Skip to content

It’s Better Not to Engage in the BLM Debate

SEATTLE, WA – JUNE 09: A “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” sign hangs on the exterior of the Seattle Police Departments East Precinct on June 9, 2020 in Seattle, Washington. Protests have continued in many parts of the city including inside City Hall and around the Seattle Police Departments East Precinct, an area that has earned the moniker “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone,” during ongoing Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyds death. (Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)

Table of Contents

Douglas Murray’s advice about responding to the BLM movement is not to play the racist game. He says you cannot win and gives the example of a UK discussion paper titled ‘Inequalities and Racial Discrimination’ produced by the Birmingham and Solihull NHS Mental Health Trust (BAME). The appropriate and politically correct response to the paper was provided by Roisin Fallon-Williams who happens to be white.

“‘Whilst I remain ignorant and incompetent I do now better understand that I am in a culpable, I have been complicit.’

She goes on to urge her equally incompetent and ignorant colleagues to take time to go up to BAME colleagues and say ‘How are you?’ and ‘Are you OK?’ and to ‘really listen’ to what they say. All of which raises the question — as such ‘anti-racists’ always do — of what precisely they got up to until the day before yesterday.”

If your stomach won’t let you admit your white privilege and grovel in self-flagellation as Fallon-Williams does, the alternative is to suggest that all lives matter. This also would be wrong because it reinforces the view that you don’t give a damn specifically about black lives. Murray is right: you are damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. Take his advice and don’t engage.

Tyler Darden writing for Zerohedge also advises non-engagement. He says focusing on racism leads us away from the real motive of the BLM movement which is not racism at all. It is Marxist policy.

“This battle is not about race, it is not about white vs. black or so called “marginalized” groups against the patriarchy, it’s about collectivism vs. liberty. It’s about socialism and communism vs. voluntarism and free choice. When I look at groups like BLM or the NFAC, I don’t see black people, I see useful idiots being exploited by elitist interests. I see Marxist pawns. The gatekeepers want to make it about race so that the real reasons for the conflict are obscured. We cannot allow this, and we must avoid the trap.

Racism is the bread-for-the-birds trail designed to lead us away from the politics behind BLM. This new breed of social justice warriors know exactly what they are doing while most of the rest of the world is just following the bread trail. Murray also warns about the ideology.

“For what the race hucksters are offering is not an upgrade of our societal software. Rather, theirs is a program intended to distort and destroy the whole system: a system that may have its faults but does not deserve the introduction of such societal malware.

From the boardroom to the NHS and everywhere else in society, I suggest people make sure they understand the consequences of what they are agreeing to. Be very, very careful before clicking ‘Accept All’.”

Zanny Minton writing for The Economist talks about the progression from simply protesting into American universities to bend students’ brains.

But a dangerous rival approach has emerged from American universities. It rejects the liberal notion of progress.

It defines everyone by their race, and every action as racist or anti-racist.

It is not yet dominant, but it is dynamic and it is spreading out of the academy into newsrooms and boardrooms.

If it supplants liberal values, then intimidation will chill open debate and sow division to the disadvantage of all, black and white.

The concept of societal malware is a good analogy for the evolving attack on Western liberties on a personal level. Murray’s advice that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it still stands, but at the academic level the political attack needs addressing. All we need is someone to do that. Hmm, I wonder what Trump is doing right now…

If you enjoyed this BFD article please consider sharing it with your friends.

Latest

Year One in Review

Year One in Review

No amount of goofy smiles, Facebook videos, or gauche clichés – we’re the greatest country in the world – by Mr Luxon is going to restore foreign investor confidence

Members Public
Is This the Foundation of a Crisis?

Is This the Foundation of a Crisis?

In Westminster systems, the courts are supposed to act as apolitical arbiters of existing laws. David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill has highlighted a profound tension at the heart of our democracy. 

Members Public