or I guess if a critical mass of its supporters were to engage in or condone violence — Michael
This is precisely the impression I get from the people who use this hashtag and support the organization.
4) BLM is not a terrorist organization. And if you want to make a case for that very serious accusation, you need strong evidence. Smears, fallacious reasoning and attempted rhetorical tricks aren't going to cut it. — Baden
Well, here is some (from one David Horowitz's websites):
- In February 2017, former BLM activist Trey Turner reported that his comrades had planned to burn down the Minnesota state capitol in Saint Paul and the governor’s mansion if Saint Paul-area police officer Jeronimo Yanez -- who fatally shot a black man named Philando Castile during a July 6, 2016 traffic stop -- was not prosecuted.
- During an anti-President Trump protest in Seattle in late January 2017, a female activist associated with BLM took a megaphone and, for four minutes, shouted obscenities, anti-capitalist rhetoric, and incitements to violence against white people and President Trump. Among her remarks were the following: "Fuck white supremacy, fuck the U.S. empire, fuck your imperialist ass lives. That shit gotta go. Fuck that shit. You know what America thrives off of? Capitalism. We use our mother fucking, fucking black and brown bodies to live and survive while white people own fucking properties after that.... White people, give your fucking money, your fucking house, your fucking property, we need it fucking all. You need to reparate [sic] black and indigenous people right now. Pay the fuck up, pay the fuck up. It ain’t just your fucking time, it's your fucking money, and now your fucking life is devoted to social change.... We're all operating under white supremacy.... And we need to start killing people. First off, we need to start killing the White House. The White House must die. The White House, your fucking White House, your fucking Presidents, they must go! Fuck the White House.... Capitalism is ... fucking racism...."
- Shortly after former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro died on November 25, 2016, BLM published an article titled "Lessons from Fidel: Black Lives Matter and the Transition of El Comandante." The piece began by stating: "We are feeling many things as we awaken to a world without Fidel Castro. There is an overwhelming sense of loss, complicated by fear and anxiety. Although no leader is without their flaws, we must push back against the rhetoric of the right and come to the defense of El Comandante. And there are lessons that we must revisit and heed as we pick up the mantle in changing our world, as we aspire to build a world rooted in a vision of freedom and the peace that only comes with justice. It is the lessons that we take from Fidel."
The article praised Castro for having taught people "that to be a revolutionary, you must strive to live in integrity." "As a Black network committed to transformation," it added, "we are particularly grateful to Fidel for holding [cop-killer/fugitive] Mama Assata Shakur, who continues to inspire us. We are thankful that he provided a home for [cop killers/airplane hijackers] Brother Michael Finney, Ralph Goodwin, and Charles Hill[;] asylum to Brother Huey P. Newton[;] and sanctuary for so many other Black revolutionaries who were being persecuted by the American government during the Black Power era." Expressing gratitude to Castro for "attempting to support Black people in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina when our government left us to die on rooftops and in floodwaters," BLM lauded the late dictator for having "provided a space where the traditional spiritual work of African people could flourish." The piece closed by saying: "As Fidel ascends to the realm of the ancestors, we summon his guidance, strength, and power as we recommit ourselves to the struggle for universal freedom. Fidel Vive!"
- In August 2015, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) officially endorsed BLM by approving a resolution that condemned "the unacceptable epidemic of extrajudicial killings of unarmed black men, women, and children at the hands of police"; stated that the American Dream "is a nightmare for too many young people stripped of their dignity under the vestiges of slavery, Jim Crow and White Supremacy"; demanded the "demilitarization of police, ending racial profiling, criminal justice reform, and investments in young people, families, and communities"; and asserted that "without systemic reform this state of [black] unrest jeopardizes the well-being of our democracy and our nation."
- On August 13, 2016, BLM activists in Milwaukee engaged in violence after police in that city shot and killed an armed man with a lengthy criminal record who was carrying an illegal gun that had been used in a burglary. One video clip of the violence showed rioters chanting “black power!”, vowing to "beat up every white person," and trying to drag white drivers out of their cars and assault them. The rioters also targeted local reporters for violent assaults, including one Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter who was thrown to the ground and punched. In another video clip, rioters could be seen burning down a gas station while chanting “black power!” This was just one of numerous businesses that were set on fire. In a Facebook post the following day, the Black Lives Matter Coalition For Justice wrote: "What happened last night was not the result of greed or an ignorant display of anger as some have called it, but rather pain and frustration built up from over 400 years of oppression. The rioting and looting that occurred last night in the city of Milwaukee is a demand for justice on every level.... What happened last night was a revolt and an uproar, not just a disturbance.... The people are angry. The people are fed up, and the people are demanding their freedom."
- In September 2016, BLM activists rioted in Charlotte, North Carolina after a black police officer there had shot and killed a gun-wielding black criminal named Keith Lamont Scott. Prior to that killing, Scott had been: convicted of assault with a deadly weapon in two different states, convicted of assault in three states, charged with “assault with intent to kill” in the 1990s, and spent 7 years in jail for “aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.” In multiple requests for domestic violence protective orders, one of which had been filed in 2015, Scott's wife claimed that the man had stabbed her, hit one of his children, and threatened to kill his entire family. The woman also reported that Scott carried a 9mm handgun but had no permit for it. (According to Fox News: "The gun recovered at the scene of Scott's shooting had been stolen and later sold to Scott.") At least 20 police officers were injured in the Charlotte riots, and National Guard troops were called in to help restore order. During the mayhem, protesters threw things at police, sometimes shot one another, looted and destroyed local businesses, set vehicles on fire, attacked white people who happened to be in the vicinity, decorated the landscape with BLM graffiti, and chanted slogans like “Black Lives Matter” and “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.”
- On July 7, 2016, BLM activists held anti-police-brutality rallies in numerous cities across the United States, to protest the recent shootings of two African American men by white police officers in Minnesota and Louisiana. At a rally in Dallas, Texas, demonstrators shouted “Enough is enough!” while they held signs bearing slogans like: “If all lives matter, why are black ones taken so easily?” Then, suddenly, at just before 9 pm, a gunman opened fire on the law-enforcement officers who were on duty at that rally (in Dallas). Four policemen and one transit officer were killed, and six additional police were wounded. The perpetrator, Micah Xavier Johnson, subsequently told a hostage negotiator that he had acted alone, was angry about the recent police shootings of two black men, and was determined to kill white people -- "especially white officers."
- In the wake of the carnage in Dallas, a number of BLM activists taunted uniformed police officers who were standing guard in front of a gas station. Some Twitter users posted footage of a local news report that showed approximately 300 to 400 protesters dancing, shouting at police, and raising their middle fingers to them. Moreover, BLM sympathizers posted numerous online tweets to express their approval of the mass shooting. Some examples:
“Y’all pigs got what was coming for y’all.”
"GIVE A FUCK ABOUT DALLAS AND THEM PIGS FUCK EM ALL"
"wtf! Is when whites think their superior than us! Dallas must burn,black lives matter now, got the message pigs!"
"These fucking pigs deserve Dallas, and every incident after Dallas until reform. Fucking disgusting animals."
“Next time a group wants to organize a police shoot, do like Dallas tonight, but have extra men/women to flank the Pigs!”
“dude hell yeah someone is shooting pigs in dallas. solidarity”
"Shout out to them Dallas shooters !! rapping pigs in blankets"
“DALLAS keep smoking dem pigs keep up the work.”
- On July 9, 2016, activists participating in a BLM protest in Phoenix threw rocks at police officers and threatened to kill them.
- On August 29, 2015—just hours after a lone black gunman had murdered a white sheriff’s deputy in Texas while the latter was pumping gasoline into his car—demonstrators affiliated with the St. Paul, Minnesota branch of BLM disrupted traffic as they marched—with police protection—to the gates of the Minnesota State Fair. Carrying signs bearing slogans like "End White Supremacy," they repeatedly chanted in unison: “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon.” “Pigs” was a reference to police officers, and "blanket" was a reference to body bags. The slogan echoed what gunman Ismaaiyl Brinsleyan had posted on the Internet—"Pigs in a blanket smell like bacon"—in December 2014, just before he murdered NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.
- During the September 1, 2015 airing of a blog-talk-radio program associated with BLM, the hosts laughed at the recent assassination of Texas Deputy Daron Goforth, a husband and father who was shot 15 times at point blank range from behind while he was gassing up his patrol car. One host, a self-described black supremacist known as King Noble, said the execution of that "cracker cop" was an indication that "it's open season on killing whites and police officers and probably killing cops, period." "It’s unavoidable, inescapable," he added. "It’s funny that now we are moving to a time where the predator will become the prey." After claiming that blacks were like lions who could win a “race war” against whites, Noble declared: “Today, we live in a time when the white man will be picked off, and there’s nothing he can do about it. His day is up, his time is up. We will witness more executions and killing of white people and cops than we ever have before. It’s about to go down. It’s open season on killing white people and crackas.”
- On September 14, 2015, BLM supporter/demonstrator Joseph Thomas Johnson-Shanks, a 25-year-old convicted felon, shot and killed a rookie Kentucky state trooper named Joseph Cameron Ponder after a high-speed chase. The perpetrator lived in Florissant, Missouri, near the town of Ferguson, and had participated in local demonstrations protesting the 2014 death of Michael Brown, a young black man killed by a white Ferguson police officer after he had tried to take the officer's handgun. (Click here for details of that case.) Johnson-Shanks was so preoccupied with the Brown case, that he even attended Brown's funeral and graveside service in August 2014.
- At a December 2014 BLM rally in New York City, marchers chanted in unison: "What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now."
- On a BLM-affiliated radio program the following month, the hosts laughed at the recent assassination of a white Texas deputy; boasted that blacks were like lions who could prevail in a “race war” against whites; happily predicted that "we will witness more executions and killing of white people and cops than we ever have before"; and declared that "It's open season on killing white people and crackas.”
In November 2015, a group of approximately 150 BLM protesters shouting "Black Lives Matter," stormed Dartmouth University's library, screaming, “Fu** you, you filthy white fu**s!," "Fu** you and your comfort!," and "Fu** you, you racist sh**!”
- In July 2016, a BLM activist speaking to a CNN reporter shouted: "The less white babies on this planet, the less of you [white adults] we got! I hope they kill all the white babies! Kill 'em all right now! Kill 'em! Kill your grandkids! Kill yourself! Coffin, bitch! Go lay in a coffin! Kill yourself!"
- A co-founder of BLM's Toronto branch is a young woman named Yusra Khogali, who in late 2015 posted the following message on Facebook: “Whiteness is not humxness. infact, white skin is sub-humxn.... White ppl are recessive genetic defects. this is factual. white ppl need white supremacy as a mechanism to protect their survival as a people because all they can do is produce themselves. black ppl simply through their dominant genes can literally wipe out the white race if we had the power to.”
- In the spring of 2016, Khogali issued a Facebook threat against a Toronto police officer: “The police officer who killed Andrew Loku. We. Are coming for you. U better believe it. You are going to spend the rest of your life without your family like how Andrew Loku’s 5 children will have to go on without their father. Justice will be served.” Around that same time, she tweeted: “Plz Allah give me strength to not cuss/kill these men and white folks out here today. Plz plz plz.”
- In February 2017, Khogali participated in a protest in front of the U.S. consulate where she shouted into a microphone that Canadian Prime Minister “Justin Trudeau is a white supremacist terrorist,” and she exhorted the crowd to “rise up and fight back.” “Look at us, we have the numbers,” she added.
- At all BLM events, demonstrators invoke the words that the Marxist revolutionary, former Black Panther, convicted cop-killer, and longtime fugitive Assata Shakur once wrote in a letter titled “To My People”: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” (The fourth line was drawn from the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.) In Shakur's original letter, she described herself as a “Black revolutionary” who had “declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces, and all the mindless, heart-less robots [police] who protect them and their property.”
- Another figure greatly admired by BLM is Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, who in the 1960s was renowned for threatening that blacks would "burn America down," and for urging blacks to murder "honkies." In the spring of 2000, Al-Amin shot two black law-enforcement officers in downtown Atlanta, killing one of them.
- Born in 1981, Alicia Garza is a self-described “queer” social-justice activist who reveres the Marxist revolutionary, former Black Panther, and convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur for her contributions to the “Black Liberation Movement.” Garza is likewise a great admirer of Angela Davis (another Marxist and former Black Panther), Ella Baker (an avowed socialist who had ties to the Communist Party USA and the Weather Underground), and Audre Lorde (a black Marxist lesbian feminist).
- In May 2015, Garza characterized the recent protests and riots in Baltimore—which erupted after a local black criminal named Freddie Gray had died under disputed circumstances while in police custody—as “Black Spring” demonstrations akin to the massive “Arab Spring” actions that had threatened and/or toppled a number of Middle Eastern regimes beginning in early 2011.
- In July 2015, Cullors spoke at the annual Netroots Nation convention in Phoenix. In the course of her remarks, she exhorted fellow blacks to “rise the fuck up” and “burn everything down!”
- Cullors herself was trained to be an activist by former Weather Underground leader Eric Mann.