The Black Lives Matter plot thickened this week with some particularly partisan developments after a longtime Clinton family ally and a top Russia hoaxer essentially took over the organization.
According to recent filings as reported by The Washington Examiner, Marc Elias, a Democrat lawyer known for funding the bogus Steele dossier while he was general counsel for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, looks to be representing BLM’s Global Network Foundation through his law firm. Additionally, Minyon Moore, a top Clinton ally, is now on BLM’s board of directors.
In other words, the corrupt Democrat establishment has effectively taken over a major left-wing organization committed to radical left-wing policies and race-hustling.
This might not seem like a big deal. It’s not like BLM was a neutral or centrist entity that’s suddenly going to be run by Democrats. On the contrary, the organization, which is under intense scrutiny right now for leadership corruption, shady finances, and disclosure delays, has long been upfront about its extreme aims. Its founder admitted the group’s embrace of Marxism, and its webpage used to broadcast its disdain for the traditional nuclear family.
The problem arises in the stickiness of the “Black Lives Matter” name and what it means that figures within the Democrat establishment now explicitly own that brand.
The genius and frustration of the Black Lives Matter organization has always been that by virtue of its very name, it cannot be easily battled, for it’s irrefutable that black lives do indeed matter. In dubbing itself “Black Lives Matter,” the organization grants legitimacy to its actions and those of its broader movement — including even the violent riots carried out by its followers. What’s more, it automatically retains a rhetorical edge on its opponents: Only racists would argue with “Black Lives Matter,” they shout over their critics.
It’s for this reason that support for the organization goes unquestioned where other political sloganeering isn’t tolerated. Schoolchildren can wear masks that say “Black Lives Matter” but are forced to remove them if they say “Jesus Loves Me” instead. As part of my former apartment lease term, no flags could be flown from the balcony, but BLM flags waved proudly from adjacent units without a peep from the management office. Arson, murder, and property destruction by BLM rioters are described with sanitary “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” chyrons on network television.
Amid the 2020 summer of rage, even an independent agency of the federal government tried to suggest that supporting “Black Lives Matter” isn’t political or partisan.
Except now that’s even more demonstrably false. The slogan that trumps every argument — and the organization it represents — once implicitly belonged to the left, but now they’re explicitly owned and controlled by Democrats. Where once you couldn’t disagree with “Black Lives Matter,” now you can’t disagree with the Democrat establishment itself. It’s the ultimate power of narrative-setting.
What’s worse than Democrats with lots of power? Democrats with lots of power and lots of cash. When BLM founder Patrisse Cullors stepped down from her post and the two activists she appointed to replace her turned down the offer, she left behind BLM accounts full of roughly $60 million, and it was unclear exactly what would become of these massive finances and who exactly would be in charge of handling them.
“Given the money involved here, this is really unbelievable,” CharityWatch Executive Director Laurie Styron told the Examiner. “To not know who is in charge of $60+ million collected by the national charity arm of arguably the most prominent social justice movement in the country is the worst transparency issue I have seen in my 18 years as a charity watchdog.”
BLM’s newly reported charitable organization filing, however, states that its “books are in the care of … the organization” that is “located at … c/o Elias Law Group.” Bingo.
The sanitized cover that once applied to the activities of the “racial justice” organization will now surely apply in the same manner to the race-hustling Democrats shielded by “Black Lives Matter’s” sticky name — and it’s loads and loads of green.
