History repeats itself with Black Lives Matter

In the 1960's, there were many obviously legitimate grievances that black people had about racism in American society. Amid the turmoil of the fight for civil rights, great leaders like Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, and Roy Wilkins stood out as individuals who advanced fairness and justice in society. But any major movement has its hateful, selfish extremists motivated less by a cause than for personal gain, its Robespierres, and the battle for civil rights for blacks is no exception.

Then, the violent manipulators who were bad people doing bad things ostensibly for a good reason were the Black Panthers. The Panthers were violent criminals, drug dealers, rapists and racists who abused a good cause to give themselves prestige and influence. For the most part, they were rejected and reviled, but there were some useful idiots who ingratiated themselves to the Panthers to try to absorb some of their "coolness." American author Tom Wolfe wrote in 1966 about Radical Chic, describing how rich white celebrities fawned over the Panthers. The glitterati sipped champagne and nibbled at caviar canapes with killers and thugs atop the terraces of 5th Avenue penthouses, not because they understood the Panthers' goals so much as that they wanted to signal they were on the cutting edge of the avant garde.

Flash forward half a century and we see something virtually identical happening with Black Lives Matter.

Addressing injustices and racism that black people still face in North America is a good and important cause. But the people leading Black Lives Matter are not good people. Particularly in Toronto, Canada, which probably has the most harmonious interwoven multicultural makeup in the world, the issues facing black people are nothing like the self-interested Black Lives Matter activists would have people believe. Toronto's Black Lives Matter is made up largely of professional protesters and despicable characters with a new bandwagon to jump on after the wheels came off the last one and the one before that. Many of them are the same vacuous people you would have seen at Toronto's "Occupy" camp-out. Some are of the "No One Is Illegal" Marxist, open borders fanatics. Many are virulently anti-white racists and antisemites who are part of the detestable "boycott Israel" campaign. Some of Toronto's Black Lives Matters leaders come out of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, a cesspool of radical activism where racist idiocy is de rigueur, such as the nonsense that all white people are racists and only white people are capable of racism. It is an appalling place where its students literally come out more stupid than when they came in, after being indoctrinated to conformity and conditioned to become hysterical at perceived offenses.

Armed with self-absorbed hysteria, Toronto's Black Lives Matters routinely throws public temper tantrums, holding Pride hostage, harassing the Premier, shutting down commuters' ability to get to and from their homes, setting fires in public places, then claiming to be "assaulted" when firefighters have to extinguish their arson. This is a group that should be rewarded with pepper spray but instead they are given exclusive meetings and adulation by sleazy politicians, vacuous news reporters and various other virtue-signallers. The people shouting loudest about their "respect" for Black Lives Matter care far, far less about racism or the issues facing black people in Toronto than they care about linking themselves with "social justice." without actually understanding the term's meaning, or lack of one, as is just as frequently the case. But facts, and even black lives, matter much less to these virtue-signalers than giving the appearance of being "socially conscious" and chic.

Repeating the violence of 50 years ago, police now are being murdered after the killers have taken inspiration from Black Lives Matter. And just as with the Panthers, eventually the wheels will fall off the Black Lives Matter bandwagon when it becomes more obvious that the group is comprised of narcissists and scam-artists concerned only about themselves and their other extremist causes.

Let's hope that happens sooner rather than later. Then we can focus on improving the quality of black lives, and hopefully all lives, rather than improving the bank accounts and publicity profiles of a few slimy professional activists and the egos of sycophants trying to suck up some of Black Lives Matter's radical chic.