostrovs 6y ago
    It's not as funny when you get to live under the rule of well trained Marxists. Hundreds of millions of them have been produced over the last century. Look into a history book or just ask around.
    - devtul 6y ago
      It turns out that some genocidal ideologies are too hard to let go, we managed with Nazism pretty well but Marxism is taking some time. Cambodia under Pol Pot should have been enough.
      - yostrovs 6y ago
        Indeed it is surprising, but I think it's because communism wasn't put on trial when the Soviet Union collapsed. There weren't courts punishing gulag wardens and KGB officers for torture, murder, and everything else under the sun. Everything was forgiven for the sake of peace, but everyone learned the wrong lesson. Which is why when "nationalism" is mentioned, people think of Nazi germany, but when "socialism" is mentioned, today's youth especially wants to think of Sweden. The crimes of Nazi Germany are regularly mentioned in popular culture, but those of Communists not so much, though they're more contemporary, lasted much longer, and arguably affected a lot more people.
      - bopbeepboop 6y ago
        China is currently butchering Uyghurs. That people in the US espouse Marxist beliefs while a Marxist state commits genocide is “the same” as when parts of American society supported Nazis. Disney thanking China for their help filming Mulan next to a camp is the same simpering we saw from corporations supporting the Nazi regime.
  - tryonenow 6y ago
    I can see how it's "funny" if one is trying to minimize and deflect, but if they're hanging around characters like maduro then they're probably referring to more than just economic or government theory - these people see themselves as full blown subversive revolutionaries. And then if you consider the spread of critical theory and postmodernism and the general influence of the Frankfurt school through our institutions, then the overtly "anti-establishment" protesting and rioting spearheaded by BLM and Antifa (which "doesn't exist", "isn't an organization", sure, how typically "revolutionary") starts to look very much like the start of a subversive, insurrectionist ploy, much like that of the bolsheviks that lead to the disaster of a government that my family fled. And then it really isn't funny to me at all. And it also isn't funny to me when one considers that part of the rise of the Nazi party pre WWII can be attributed the behavior of very similar "revolutionary" communists who also were running destroying businesses and beating up citizens on the street for disagreement. No, I'd say such an overtly insurrectionist movement evolving openly in the US is not funny at all.
    - chumich1 6y ago
      I don't think you have much to worry about in the US. From my experience, those who call themselves "Marxist" have a hard time organizing a barbecue, let alone a revolution. They are mostly revolutionary LARPers. I think the internet and media sometimes magnify the size and power of these groups and it warps with our perception of reality. The largest Leninist group in the US is the PSL and they're a joke. A bunch of weirdos with no friends but the ones they found online
  - justaman 6y ago
    "Trained Marxist" might as well mean college graduate these days.
  - neartheplain 6y ago
    I’ve had colleagues in Silicon Valley who were members of their home countries’ Communist Party student organizations.
    - collyw 6y ago
      Commies killed a lot more than Nazis, yet I would be extremely surprised if Nazi party student organization would be allowed.
  - LudwigNagasena 6y ago
    Why is this funny to you? There are many Marxist organizations in the world, surely some of them focus on organizing considering that one of the core ideas of many Marxist and “post”-Marxist intellectual currents (like critical theory) is proletarian or some other sort of revolution.
  - ctrlp 6y ago
    This suggests you didn't get a degree in the humanities in the past 20 years and don't understand the Leninist part of Marxist-Leninist.
    - claudiawerner 6y ago
      I'm yet to see anyone describe themselves as simply a 'trained Marxist' without any indication as to what that might mean specifically, other than these BLM leaders. A 'trained Marxist guerilla'? Sure. A 'trained Marxist economist'? Sure. 'Educatied in Marxism'? Sure. Even just a 'Marxist', sure. But even with the Leninist part (which the quote doesn't specify - there are plenty of non-Leninist Marxists about) it's unclear what it means to be a 'trained' one. It's not as though there's a 'Marxism coach' somewhere who trains you on understanding the significance of the ratio between constant and variable capital or the labour theory of value. It's hilarious because it's so vague, not because there are guerillas or revolutionaries who have been trained by Marxists in agitprop/organizing/guerilla tactics. In short, what's the difference between being a 'trained Marxist' and 'educated in the works of Marx and Engels'? If I heard someone describe themselves as a 'trained literary critic', I'd think exactly what GP pointed out too. My comment is just as much a criticism of the vagueness of the BLM leaders as it is the people who accept them at their word without even inquiring into what it means. For all we know, they could literally just be holding a philosophy degree completed with a Master's project in an aspect of Marxist philosophy.
      - tryonenow 6y ago
        >It's hilarious because it's so vague It's not hilarious, it's the modus operandi to keep things vague so that they can hide behind apologists when called out. Like hiding behind decentralization to minimize the implicitly organized behavior of antifa. It's disingenuous and subversive. Then again I suppose subversion is the point...
      - ctrlp 6y ago
        Right, if you haven't seen it it must not exist. Are you from Missouri? If that level of radical skepticism works for you, good on ya. Personally, I don't conflate things that I don't know with things that can't be known. A trained Marxist is an activist, it's really that simple. The point is not to interpret the world but to change it yada yada yada. A Leninist is a Marxist who believes the proletariat is too economically comfortable to bring about the revolution and therefore an intellectual vanguard of "trained" revolutionaries (marxist activists) are required to lead the way. Time to hit the books!
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  From Time's interview (https://time.com/5171270/black-lives-matter-patrisse-cullors/ https://time.com/5171270/black-lives-matter-patrisse-cullors...) of Cullors, the "main" founder and the only one still maintaining a leadership position at BLM: > Cullors weaves her intellectual influences into this narrative, from black feminist writers like Audre Lorde and bell hooks, to Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong. Reading those social philosophers “provided a new understanding around what our economies could look like,” she says. Reading Lorde and hooks “helped me understand my identity.” All the people happily repeating "Black Lives Matter", putting up lawn signs, and donating to them have no idea that it is led by someone who admires and is inspired by Marx, Lenin, and Zedong. They think the accusations of Marxism are a right-wing conspiracy theory, when the reality is that this is the ideological rot at the core of the Black Lives Matter organization, that its philosophies and goals are based around the same principles espoused by some of the most dangerous ideologues of all time. From https://www.wsj.com/articles/100-years-of-communismand-100-million-dead-1510011810 https://www.wsj.com/articles/100-years-of-communismand-100-m...: > the deaths caused by communist regimes [...] is closer to 100 million. That makes communism the greatest catastrophe in human history
glasss 6y ago
I do hope everyone would be at least sympathetic towards other human beings wanting justice and equal treatment. I would be wary about that website and I would take whatever you see about a central organization relating to BLM with a grain of salt. I've been involved in local protests and other events in Chicago and I've never once been directed to or heard of a centralized website. I hope you reconsider your stance with the knowledge that BLM is a very decentralized movement, and (while anecdotal) no one I've known who's been involved has been "disruptive" towards the idea of nuclear families. If I can make any other supporting statements or answer questions that might sway you please let me know.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  I get that BLM is decentralized and I agree that most people are just protesting injustices, but then my question is: to whom did all that money go? Clearly it went to someone. Isn't it fair to consider this organization representative of BLM? > Black Lives Matter raised more than $90 million in 2020 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/black-lives-matter-raised-more-than-90-million-in-2020-01614135178 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/black-lives-matter-raised-...
  - runako 6y ago
    > my question is: to whom did all that money go? (The link you provide outlines where the money went.)
    - zo1 6y ago
      The point is that this "decentralized" movement has a central organization that has a lot of money donated to it, and that the central/important tenets of that central organization probably has some measurable influence in deciding which "decentralized" parts of the organization get funding/donations/focus/marketing. So if the "BLM" organization views the nuclear family as something that has to be abolished, then one can assume that they wouldn't donate to local BLM chapters that don't subscribe to that idea. Maybe not always, but a greater than 0% chance for sure. With this whole "decentralized" argument, we might as well say the Republican/Democratic parties are decentralized and that what the RNC and DNC do/say hasn't a huge bearing on the way that the individual local leaders/sub-organizations of the parties do or how their rallies behave. It's more "centralized" than BLM, sure, but like with a lot of things, it's not a black/white description. It's rather a range, and we can't just say "no it's not" when we can clearly see that the "central" portion has some bearing on the smaller parts. So, my thinking on this also aligns with the Sorites Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox
rayiner 6y ago
The alliance of necessity between social liberals and racial justice advocates creates this problem. There is not anything inherent about “people of color should be treated equally” that also requires buying into “we should disrupt the nuclear family.” That’s just how the political alliances have worked out. The latter ideology in practice works to undercut the former ideology. The contribution to racial inequality is stark: the poverty rate for Black, Latino, and Asian children in two parent households is 1/4 to 1/2 the poverty rate for white children in single mother households. As a south Asian person, I find the aggressive push to move Asian Americans to the left quite troubling. The intense social norms in south and East Asian culture in favor of two parent households is an incredible advantage we should not give up lightly. But it’s almost taboo in socially progressive circles to say that family structure matters (even though this is obvious to Asians).
- throwaway6734 6y ago
  >But it’s almost taboo in socially progressive circles to say that family structure matters (even though this is obvious to Asians). You must hang in some especially woke circles
  - ceilingcorner 6y ago
    Doesn't seem that extreme to me. Even saying that divorce should be avoided at all costs and a two parent household is vastly superior to a single parent one is enough to get labeled as a conservative by many.
    - throwaway6734 6y ago
      Definitely not by the average American. Twitter and San Fran/Portland are a small minority of the US.
      - ceilingcorner 6y ago
        College students too, unfortunately.
brodouevencode 6y ago
There's the notion of BLM, of which only sociopaths would disagree, then there's BLM the organization which is exactly how you described it. The naming of this organization was actually a stroke of genius. Only the crazy edge cases would refute it's name but served as a Trojan horse for an ideology that is inherently un-American. If you disagree with them the immediate reaction has been "you don't think black lives matter?" This is a brilliant move.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  Just an inheritance from the term progressive. "I disagree with you." "What, you're against progress?"
  - monoideism 6y ago
    Also "anti-fascist" and "anti-racist". The left has gotten clever with their naming, similar to the conservative movement in the 90s under the advisement of George Lakoff ("death tax", etc).
- seneca 6y ago
  It's a Motte and Bailey, by design (which I seem to end up pointing out a lot on HN, apology for the repetition but it's a common and important pattern). The core BLM organization are subversive Marxists. Their tenants are extremely un-American and probably not shared by most of the people marching under their banner. When you point this out, they can retreat from the Marxist Bailey to the racial equality Motte and attempt to shut down criticism. This pattern of equivocating between subversive ideas and basic liberal tenants is extremely damaging for the liberals accidentally aligning themselves with extremists, but this smokescreen tactic has existed longer than most any HN posters have been alive. This is the proverbial "Useful Innocents" (and its more pejorative alternative).
genghisjahn 6y ago
This is the language from the BLM site regarding disrupting the nuclear family. I'm very pro nuclear family. This didn't seem bad to me. -------------------------- We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work. We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable. -----------------
- zpeti 6y ago
  A dig at fathers in the first paragraph, and a diplomatically stated rejection of the nuclear family in the second. You need to be very generous to interpret this as anything other than an attack on the traditional family.
  - calvinmorrison 6y ago
    And across all the KPI's we know of - kids in a two parent household are more successful by every measure.
    - jjeaff 6y ago
      Which is why it says they reject the "requirement". No one is denying that a 2 parent home is better. But if you are a kid that grew up with one parent, we need to have alternatives to help those kids thrive. Harping on the fact that 2 parents are better than 1 does nothing for kids with only one parent (except maybe make them feel defective and disadvantaged).
      - monstersinF 6y ago
        Who made it a requirement?
m0llusk 6y ago
It is amazing that people are always projecting these ideas of organization so aggressively. Here BLM is portrayed an organization with founding documents that are have important guiding philosophy from which the rest emerges. Actually looking at the people and what happened shows that there was very little organization involved and what little there was got conjured up late in the game by the most extreme involved players. In reality what happened is that our media intensive culture broadcast a nearly nine minute video of a black man being strangled by a cop and there was a broad visceral reaction against that. So what is really being said here is that a cop strangling a black man isn't that much of a big deal and what really matters is the philosophical positions expounded by the founding documents of the organization that emerged as protests grew. Want to object to cops strangling black men? You better be really slick with your organizational skills and foundational document writing because that is what really matters.
- bopbeepboop 6y ago
  Yes, it matters what the group espouses: a group using the death of George Floyd to attack the nuclear family using trickery is a second problem.
  - m0llusk 6y ago
    What group is this? Protesters used the slogan and there is now an organization that uses that slogan. Does that mean that the protestors and their protests can be conflated with the organization that makes use of the name? Sharing a negative reaction to cops murdering citizens is not the same as being an organized group. Slogans have great power, but not that power.
- collyw 6y ago
  The cop restrained a black man using a standard technique, while the balck man had overdose levels of fentanyl in his system. The cop has not been found guilty of strangling Floyd so far, and I believe the system in the US means innocent until proven guilty.
  - 6y ago
collyw 6y ago
Can anyone point me to where the millions raised by BLM after the summer riots has gone? BLM seem to cause a lot of agitation, but I am not aware of them doing anything helpful to the communities that it claims to be fighting for.
- justaman 6y ago
  ActBlue.
ctrlp 6y ago
BLM was founded by Marxist-Leninist activists. The original statements about the nuclear family were consistent with viewing the family as a site of patriachical oppression. None of that antagonism is innovative or surprising if you know a bit if intellectual history. I suspect they changed the language because it was too radical to hold a coalition together. Most people seem to like their families and view the nuclear family as a good thing.
- ctrlp 6y ago
  I see I'm getting downvoted. Will any downvoters have the balls to say why? Here's the relevant quote: "Just ask BLM leaders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi. In a revealing 2015 interview, Cullors said, “Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists.” That same year, Tometi was hobnobbing with Venezuela’s Marxist dictator Nicolás Maduro, of whose regime she wrote: “In these last 17 years, we have witnessed the Bolivarian Revolution champion participatory democracy and construct a fair, transparent election system recognized as among the best in the world.”"
olalonde 6y ago
I was sympathetic with the anti police (brutality) movement but I was never convinced that racism was disproportionally responsible for it. Gender seems to be an even greater factor, yet you don't see a "Male Lives Matter" movement. I don't have a strong opinion on the subject though and I'd be open to see some data.
- jjeaff 6y ago
  Black males seem to disproportionately die at the hands of police. But BLM is about much more than just death. Death is just a catalyst that makes people notice. Lots of Black people deal with disrespect and abuse from police on a regular basis. A lot of the seemingly flippant behavior from Black people towards police that we sometimes see during recorded interactions is well earned by years of subtle, and not so subtle harassment by some police officers. Look up some of Amber Ruffin's videos on her interactions with police growing up in NYC. It's pretty eye opening and all of my Black friends have echoed similar stories. Another example that comes to mind is the story of the Black women and children that were made to get out of their car and lay handcuffed, face down on the asphalt in the arizona sun while the cops slowly discovered that the car they were driving was not actually stolen and that they had read the plate wrong. Supposedly, the cops tried to handcuff the little 7 year old girl but even fully tightened her wrists were too small. I have been unable to find a comparable story of an innocent white family of women and children made to lay handcuffed face down like that. I suspect very strongly those same cops would not have treated a white family like that. Excess deaths at the hands of cops is just a serious symptom of a much larger underlying problem of disrespect and abuse.
  - chmod600 6y ago
    The other comment raised the interesting point that the gender gap is a stronger signal here than the race gap. Do you have a comment on that?
    - jjeaff 6y ago
      Seems irrelevant. Of course police see women as less threatening. Most police are men. Though I'm sure Black women are killed by police at higher rates than white women. Seems like just trying to redirect the narrative. Kind of like when you bring up the studies where identical resumes were sent out half with white sounding names and half with Black sounding names and the white sounding names get way more callbacks. The response is usually something like, that probably has more to do with class/wealth, not race. As if the two are not strongly linked.
scdp 6y ago
Yes, much like how MLK's popularity made this country socialist. This whole thread reeks of "unwise and untimely".
ryanmarsh 6y ago
Black activists (people presenting themselves as activists on behalf of black folk) seem to never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. It's almost as if the people funding these activists don't have black folks interest in mind at all... Long history of this. Many such cases. Follow the money and you'll see.
throwawaysea 6y ago
What's even more shady is that they did not acknowledge the criticism directed on this point at all. Instead they quiety scrubbed their "What We Believe" page (https://thepostmillennial.com/exposed-blm-quietly-scrubs-anti-american-marxist-language-from-its-website https://thepostmillennial.com/exposed-blm-quietly-scrubs-ant...), without actually admitting that this screed was based on Marxist philosophy (likely Friedrich Engels). In various works, such as "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", Engels claimed that the modern family unit gave rise to the notion of private property, and therefore capitalism, and that it must be undone for socialism to succeed. The greater ecosystem of fundamental socialist and communist theory includes proposals to ban all home and religion education, banning concepts like property and inheritance, nationalizing various housework, and even separating children from parents at an early age so they could primarily be reared by the state (https://thefederalist.com/2015/06/29/americans-buy-into-marxist-family-planning/ https://thefederalist.com/2015/06/29/americans-buy-into-marx...). It's incredible to me that activists who often complain about vague "dog whistles" cannot connect the dots on an ideological relation that is so basic and clear.

nullifidian 6y ago

"Just ask BLM leaders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi. In a revealing 2015 interview, Cullors said, “Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists.” That same year, Tometi was hobnobbing with Venezuela’s Marxist dictator Nicolás Maduro, of whose regime she wrote: “In these last 17 years, we have witnessed the Bolivarian Revolution champion participatory democracy and construct a fair, transparent election system recognized as among the best in the world.”"

chumich1 6y ago
The idea of somebody being a "trained Marxist" is very funny. Personally, I'm a 4th degree Historical Materialist and I'm training for the 2nd level Communist obstacle course
- yostrovs 6y ago
  It's not as funny when you get to live under the rule of well trained Marxists. Hundreds of millions of them have been produced over the last century. Look into a history book or just ask around.
  - devtul 6y ago
    It turns out that some genocidal ideologies are too hard to let go, we managed with Nazism pretty well but Marxism is taking some time. Cambodia under Pol Pot should have been enough.
    - yostrovs 6y ago
      Indeed it is surprising, but I think it's because communism wasn't put on trial when the Soviet Union collapsed. There weren't courts punishing gulag wardens and KGB officers for torture, murder, and everything else under the sun. Everything was forgiven for the sake of peace, but everyone learned the wrong lesson. Which is why when "nationalism" is mentioned, people think of Nazi germany, but when "socialism" is mentioned, today's youth especially wants to think of Sweden. The crimes of Nazi Germany are regularly mentioned in popular culture, but those of Communists not so much, though they're more contemporary, lasted much longer, and arguably affected a lot more people.
    - bopbeepboop 6y ago
      China is currently butchering Uyghurs. That people in the US espouse Marxist beliefs while a Marxist state commits genocide is “the same” as when parts of American society supported Nazis. Disney thanking China for their help filming Mulan next to a camp is the same simpering we saw from corporations supporting the Nazi regime.
- tryonenow 6y ago
  I can see how it's "funny" if one is trying to minimize and deflect, but if they're hanging around characters like maduro then they're probably referring to more than just economic or government theory - these people see themselves as full blown subversive revolutionaries. And then if you consider the spread of critical theory and postmodernism and the general influence of the Frankfurt school through our institutions, then the overtly "anti-establishment" protesting and rioting spearheaded by BLM and Antifa (which "doesn't exist", "isn't an organization", sure, how typically "revolutionary") starts to look very much like the start of a subversive, insurrectionist ploy, much like that of the bolsheviks that lead to the disaster of a government that my family fled. And then it really isn't funny to me at all. And it also isn't funny to me when one considers that part of the rise of the Nazi party pre WWII can be attributed the behavior of very similar "revolutionary" communists who also were running destroying businesses and beating up citizens on the street for disagreement. No, I'd say such an overtly insurrectionist movement evolving openly in the US is not funny at all.
  - chumich1 6y ago
    I don't think you have much to worry about in the US. From my experience, those who call themselves "Marxist" have a hard time organizing a barbecue, let alone a revolution. They are mostly revolutionary LARPers. I think the internet and media sometimes magnify the size and power of these groups and it warps with our perception of reality. The largest Leninist group in the US is the PSL and they're a joke. A bunch of weirdos with no friends but the ones they found online
- justaman 6y ago
  "Trained Marxist" might as well mean college graduate these days.
- neartheplain 6y ago
  I’ve had colleagues in Silicon Valley who were members of their home countries’ Communist Party student organizations.
  - collyw 6y ago
    Commies killed a lot more than Nazis, yet I would be extremely surprised if Nazi party student organization would be allowed.
- LudwigNagasena 6y ago
  Why is this funny to you? There are many Marxist organizations in the world, surely some of them focus on organizing considering that one of the core ideas of many Marxist and “post”-Marxist intellectual currents (like critical theory) is proletarian or some other sort of revolution.
- ctrlp 6y ago
  This suggests you didn't get a degree in the humanities in the past 20 years and don't understand the Leninist part of Marxist-Leninist.
  - claudiawerner 6y ago
    I'm yet to see anyone describe themselves as simply a 'trained Marxist' without any indication as to what that might mean specifically, other than these BLM leaders. A 'trained Marxist guerilla'? Sure. A 'trained Marxist economist'? Sure. 'Educatied in Marxism'? Sure. Even just a 'Marxist', sure. But even with the Leninist part (which the quote doesn't specify - there are plenty of non-Leninist Marxists about) it's unclear what it means to be a 'trained' one. It's not as though there's a 'Marxism coach' somewhere who trains you on understanding the significance of the ratio between constant and variable capital or the labour theory of value. It's hilarious because it's so vague, not because there are guerillas or revolutionaries who have been trained by Marxists in agitprop/organizing/guerilla tactics. In short, what's the difference between being a 'trained Marxist' and 'educated in the works of Marx and Engels'? If I heard someone describe themselves as a 'trained literary critic', I'd think exactly what GP pointed out too. My comment is just as much a criticism of the vagueness of the BLM leaders as it is the people who accept them at their word without even inquiring into what it means. For all we know, they could literally just be holding a philosophy degree completed with a Master's project in an aspect of Marxist philosophy.
    - tryonenow 6y ago
      >It's hilarious because it's so vague It's not hilarious, it's the modus operandi to keep things vague so that they can hide behind apologists when called out. Like hiding behind decentralization to minimize the implicitly organized behavior of antifa. It's disingenuous and subversive. Then again I suppose subversion is the point...
    - ctrlp 6y ago
      Right, if you haven't seen it it must not exist. Are you from Missouri? If that level of radical skepticism works for you, good on ya. Personally, I don't conflate things that I don't know with things that can't be known. A trained Marxist is an activist, it's really that simple. The point is not to interpret the world but to change it yada yada yada. A Leninist is a Marxist who believes the proletariat is too economically comfortable to bring about the revolution and therefore an intellectual vanguard of "trained" revolutionaries (marxist activists) are required to lead the way. Time to hit the books!
throwawaysea 6y ago
From Time's interview (https://time.com/5171270/black-lives-matter-patrisse-cullors/ https://time.com/5171270/black-lives-matter-patrisse-cullors...) of Cullors, the "main" founder and the only one still maintaining a leadership position at BLM: > Cullors weaves her intellectual influences into this narrative, from black feminist writers like Audre Lorde and bell hooks, to Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong. Reading those social philosophers “provided a new understanding around what our economies could look like,” she says. Reading Lorde and hooks “helped me understand my identity.” All the people happily repeating "Black Lives Matter", putting up lawn signs, and donating to them have no idea that it is led by someone who admires and is inspired by Marx, Lenin, and Zedong. They think the accusations of Marxism are a right-wing conspiracy theory, when the reality is that this is the ideological rot at the core of the Black Lives Matter organization, that its philosophies and goals are based around the same principles espoused by some of the most dangerous ideologues of all time. From https://www.wsj.com/articles/100-years-of-communismand-100-million-dead-1510011810 https://www.wsj.com/articles/100-years-of-communismand-100-m...: > the deaths caused by communist regimes [...] is closer to 100 million. That makes communism the greatest catastrophe in human history

glasss 6y ago

I do hope everyone would be at least sympathetic towards other human beings wanting justice and equal treatment. I would be wary about that website and I would take whatever you see about a central organization relating to BLM with a grain of salt. I've been involved in local protests and other events in Chicago and I've never once been directed to or heard of a centralized website. I hope you reconsider your stance with the knowledge that BLM is a very decentralized movement, and (while anecdotal) no one I've known who's been involved has been "disruptive" towards the idea of nuclear families. If I can make any other supporting statements or answer questions that might sway you please let me know.

ceilingcorner 6y ago
I get that BLM is decentralized and I agree that most people are just protesting injustices, but then my question is: to whom did all that money go? Clearly it went to someone. Isn't it fair to consider this organization representative of BLM? > Black Lives Matter raised more than $90 million in 2020 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/black-lives-matter-raised-more-than-90-million-in-2020-01614135178 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/black-lives-matter-raised-...
- runako 6y ago
  > my question is: to whom did all that money go? (The link you provide outlines where the money went.)
  - zo1 6y ago
    The point is that this "decentralized" movement has a central organization that has a lot of money donated to it, and that the central/important tenets of that central organization probably has some measurable influence in deciding which "decentralized" parts of the organization get funding/donations/focus/marketing. So if the "BLM" organization views the nuclear family as something that has to be abolished, then one can assume that they wouldn't donate to local BLM chapters that don't subscribe to that idea. Maybe not always, but a greater than 0% chance for sure. With this whole "decentralized" argument, we might as well say the Republican/Democratic parties are decentralized and that what the RNC and DNC do/say hasn't a huge bearing on the way that the individual local leaders/sub-organizations of the parties do or how their rallies behave. It's more "centralized" than BLM, sure, but like with a lot of things, it's not a black/white description. It's rather a range, and we can't just say "no it's not" when we can clearly see that the "central" portion has some bearing on the smaller parts. So, my thinking on this also aligns with the Sorites Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox

rayiner 6y ago

The alliance of necessity between social liberals and racial justice advocates creates this problem. There is not anything inherent about “people of color should be treated equally” that also requires buying into “we should disrupt the nuclear family.” That’s just how the political alliances have worked out. The latter ideology in practice works to undercut the former ideology. The contribution to racial inequality is stark: the poverty rate for Black, Latino, and Asian children in two parent households is 1/4 to 1/2 the poverty rate for white children in single mother households. As a south Asian person, I find the aggressive push to move Asian Americans to the left quite troubling. The intense social norms in south and East Asian culture in favor of two parent households is an incredible advantage we should not give up lightly. But it’s almost taboo in socially progressive circles to say that family structure matters (even though this is obvious to Asians).

throwaway6734 6y ago
>But it’s almost taboo in socially progressive circles to say that family structure matters (even though this is obvious to Asians). You must hang in some especially woke circles
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  Doesn't seem that extreme to me. Even saying that divorce should be avoided at all costs and a two parent household is vastly superior to a single parent one is enough to get labeled as a conservative by many.
  - throwaway6734 6y ago
    Definitely not by the average American. Twitter and San Fran/Portland are a small minority of the US.
    - ceilingcorner 6y ago
      College students too, unfortunately.

brodouevencode 6y ago

There's the notion of BLM, of which only sociopaths would disagree, then there's BLM the organization which is exactly how you described it. The naming of this organization was actually a stroke of genius. Only the crazy edge cases would refute it's name but served as a Trojan horse for an ideology that is inherently un-American. If you disagree with them the immediate reaction has been "you don't think black lives matter?" This is a brilliant move.

ceilingcorner 6y ago
Just an inheritance from the term progressive. "I disagree with you." "What, you're against progress?"
- monoideism 6y ago
  Also "anti-fascist" and "anti-racist". The left has gotten clever with their naming, similar to the conservative movement in the 90s under the advisement of George Lakoff ("death tax", etc).
seneca 6y ago
It's a Motte and Bailey, by design (which I seem to end up pointing out a lot on HN, apology for the repetition but it's a common and important pattern). The core BLM organization are subversive Marxists. Their tenants are extremely un-American and probably not shared by most of the people marching under their banner. When you point this out, they can retreat from the Marxist Bailey to the racial equality Motte and attempt to shut down criticism. This pattern of equivocating between subversive ideas and basic liberal tenants is extremely damaging for the liberals accidentally aligning themselves with extremists, but this smokescreen tactic has existed longer than most any HN posters have been alive. This is the proverbial "Useful Innocents" (and its more pejorative alternative).

genghisjahn 6y ago

This is the language from the BLM site regarding disrupting the nuclear family. I'm very pro nuclear family. This didn't seem bad to me. -------------------------- We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work. We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable. -----------------

zpeti 6y ago
A dig at fathers in the first paragraph, and a diplomatically stated rejection of the nuclear family in the second. You need to be very generous to interpret this as anything other than an attack on the traditional family.
- calvinmorrison 6y ago
  And across all the KPI's we know of - kids in a two parent household are more successful by every measure.
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    Which is why it says they reject the "requirement". No one is denying that a 2 parent home is better. But if you are a kid that grew up with one parent, we need to have alternatives to help those kids thrive. Harping on the fact that 2 parents are better than 1 does nothing for kids with only one parent (except maybe make them feel defective and disadvantaged).
    - monstersinF 6y ago
      Who made it a requirement?

m0llusk 6y ago

It is amazing that people are always projecting these ideas of organization so aggressively. Here BLM is portrayed an organization with founding documents that are have important guiding philosophy from which the rest emerges. Actually looking at the people and what happened shows that there was very little organization involved and what little there was got conjured up late in the game by the most extreme involved players. In reality what happened is that our media intensive culture broadcast a nearly nine minute video of a black man being strangled by a cop and there was a broad visceral reaction against that. So what is really being said here is that a cop strangling a black man isn't that much of a big deal and what really matters is the philosophical positions expounded by the founding documents of the organization that emerged as protests grew. Want to object to cops strangling black men? You better be really slick with your organizational skills and foundational document writing because that is what really matters.

bopbeepboop 6y ago
Yes, it matters what the group espouses: a group using the death of George Floyd to attack the nuclear family using trickery is a second problem.
- m0llusk 6y ago
  What group is this? Protesters used the slogan and there is now an organization that uses that slogan. Does that mean that the protestors and their protests can be conflated with the organization that makes use of the name? Sharing a negative reaction to cops murdering citizens is not the same as being an organized group. Slogans have great power, but not that power.
collyw 6y ago
The cop restrained a black man using a standard technique, while the balck man had overdose levels of fentanyl in his system. The cop has not been found guilty of strangling Floyd so far, and I believe the system in the US means innocent until proven guilty.
- 6y ago

collyw 6y ago

Can anyone point me to where the millions raised by BLM after the summer riots has gone? BLM seem to cause a lot of agitation, but I am not aware of them doing anything helpful to the communities that it claims to be fighting for.

justaman 6y ago
ActBlue.

ctrlp 6y ago

BLM was founded by Marxist-Leninist activists. The original statements about the nuclear family were consistent with viewing the family as a site of patriachical oppression. None of that antagonism is innovative or surprising if you know a bit if intellectual history. I suspect they changed the language because it was too radical to hold a coalition together. Most people seem to like their families and view the nuclear family as a good thing.

ctrlp 6y ago
I see I'm getting downvoted. Will any downvoters have the balls to say why? Here's the relevant quote: "Just ask BLM leaders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi. In a revealing 2015 interview, Cullors said, “Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists.” That same year, Tometi was hobnobbing with Venezuela’s Marxist dictator Nicolás Maduro, of whose regime she wrote: “In these last 17 years, we have witnessed the Bolivarian Revolution champion participatory democracy and construct a fair, transparent election system recognized as among the best in the world.”"

olalonde 6y ago

I was sympathetic with the anti police (brutality) movement but I was never convinced that racism was disproportionally responsible for it. Gender seems to be an even greater factor, yet you don't see a "Male Lives Matter" movement. I don't have a strong opinion on the subject though and I'd be open to see some data.

jjeaff 6y ago
Black males seem to disproportionately die at the hands of police. But BLM is about much more than just death. Death is just a catalyst that makes people notice. Lots of Black people deal with disrespect and abuse from police on a regular basis. A lot of the seemingly flippant behavior from Black people towards police that we sometimes see during recorded interactions is well earned by years of subtle, and not so subtle harassment by some police officers. Look up some of Amber Ruffin's videos on her interactions with police growing up in NYC. It's pretty eye opening and all of my Black friends have echoed similar stories. Another example that comes to mind is the story of the Black women and children that were made to get out of their car and lay handcuffed, face down on the asphalt in the arizona sun while the cops slowly discovered that the car they were driving was not actually stolen and that they had read the plate wrong. Supposedly, the cops tried to handcuff the little 7 year old girl but even fully tightened her wrists were too small. I have been unable to find a comparable story of an innocent white family of women and children made to lay handcuffed face down like that. I suspect very strongly those same cops would not have treated a white family like that. Excess deaths at the hands of cops is just a serious symptom of a much larger underlying problem of disrespect and abuse.
- chmod600 6y ago
  The other comment raised the interesting point that the gender gap is a stronger signal here than the race gap. Do you have a comment on that?
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    Seems irrelevant. Of course police see women as less threatening. Most police are men. Though I'm sure Black women are killed by police at higher rates than white women. Seems like just trying to redirect the narrative. Kind of like when you bring up the studies where identical resumes were sent out half with white sounding names and half with Black sounding names and the white sounding names get way more callbacks. The response is usually something like, that probably has more to do with class/wealth, not race. As if the two are not strongly linked.

scdp 6y ago

Yes, much like how MLK's popularity made this country socialist. This whole thread reeks of "unwise and untimely".

ryanmarsh 6y ago

Black activists (people presenting themselves as activists on behalf of black folk) seem to never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. It's almost as if the people funding these activists don't have black folks interest in mind at all... Long history of this. Many such cases. Follow the money and you'll see.

throwawaysea 6y ago

What's even more shady is that they did not acknowledge the criticism directed on this point at all. Instead they quiety scrubbed their "What We Believe" page (https://thepostmillennial.com/exposed-blm-quietly-scrubs-anti-american-marxist-language-from-its-website https://thepostmillennial.com/exposed-blm-quietly-scrubs-ant...), without actually admitting that this screed was based on Marxist philosophy (likely Friedrich Engels). In various works, such as "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State", Engels claimed that the modern family unit gave rise to the notion of private property, and therefore capitalism, and that it must be undone for socialism to succeed. The greater ecosystem of fundamental socialist and communist theory includes proposals to ban all home and religion education, banning concepts like property and inheritance, nationalizing various housework, and even separating children from parents at an early age so they could primarily be reared by the state (https://thefederalist.com/2015/06/29/americans-buy-into-marxist-family-planning/ https://thefederalist.com/2015/06/29/americans-buy-into-marx...). It's incredible to me that activists who often complain about vague "dog whistles" cannot connect the dots on an ideological relation that is so basic and clear.