Black Lives Matter Shares a Common Problem with the Tea Party
Grifters Gonna Grift, Regardless of Ideology
You won’t be surprised to learn that Black Lives Matter (the organization) is out with a statement supporting the brutal Communist dictatorship in Cuba.
It’s weird flex for Black Lives Matter (the organization) to support the continued brutal oppression of people of color by an overbearing central government. It’s less unusual for them to blame the United States Government for the oppression. But Black Lives Matter (the organization) has long used the name Black Lives Matter to promote their own warped political ideas.
Like calling the US flag a symbol of hatred, for example.
Black Lives Matter (the organization) is Marxist. This is not a surprise to anybody.
That creates a problem for Black Lives Matter (the movement). Black Lives Matter (the movement) is decentralized and has no official political agenda. While supporters of Black Lives Matter (the movement) want to end police brutality against African-Americans, they do not necessarily have a shared ideology or a shared political platform.
But Black Lives Matter (the organization) wants to take it a step further and supporter Marxism. Black Lives Matter (the organization) and other groups that have co-opted the term and the name are using the goodwill of Black Lives Matter (the movement) to promote their radical political ideas.
Ultimately, that means that people who may be predisposed to support Black Lives Matter (the movement) maybe turned off due to the perceived association with Black Lives Matter (the organization) even if the two are not formally linked.
Anybody who has been involved with conservative politics for some time can recognize the political problems that this causes.
In 2009, the Tea Party movement started with a bang. And nearly immediately, there were groups across the country that sprouted up with the “Tea Party” in their name. All of a sudden, there were groups called Tea Party Patriots, Tea Party Pac, Tea Party National Committee, Tea Party Coalition and others, all asking for your support and your money. It wasn’t long before these groups started deviating away from Tea Party issues and became generally just another conservative PAC, supporting generally conservative (sometimes fringe) ideas. They raised a lot of money, and made a lot of their organizers (and consultants) rich, but they had generally little overall impact on winning elections.
If anything, these groups confused the meaning of what the Tea Party was about. Instead of a tax and spending revolt, it morphed into just another corporatized conservative movement.
So yes, to that extent, the Tea Party and Black Lives Matter have the same problem. A movement was coopted by grifters pushing their agenda which was unrelated to the original movement. The grifters get paid and the movement gets marginalized. A frustrating conclusion to any movement, regardless of which side of this problem you’re on.