Mick Hartley

Black Lives Matter are now making the news here, by – um – blocking roads and making life miserable for commuters and holiday makers:

In a statement, the national organisation, which describes itself as a network of anti-racists, said the UK needs a movement similar to the campaign in the US.

"[We] have #Shutdown roads in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Nottingham to mourn those who have died in custody and to protest the ongoing racist violence of the police, border enforcement, structural inequalities and the everyday indignity of street racism.

"We have chosen today for our action to commemorate the fifth anniversary of Mark Duggan's death at the hands of the Metropolitan Police. We stand in solidarity with the families and friends of all who have died at the hands of the British state."

Gangster Mark Duggan, that is – the armed man whose shooting by police sparked the 2011 riots. It's almost as though they're hoping for more riots…

There's also the matter of BLM's support for BDS, and their views on Israel: “complicit in the genocide against the Palestinian people.”

Chloe Valdary – Black Lives Matter’s Jewish Problem Is Also a Black Problem:

On Aug. 1, the Black Lives Matter coalition (BLM) of groups and partners published a platform of objectives and demands ostensibly constructed to correct heavy-handed policing, educational negligence, and economic inadequacy in black communities.

That platform did no such thing.

Instead, organizers offered up a hodgepodge of half-baked ideas in the service of creating a new world order, one in which defunding police, releasing all political prisoners from jail, and redistributing of land are imperative.

Moreover, apparently believing that societal reforms in America’s inner cities are somehow related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, BLM included a section on Israel in its list of demands. With trite talking points, the group called for a divestment from the Jewish state as it is allegedly “complicit in the genocide against the Palestinian people.”

What this means is unpleasant to contemplate. An organization formed to confront systemic prejudice against black Americans—which predates the reestablishment of the state of Israel—is now intimating that such prejudice is caused by the Jewish state’s supposed genocidal tendencies (which, according to census reports, have led to a population increase among Palestinians).

Though I find no intrinsic value in “rebutting” crackpot conspiracy theories, it’s worth demonstrating how far removed BLM is from honoring the legacy of its ancestors by reminding readers just how pro-Zionist prominent leaders in the black community have been throughout history—and how Zionism helped shape black politics in America.

Edward Wilmot Blyden, founder of the 19th-century American Pan-African movement, famously wrote,“[I have] the deepest possible interest in the current history of the Jews—especially in that marvelous movement called Zionism.”

W.E.B. Dubois, founder of the NAACP, declared in 1919, “The African movement must mean to us what the Zionist movement must mean to the Jews, the centralization of race effort and the recognition of a racial front. … For any ebullition of effort and feeling that results in an amelioration of the lot of Africa tends to ameliorate the conditions of colored peoples throughout the world.”

Marcus Garvey, founder of the Back-to-Africa movement, stated in 1920: “When a Jew says, ‘We shall have Palestine,’ the same feeling comes to us when we say, ‘We shall have Africa.’ … Africa remains the heritage of black people, as Palestine is of the Jews.”

Even Malcolm X favorably declared, the year before he was assassinated, that, “Pan- Africanism will do for the people of African descent all over the world the same that Zionism has done for Jews all over the world.”

Not only has Zionism influenced black political movements throughout American history, Israel has long been used as a symbol of black liberation and freedom. By denigrating the memory of this legacy, BLM disrespects black American heritage and betrays the hard-won freedom it claims to stand for….

I wonder how much the turn-around in certain radical black attitudes to Jews is due to the malign influence of the Nation of Islam.