Black Lives Matter: how should we respond?

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• Slavery is rife in Africa, Black people are victims of terrorism and war in Africa, Gay people are thrown off tall buildings in the Middle East. Uigers are imprisioned in camps in China. Why are thes atrocities not mentioned by BLM? Because it does not fit into the Marxist identity politics agenda of destroying the culture of the West.

  • Gay people are thrown of tall buildings exactly where??? I live in Middle east country we had pride walk, people and police just watched them and let them do their thing… There was never any incident about gay people in my country, nothing like you said! Stop using area name like middle east and give a exact country city name. Your mindless generalizing hurts all middle easterns not only bad apples!

    • I agree, I find the comments he has put are wrong and very biased/incorrect

      • Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia are places I’ve found that it’s been reported.

      • So you are spokesperson for the whole of your Country; as it is in the scriptures to punish gays; how many people in your Country would condone such attrocities of throwing off gays at the highest point? After all, from your comment, ‘to let them do their own thing’ suggests, you may tolerent them but not accept them into your society

      • Lister and natalie
        Your an example of warped identity politics .. being gay in the Middle East or in most Muslim countries is very problematic and dangerous … sex between men in 16 of the 22 countries is illegal and in 6 punishable by death … slavery in Africa is rife with trafficking of children and women and sexual slavery prevalent …instead of targeting actual slavery and gay rights you target the truth speaker who don’t agree with your narratives .., your part of the problem not the solution … those Black Lives Matter .. but not to the black lies matter activists ( mostly white liberals )

      • How dare you! The facts are right there, I’ve seen this happen, I’ve travelled to these countries, just because your sat in your bedroom on laptop or mobile phone and dismissive of truthful facts makes you a very Ignorant individual of the plight and suffering of Gay people in Saudi Arabian states. You obviously have never left your bedroom or set foot in these places.

  • Who cares about a 3rd world craphole thinks anyway

• Ok. But what do we do?

  The headline promised some ideas!

  • Do not be weak. Stand up to protect what you believe. Hold your values and principles like a shield and sword and stand fast.

    • BLM has shown, the only way to get your voice heard is to get out on the streets. Show you oppose BLM far left revolutionary racist doctrine, and educate others. The mainstream media will only give a myopic one sided woke view so people need to be made aware of the full picture

      • The level of control the left wing has in our days is really worrying, sad people dont learn from the past. We have to just be patient, they target the young to, who are less likely to question things like this

        • Unfortunately, taking to the streets would have a detrimental effect. The main stream media would show “racist” mob marches, not peaceful protest movement. Better to remain a silent majority.
          I’m pretty sure we all agree in equality and tolerance, but remember, tolerance means ‘putting up with’ and equality doesn’t mean special.

      • @Alan Major: Even better: Instead of holding your values and principles like a sword, do it the other way round. Hold a piece of sharpened steel to defend your values and principles. Because this is what it will come down to in the next years.

        Where BLM (and related organizations) doesn’t have success with intimidation and through “soft” terror, e.g. political, medial and social diffamation of opponents, they resort to violence. Be prepared to fight back – mentally, morally, politically and most importantly – physically. The “moral high ground” does not help you if your enemy are nazis, stalinists and/or BLM.

        • Down with things like that!

    • Also hold a real shield and a real sword, for just in case.

      Recently in Canada, a BLM activist has publicly garnered applause for saying that white people are genetically deficiant and sub-human, and that white people therefore must be killed. That might ring a bell, at least with some of the older folks.

      • Still trying to figure out who Black Lives Matter too

  • Rubbish u have more opportunities then ever black lives matter need to be arrested and put in prison there nothing but vile people

  • Two ideas:
    1. Donate as much as you can to any organisations that uphold British values. Your local history groups, alternative media, free thought and speech groups. These are the people who will end up opposing a lot of what BLM want to destroy in this country.
    2. Keep an eye on what your local council is doing (especially if it is Labour) and object to anything that you feel is being done to appease the BLM hysteria.

    • Gonna take serious actions with consequences. A laser in my eye might get something back at you

    • Actions have consequences. If we don’t stop this stupid shit we gonna be shooting each other. Blm is bullshit They never help a black person except their self get richer.
      Blacks don’t support this crap.

    • Quite agree you

  • All we have left is electoral heft. The majority of quiet, tolerant British people hate this stuff. So we must use that democratic will while we have it – pressing the government to recapture our public institutions. Any body receiving public money or guarantees must commit to observe and promote political impartiality within its field – universities, schools, public broadcasters, and all public services. This is a policy that is practicable, but it would require immense leadership.

    • I agree, the problem is, we’re currently at a time when our government, institutions and polite society is utterly in the thrall of BLM. Failure to show support can get you in trouble. I mean literally staying out of it can be considered an offence. Actual criticism can get you sacked, ostracised or physically attacked.

      In such a climate, how on earth do we apply that pressure. We’re in an entirely captured society. They are a minority but they’re the establishment. How on earth do we apply pressure to a captured establishment, not to be captured when criticism is currently considered a punishable offence in work places, council offices, boardrooms and middle class dinner parties. Not to mention a punchable, kickable, stabable offence on many a London street.

      This isn’t an ordinary situation.

    • Blm why arnt they protesting for the children and people of Africa that go hungry and without water. Why dont they ever help them

      • Well they do but Africa can’t help it;s self! A lot of Elite in Africa taught by the West!

        • Thats its blame someone else for Africas elite not taking personal responsibility for their own actions.
          Like where in the west are children left to starve?

        • @david painton – Yr comment “A lot of Elite in Africa taught by the West!” is nonsense. Heard of Emperor Haile Selassie? Rich, elite dictator? Sorry you got it wrong and it’s clear you are rather marxist in that comment – it is human nature so stop with the blame game.

      • I work for a public sector organisation. They have published an Anti Racism Toolkit. The document defines racism, then later goes on to define White Privilege, in such a way, that matches their own definition of racism!! How can you argue with people who don’t use logic?
        Later, they talk about the BLM movement, explaining that it came about after the deaths of black people at the hands of the police in several American States. Well, thanks for that. How does that relate to a British public sector department?
        During the 1980s, I spent a lot of my time shitting my pants, thinking that communists were going to drop a nuclear bomb on us. Communism was seen as evil. Now it would seem that communism (Marxism) is absolutely fine, no problem, let’s all hold hands and sing The Red Flag!! But whatever you do, don’t you dare Wrongthink!!

      • There not interested in helping them, they do what they do to for there own selfish needs they actually don’t give a shit about Black people. BLM leader has acquired 4 mansions in WHITE areas in America, by fraudulently using the Blm go fund me page donations they received off Good hearted people supporting there cause. They are vile and should not be supported in any way. They are a Marxist group who want to rise to the top and stamp out our way of life, there as bad as Isis if not worse. There been funded by hi tech company’s, such as Google, Amazon, Apple, T. Mobile, Pfizer, capital one and many more, our football league, yorkshire tea. It’s all one big load of bull and people need to stop swallowing and falling for there bull shit.

• An amazing article. Makes me think I’m not going mad. Not the only one thinking it.

• ‘You never compromise with violence.
  You never compromise with intimidation.
  You never compromise with those who want to use it to extinguish freedom and democracy, because if you do then the very things for which you stand are extinguished.’

  Margaret Thatcher

• This is nothing more than another opportunity to damage the West, every other country these people should be demonstrating in will not, how long do you think they would last in any of the Middle East countries, China, Russia and many more countries, I, for one, would love to see them demonstrate in North Korea! If they are that dedicated to that cause then let them go to these places and stay out of countries that are leading the way for their causes anyway! They won’t simply because it is not in their agenda to destroy democracy! This is one so called political movement that must be proscribed as a terrorist organisation!

• Churchill was also a piss artist, but if celebrity-oriented newspapaers and magazine refused to publish articles about drinkers, there wouldn’t be much left.

  • Well said alan

  • They won’t go to country’s like Korea and Russia because they couldn’t get away with what there getting away with here. They would be shot and not with rubber bullets we are easy pickings because we will bend over backwards to show we are not racist.
    There are black people that are racist to in fact there’s some form of racism in most cultures. We cannot have a lawless society it is said that more black people are stopped and searched and more are arrested. While I believe there possibly is racism in some police but not all instead of putting the numbers out there and graphs as comparison to white people it may help if someone put a graph out there where they were guilty of a crime and there would be justification of the arrest. As much as I believe some racism still exists on both sides this is England with western ways and standards and don’t believe that we should allow our country to be torn apart and changed because someone demands it. Perhaps we should start calling the race card ourselves they don’t want us to fly our own flag other country’s fly there flags do why are they not ranting to them. We speak English but sometimes Jamaicans speak pattwa even when born here we don’t have a problem with that but if our heritage is to be stripped then that can work both ways. Personally I think we have come along way this going on about the slave trade it was disgusting but it also was 400 years ago. If we all start going back in time there will be country’s at war all over the world.
    Sit down and talk and compromise on both sides not all one sided demands.
    The majority of children in this country get the same education black and white. If someone wants to do well then attend school put the work in and that goes for all. But don’t not attend school half the time come out with nothing and demand a job way above your capability and when it’s not given say it’s racism. The older generation of this country have good work ethics black and white but younger people want it all on a plate black and white.

    • Hit the nail on the head

      • What Tracy said..

        • You talk about slavery being 400 years ago. Have a look at open air Libya Slave markets and see if you change your mind.

    • The slave trade in America ended 150 years ago, not 400. The effects of both it and segregation are very much at work today. This video is an excellent (brief) summary: https://youtu.be/AGUwcs9qJXY

      The statistics for our (UK) police system are readily available for those interested. As are the statistics for white people who commit crimes and the sentences they are given vs. minority groups.
      Racial bias within education is also well documented. As are the affects of poverty on children. Speaking as a teacher, I can assure you most children who come from impoverished backgrounds are certainly not given ‘the same education’, when you delve into the disparity between inherited wealth and how it affects minorities it becomes an even more apparent issue.

      • Caroline are you saying that you don’t teach minority groups the same, are they taught differently to white children, are they put in separate rooms. Do they have a different teacher to the white kids, of course they don’t, all children in this country are given exactly the same start in life when they begin school but how their parents/guardians/communities encourage this is not, even some parents of white children don’t give a toss what their kids are doing so good education stems from good parenting regardless of wealth. I know some extremely well educated people in mega paid jobs who come from poor families and some very wealthy parents who’s children are total wasters.

        • Do you think that only black people come from impoverished backgrounds?

          I grew up in the biggest council estate in Europe and went to bed sometimes as a child hungry because my single parent mum couldn’t afford food.

          Because I am white however, I obviously had a privileged upbringing didn’t I?

          No, I didn’t. What I did though after leaving school at the beginning of year 4 (year 10 today) with no qualifications is got a student loan and put myself through uni and got a degree while in my 30s.

          You get what you work for in this life and no one should have it handed to them on a plate just because of their colour.

          What a load of utter nonsense. The biggest problem I see here is the education systems of the world being infiltrated by left wing appears such as yourself filling our kids heads with this false, one sided nonsense!

        • Caroline I checked the stats as you suggested since you left it open.
          In the past 10 years, 163 people have died in police custody in England and Wales according to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).
          Of these 163 deaths: 140 were WHITE, 13 were BLACK and 10 were from other minority groups.
          That is a very large amount of white deaths compared to black and minority police deaths wouldn’t you agree?

      • The slave trade argument is utterly absurd. Irish people were not slavers, but muslim slavers for hundreds of years attacked Ireland and kidnapped people. Should Irish people receive reparations and say IRISH LIVES MATTER? Ridiculous! Even if you consider Black Americans, they would still largely have been better off for modern generations than had they remained in their homelands. It’s all irrelevant now. Germany was bombed almost out of existence after WWII with half its men dead and yet was a superpower again in 20 years. Blaming 150 year old history for failure is preposterously stupid.

        BLM started in America based on false premises of systemic racism and black people under attack from racist white people.

        Here’s some reality based on undisputed FBI and ONS statistics : Black people commit violent crimes at 5 x the rate of white people.
        In race on race crimes more than 90% are BLACK ON WHITE.
        Maybe it’s only against their “white oppressors”. No. A similar pattern is present in crimes against Asians.
        Maybe it’s poverty. No. Studies allowing for welfare packages, household income, assets etc, still show an over representation of crime.

        Police officers are 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black person than a black person is by police officers.

        Blacks people are over-represented in (real) “race hate crimes” (where race is a factor in the rape, violence etc) against other races and whites are underrepresented.

        Approximately 0.015% of killings of black people is by the police. And consider the enormous amount of violence coming from black people, it’s not a surprise that a few die unnecessarily.

        The cops are having millions of interactions with black people because there’s so much crime and occasionally it goes wrong when they get violent.

        BLM doesn’t care about black people under the surface. If they did, they would have been more worried about David Dorn, the 75year old former police officer who was murdered during the riots and all the other black people killed in the riots, but they don’t care. They don’t care about the 99.98% of blacks killed who were not killed by police officers. They didn’t care that over the weekend of George Floyd’s tragic death about 19 people were killed in Chicago alone! They don’t care that 70% of black homes are fatherless. They don’t care about the abortion rate in black committees…They don’t care unless, they can pin it on a white person…..and people are sick of this nonsense.

        BLM gain support from naive people with disingenuous use of statistics and often outright lies. BLM keep talking about race, which we should have stopped doing years ago but it makes money for grifters and fuels ant-Western narratives. However if they want to talk about race, it’s WHITE people who should feel disgruntled!

        • I agree. Supported my kids education providing tutoring to suppliment school education. (found this out reading Guardian). My back ground, female, white working class; born 1960. Left secondary school with ‘O’ Level Art. Went to college for clerk/typing course. From then on used Night School, now adult education to better myself. Achieved degree after 40; MA in 50’s. Always played catch up with middle class individuals who achieved aqualifications at the appropriate age. The adult education system in this country has been ripped to pieces; including Open University. I would like to see funding for adult ecucation and Open University increased. Adult education gave me the nous to middle class my kids activities CV. TES explained working class youngsters generally stick to one accessable sport, middle class have a variety. Also, I knew to explain to my kids educators that I had a degree; expect my youngsters to attend ‘Uni’ at an appropraite age. Lo; the year head stated there and then at parents evening my kid’s are now viewed as ‘ gifted and able.’ Education gives parents the tool kit to ‘enhance’ outcomes.

        • Also the number of Blacks killed from the end of the Civil War to the Civil Rights era by Lynchings and the KluKluxKlan is exceeded every 6 Months by Black on Black Murders it the USA

        • I live in the United States. I believe that this rich poor thing with race is incorrect. Race has nothing to do with a person’s potential. Anyone with a mind and good health can become financially well off. In history, there were poor people who made a difference in this world. One of them was Charles Dickens. In the United States, people say that immigration don’t do well at becoming financially secure. Not everyone. I read that somewhere. My immigrant grandparents were from Russia. They did well here and lived constructive lives. My Mom has ancestors back to the revolutionary war. It does not mean that I am a bad person. I have the right to like who I am without being harassed for my identity. I do have my opinions about what is right and wrong like many people. It seemed like I’m school, I was someone not to like. I don’t understand. In the United States, it is all about physical appearance no matter what your heritage is. My sister changed her physical appearance my going under the knife. I hope that she was not bullied for physical appearance. It makes me feel like Americans go too far. I learned to ignore people who are ignorant, judgmental and hypocritical. My ex friend who told me that she is part Native American and from the Mohican tribe tells me that I don’t understand. What I don’t understand is that I did not ask her and I could care less. It is strange hearing from people who I don’t know why they tell me that they are part Native American when I did not ask, I stand there looking like a fool while I noticed their lighter eyes and they aren’t even dark complected. I found out that I am part Hispanic recently. All of these people who regarded me as a racist do not know my heritage or anything at all about me except that I practice Judaism. It seems real and has been happening for a long time that Jewish Americans are regarded as racists. If you don’t believe me, then why would someone scream at me, “You White Jewish Bitch!” They got away with this. I was treated like myself being verbally abused and harassed was fine and acceptable. I see Americans showing acceptance to hatred against people who they might feel deserve it. If you don’t believe me, why do you think someone would scream, “Blondie, skinhead, redneck!” It is immature. Basically, I live in a country with many immature people. It seems like people of all backgrounds have their immature people. We keep on saying that it is unlawful for someone to harass a person only for their appearance or heritage. I look Austrian as hell. I am blended. I don’t understand why people talk talk about themselves as they are better than me. If you don’t believe me, then why do they holler that I have racial issues. For many years in my life, I came to realize that possibly the whole world is color blind and in denial about their prejudices, hate, biased opinions, ethnocentrism and their need to feel better than a certain group. I never met anyone who told the truth that they are a racist like myself. I guess that people have to feel great. It seems grandiose. I am blended. I was told who to love. I can go on and on about how people do not want to admit that they are prejudiced. The man who screamed at the top of his lungs at me the first second he saw me, he got really excited when he said he was not racist. Interracial sex does not make someone not prejudiced. I am afraid to have sex because I have been showing signs of endometriosis. I know that sounds inappropriate, but becomes of that, I am best of not doing it so I show interest in no one because I know it will hurt. So stop judging people and stop hating. I have been insulted most of my life. All sorts of insults. Like confused, angry, psycho, schiz, bitch, fuck up, racist, slut, psychotic, oversexed, skinny, fat, pale, homicidal, violent, redneck, insensitive to racial issues and I am supposed to be nice to these idiots. I have also been called an asshole and highly conceited. I don’t see how I could be all of these. I am sorry if I disappointed anyone. Oh yes, my schizophrenia was changed to psychopath after schizophrenia was my diagnosis for over thirty years. I have been harassed. Have you ever met a jerk? I can’t stand people asking me to feel sorry for them. If people stop their ethnocentric thinking and speaking that they are in denial about, maybe I will help, but maybe others need to apologize too. You don’t have to use rudeness and aggressive insults to get us to help you. It just gives us a reason to look down at you. I have friends. I am sorry. When will people stop being hypocrites and saying that I owe Irish, Hispanics and Jewish people when I am one of all of that. If I say that I am blended, that makes me a bad person. There are blended people through history like Diego Rivera. I guess we blended people think differently and get obsessed with the news like it is too important. Anyways, I disagree that Winston Churchill was a racist. Whoever wrote that has no sense. He was antiHitler. The story of Churchill is long. I find him complicated. You may think that I want validation or admiration. No. I just want to shun people who insult others regularly because I am against defamation of personality of dead people who can not defend themselves and their morals. These are just things written from my head that I find interesting and I hope that I get people to like themselves, stop blaming themselves and see that we are all pretty much the same. I mean when it comes to being good. What gets in the way is our environment.

      • You are right Caroline, the statistics are there for all to see. I suggest you take a look at them as you clearly haven’t.

        Black individuals are over represented in higher education.

        The highest educational achiever are 1) Chinese origin 2) Indian origin Last) white working class origin.

        The highest earners are 1) Chinese origin 2) Indian origin Last) white working class origin.

        Do these facts indicate racial bias in education? Please look at ONS website for details.

        Minority individuals commit more crimes proportionally that whites. This might be why there are more in prison. Minority individuals commit more crimes that dictate a longer sentence that whites. That might be why the sentences are longer for minority groups.

        The number of people killed by police in the UK is trivially small (obliviously not trivial for the individuals before you jump on that). The number of minority groups killed by police is roughly proportionally the same as the proportions that come into contact with the police. Many people compare this to the population figures, but any half decent statistician will tell you this comparison is not appropriate.

        Please look at ONS website for details.

        I am not for a moment suggesting there is no discrimination in the UK, but just as BLM are (deliberately or ignorantly?) misrepresenting statistics, so are you.

        The only part I agree with of your comment is the disparity in inherited wealth and the effect this can have.

        • Hello John

          I am female, white and working class. Born 1960. My education was as per Butler Act 1944. I chosen to use Night School/Adudlt Education to better myself. Indivdual responsibility does not get a mention. My education was designed to relegate me to low paid part-time employment and parenting. I was my decision to achieve a Degree and MA, albiet; very late in the day for me.

        • Hi Alison.
          In 1960 there was a definite fight for the black race with segregation and prejudice aplenty but I believe there was also a fight for women’s rights and the gay community too.
          These were issues worth fighting and uniting for at the time but in 2020, it is a completely different, far more free and tolerant world but I clearly see a neo Marxist divisive movement disguised as BLM trying to create racism and division and they are the ones we should be uniting and fighting against before they create a 1960s style world that they so dearly crave for.
          These types of people border on evil and at least sick and mentally unwell.
          In the words of Malcolm X – The white Liberal is the real enemy of the black man, pretending to be his friend but actually using him/her to gain power.
          We see BLM for what they are masquerading as the friend of black people.

      • I think Stacey is repling to the BLM’s narrative on slavery. You are totally right, slavery has continued to exist and trafficked still. But BLM wont take this on because it is againt the narrative, nothing to do with black lives but to persue the ideology of marxism.

        • I live in the United States. I have a learning disability. I always try not to sound conceited. I constantly say bad things about myself. I was called a white bitch, psycho, skinhead, redneck, stupid looking, fuck up, piece of shit, retard, racist and a Ted Bundy type. This is crazy. Americans are judgmental. Why do people need to be admired? I work hard during this Covid 19. People tell me that I have it well. I have an anger problem. This racism crap and name calling is stupid and rude. I know that all of those insults are not true. If I don’t agree, I am afraid that I will be put on medicine for grandiosity. That was my early adulthood. My doctor would make sure to bring my ego down. People who talk down to others should look at themselves as people who make no sense. I listen too much to the point that I heard the most ridiculous, nonsensical, egotistical, biased and hypocritical stuff. I guess that most people are in denial that they are not as great as they think so that they put down others. I have been dealing with hypocrites most of my life. I have to protect myself and I feel like no one has empathy so no one will understand. America is too egotistical and ethnocentric. I am American. My friend told me to say nice things about myself. So I did. Then she told me who to love. Everyone brought me down. I hate how Americans talk about their ancestry to me without me asking. I hate how people talk about race to me. It is a sensitive topic. No one obviously seems to do it correctly without offending someone or making themselves looking like the best person in the world.

    • I am aware that Churchill liked a drink, he was possibly one of the few that remained overweight during the war, however, I don’t think a pisshead could have rallied up such hope and belief in our darkest hour than Churchill did with his well executed speeches.

      Regards, tabloids and magazines etc, the mainstream lie and produce so much fake news, they would never run out of material to publish

• That’s one of the truest and frank comments I have read.
  Very well put.

  • Tracey, very good comment, articulate and succinct. It says what most people are thinking and most will agree with!

  • I think what Caroline is saying is that we need to take into consideration the legacy of past events. It’s a well-documented fact that people are more likely to do well if their parents did well. This does not make it impossible if you’re from an impoverished background – just more challenging.

    Now imagine the situation where one of those obstacles is simply the colour of your skin -which you have little choice over; or your gender or sexual preferences – all of which hurt no one, but make certain people see you as inferior before even giving you the chance to prove yourself.

  • That’s the truth DJ. Inconvenient truths that will bring down a whole world of anger and retribution on your head, but true all the same.

    • True to some extent. I have a bilateral cleft lip and palette. I am a white, working class female born 1960. My education was affected, constant disability related discrimination from staff and pupils. I chosen to used adult education throughout my life for self betterment. Yes, class and disability can have a negative effect; I chose to spend my own money to access eduction.

• Great Article,let’s hope this message can get across to people,I have no great education,but have seen through this charade from the start

• Great Article,let’s hope this message gets across to all involved in this pathetic kneeling competition.

  • Thank you for such great article. I’m glad I’m not going crazy or creating conspiracies. Growing up in a socialist regime, I had to learn about Marx and Lenin and their ideology. We also learnt about the Great October Socialist Revolution and how it “freed” the oppressed class. What I see happening in the world right now fills me with dread because it’s starting to look very familiar. In socialism, we were told what to chant, what to say, how to behave, what to think. Please don’t be fooled, there was no freedom or democracy in socialism! If you didn’t agree, if you dared to express a different opinion, you were the class’ enemy and you had to be rid off!! People lost jobs, their children suffered for their fathers’ “crimes”. That is if they were not thrown in jail or “accidently” fell out of windows. The secret police were everywhere, monitoring and watching your every move. I’ll just say this: be very careful who and what you support. Racism and discrimination still needs to be tackled on a global level for everybody who’s experiencing it! What does BLM want? I’ve asked this question so many times, why is it not made clear?? Many of us would say, they fight racism. Correct but there is more! It’s a neo-Marxist party dreaming of a communism whilst hiding behind a cause that’s close to people’s hearts. Don’t be surprised if calls to abolish the UK police are to follow because without the police, the socialist coup will be right on track. People will be so brainwashed by that point, that it’s going to sound like the perfect idea…just like it’s happening in the US! The first thing you do in a coup, you take control of the country’s official media (BBC) to manipulate peoples’ opinion. It won’t matter what colour you are. We’ll all suffer. When you forget who you are, when you are told who you are, it’s easier to control you. Don’t let anyone brainwash you! Scary times indeed. More than we realise.

    • I so agree Lucia. I grew up in communist Czechoslovakia and I can see the same. It’s scary, the rhetoric is the same. The same damn Marxist bullshit that we thought we’d kicked 30 years ago. Apparently not!!! I feel I need to tell people here about my experience but when I do, so many say, ah, socialism is not the same as communism. They make excuses for Venezuela’s dire state, blaming it on corruption, not on their communist ideology. It’s so naive, and ever so frustrating to hear. We have to speak up, us that still remember what the left is truly capable of when given the opportunity.

• Excellent article Ben. We all need to be mindful of the need to resist jumping on board the resentment bandwagon, for I fear we are getting close to a significant reaction from ordinary people. The next hot-spot will be Extinction Rebellion. If they take to the streets and prevent people from going about their lawful occasion and the police do nothing I fear people will start taking the law into their own hands. We will then be in dangerous territory. I feel we are pressure cooker at the moment, and when ordinary, peaceful, people like myself are getting very angry at the failure of Government and Institutions to stand up to this Woke movement something will have to give. I just wonder if our current crop of politicians have a clue about feelings outside the M25.

• The far left have a stranglehold on the media, the Labour Party, socialist leaning voters and dangerously are whitewashing history. The United Kingdom historically has a class system, some argue that this class system has been removed or watered down, with line blurred between ever transient social hierarchies. But it is a fallacy, class is clearly the main driver of social issues still today, so why are the liberal left ignoring the elephant in the room?

  I have repeatedly been dictated to, lately, that white people do not and cannot understand the social struggles of black people in the United Kingdom. I have watched on in horror as, largely, prominent white British figures have spread this concept across social media, and ordinary white Britons have bowed to this ideology. And it’s a false narrative. Leaving aside the obvious discrimination Jews, LGBT+ communities, the Irish and many more have faced in the United Kingdom, historically, we merely have to look at an average Joe like myself to blow this idea that white people cannot suffer discrimination out of the water.

  My grandmother came to Britain from Germany, she married a British soldier, she spoke English, she worked and paid into the system. She also faced systemic racism daily, being physically and verbally assaulted many times. Most of my family were traditionally coal miners, my young memories are full of the struggles of the 1984/85 strike, the flying pickets, the mounted police charging our community, the injustice of mocked up arrests and convictions and the death and burial of one of our miners who was killed on the picket.

  Leaving aside the politics of the strike and it’s legacy I was a child in a land where my own police force were ordered by my own Government to use violence, where our legal system was used to wrongfully convict many (including my father) for crimes that were later proven to be fabricated by police officers. I was shamed at school for wearing free clothes, I gladly accepted Christmas gifts from the Soviet Union, I spent a freezing winter half starving to death all for nought.

  I learned a great deal from this, I was the first of my family to go to university, the first of my family to question why Labour nor the Conservatives ever did anything to replace the chasm left behind by the loss of coal mining in villages like mine (still today one of the most deprived areas in Europe) and the first to really grasp the idea that systemic abuse of working class, lower class (whatever arbitrary tag you wish to use) people is the actual divide our leading political bodies use to control our entire economy, control our very existence.

  Whilst equality for all is a just concept and indeed racism of all forms does need to be stamped out of our lives the far left have successfully hijacked the Black Lives Matters protest to pour fuel on the fire and divide us once more. The quicker the ordinary, non-wealthy families and individuals of all race, religion or any other minority identity realise that we are being played for fools by the establishment, the quicker we can make real change.

  And yes, ALL people can suffer discrimination, I refuse to allow leftist zealots dictate to me that isn’t true, whilst I stand shoulder to shoulder with my brothers and sisters from all creeds in their struggle for equality.

  • Well said – many , many people saying Amen to that attitude . The government could be about to lose much support for not being seen to care about the ordinary decent working people of this country .

    • this Government is awful and it certainly it certainly does not represent the Country as a whole full of entitled buffoons who have never done a proper Day’s work in their lives

  • Matthew, I don’t agree that the establishment is “playing us for fools”. That kind of generalising statement is meaningless really. If you’re implying that the establishment (whatever that is) is deliberately conspiring to keep the little people down, then that is false. If the “establishment” is the likes of politicians (local and national), the police, the judiciary, the military, the civil service etc., then it has never been more accessible for people of any background to join its ranks. Does the medical profession and the scientific community count as the establishment? Is there still an asset owning “aristocracy”? Possibly, but that has dwindled considerably. What we are talking about is “money”, not “class”. Whilst we don’t live in a meritocratic utopia (if such a thing exists) education and social advancment has never been more accessible. You were the son of a coal miner.. but worked hard and advanced. I am the son of a doctor, had every privilege and yet still nearly dropped out of university through sheer laziness – before I bucked my ideas up and realised I had to work hard to advance. Whilst there is a lot to the establishment I dislike, the idea that it is “playing ordinary people for fools” when many thousands from ordinary backgrounds are eagerly joining its ranks every year doesn’t add up. Or are they traitors? Take Keir Starmer.. decidely ordinary background.. but eagerly joins the establishment via the legal profession. Maybe Grammar Schools are the best meritocratic social advancment tool? Keir went to one.

    Anyway, one thing we can agree on is that the BLM narrative is mostly false (or at least dishonestly selective) and incredibly divisive.

• This is a fantastic article and really sums up how I am feeling right now. I am fearful of what lies ahead. I can’t even switch on my television any more, as its all so one sided. I am truly sickened. At least I know I am not alone in all of this!!

  • Matthew, I agree with most of what you say there but you use the term “the left” and the “far left” throughout. There is no doubt that the far left will be supportive of and even involved in these riots and protests, but to believe that their philosophy is what’s primarily driving it is to misunderstand what’s going on here in my opinion.
    I see the main philosophy behind these groups as being extreme liberalism or what the great British philosopher John Gray calls the “alt liberals”. Alt liberalism consists of two main elements – extreme social liberalism and extreme economic liberalism.
    It’s obvious that most of these protesters are social liberals I.e they aren’t cultural conservatives, but they’re also backed up by the aerial firepower of big business I.e. economic liberalism. Just look at the amount of corporates showing their unequivocal support for BLM in the last few days e.g. Yorkshire tea, PG tips etc
    It’s important that we understand the nature of what we are up against and it’s not just the traditional left but also the economic liberals of the “free market” right,”Woke Capitalism” as it’s sometimes known.

  • A really informative artical and something that all rational people should realise is happening. The very fa t that MSN have broadcast any facts about Geirge Floyd’s criminal activities but have in fact elevated him to a latter day saint has distorted what was a brutal act committed by the police and for which the perpetrators will be punished into a struggle against racist white society fueled by a left wing press which is constantly praising BLM and criticising any one who has alternative views. We have to stand up against this .manipulation of the truth or we descend I to anarchy. Appeasement didn’t work before the second world war and it wont now because we should all understand that the destruction of our history and Democracy is the final goal

  • Well said Christina.

• So ! slavery started when Africans were transported to America. Of course it didn’t. It has been carried out long before inner Africa was even discovered. After wars and battles the losers were taken or sold into slavery. Soon we will have to change the History books to suit BLM. To me this is BLM fuelling Racism.

• Thank you, Ben, for this superb and nuanced article explaining the psychological and behavioral aspects of this in simple, understandable terms. As you say, it’s a “protection racket […] with no possible limits and no end in sight, [none of which] can be criticised without appearing to oppose the idea that black lives do indeed matter. […] Either get on board or you’re a racist”

  Every single brand and corporation is bending over backwards to make themselves look as virtuous as possible – as you say, out of fear. They’re all trying to cover their arse. An absolutely mad sentence I read on BBC News earlier: “Yorkshire Tea said it had not yet commented on the BLM protests as it had been ‘taking time to educate itself'”. Apparently we live in a world where people expect their cup of tea or their lawnmower or their foot spa to share the same ideological beliefs as them. Or at least that’s what brands and the media seem to think… in reality I doubt most people care. Whatever side of a given argument you’re on, it’s a sad indictment of our debate culture in the current day and age that this is the form that people’s engagement with societal issues increasingly takes. Can I still use Persil washing powder if I don’t know their stance on intersex rights? What if my breakfast is transphobic? It’s this absurd, unholy alliance of online mass contagion and consumerism. Brands have been great at harnessing online movements in order to convince people that consuming products is a virtuous and even political act, one that helps you be a Good Person – by going to see Captain Marvel you’re not just watching a Hollywood blockbuster made by a megacorporation but supporting feminism, by drinking Yorkshire Tea you’re even combating US police brutality(!). We see brands pandering to the populist right to some extent too (albeit perhaps lesser), in the way British flags are increasingly slapped on all kinds of products to play up their “Britishness” in the hope of boosting sales, and in the creation of a kind of patriotic supermarket brand like Jack’s. This kind of consumer activism has always happened on a smaller scale of course – I have a friend who hasn’t bought anything Nestle for decades, another who stopped visiting Wetherspoon’s over Tim Martin’s Brexit stance, and my parents boycotted South African fruit and fruit juice in the 80s over apartheid – but those feel more like personal, individual choices, not borne out of internet-mediated mass participatory phenomena.

  In the US and UK, the left has more cultural and symbolic power than ever (and this is leaching into institutions and consumer brands), but the right has more actual political and economic power than ever. Neither of these is a good thing and each exacerbates the other – the more our culture and public life tacks toward the hard left, the more ordinary people tack towards the (populist or hard) right in the voting booth and in their personal sentiments. And the more political power the populist right then gains, the more the left responds in the only way it knows how to these days, via institutions, cultural spaces, symbolic gestures and internet-mediated mass participatory movements that make you feel like you’re doing something Good but which don’t actually achieve anything in practical or human terms. It’s a push-me-pull-you. The centre cannot hold… but the centre is still there underneath this, on any suburban street you walk down.

  In terms of how the public will respond to the current wave of BLM hysteria, I really don’t think the British Asian community is going to stand for this. I don’t even think a lot of black British people will be on board with what’s being done in their name at the moment in this country, especially older ones. This is being driven by woke millennials (of all creeds) and middle-class white liberals. Moreover, British Asians are in a fortunate position where they can speak out about this critically and vociferously without being labeled racist (or even if they are, as some tried to do with Patel, it doesn’t stick or gain momentum in the way it often does when a white person is labeled racist). This can benefit us all. As you suggest, the further this goes, the more it will unite ordinary people of all races against what’s being done in the name of progress. In addition to most British Asians and older black British people not being not being signed up to the woke agenda, there’s also our significant and well-integrated eastern European populace in the UK, who are very much not going to be on board with BLM etc. as they have no concept of white liberal guilt – the whole idea is completely alien to them, as their countries were never involved in colonialism in the first place, they generally have more traditional small-c conservative values than the average white Brit, and the vast majority of them are from backgrounds that are the very opposite of privileged. Coming from post-communist countries, they also have a healthy suspicion of mass movements, slogans and propaganda, as well as lived experience of the huge harm done by hard left ideology.

  People of all creeds in this country have a basic desire for security, stability, law and order. The more that TV news reports show frightening footage of multi-ethnic mobs defacing statues and war memorials, rioting, attacking businesses and vandalizing public spaces, all seemingly unhindered by police, the more it’s going to inflame racial tensions in this country and push people (of all ethnicities) further away from the left (even the rational centre-left, what little of it still remains) and more towards hard-right politics, until we end up with a kind of Orban-state. I can barely think of a better way to radicalise white people in this country (the vast majority of whom don’t identify as white) that to start taking down comedy shows from iPlayer to appease a tiny minority. I always thought Little Britain was rubbish myself, but this is such a transparently venal and counterproductive decision, particularly the BBC’s line that “times have changed” when tons of people flagged up how witless and cruel the show was at the time – particularly in relation to how it portrayed disabled people, it was almost less a sketch show than a bullying manual. But the BBC essentially officially declaring Lucas and Walliams racist (which I don’t believe to be the case) is a shocking precedent for anyone in the creative sectors and anyone in public life. If we’re indeed entering an era where all kinds of cultural artefacts can be declared haram even by the organizations that made them, and people can be declared unpersons by their own former employers, all out of institutional cowardice, we’re gonna need better fucking samizdat that Little bloody Britain.

  • wolfstar, great comment

    • Excellent wolfstar.

  • I could kiss you for this reply. Bravo.

  • I could kiss you for this reply, Wolfstar. Bravo.

  • I first wanted to post a comment for such a brilliant article; however, now I believe what you wrote is even better.
    I am here in the US and you have just so intelligently and perfectly described my thoughts and feelings that I no longer feel like I’m going mad. This is the EXACT atmosphere here. I hope both of our countries pull through in tact.
    Thank you Wolfstar. Bravo !

    • What can I say, thank you thank you for posting this! I am also in the US and beginning to feel like I must be the only person feeling this way. Absolutely stunned by what I’m seeing, and I’m afraid to share my feelings with anyone lest I be labeled a racist.
      It’s truly frightening. This is so well stated and the comments are amazing. I wish this message and alternative way of viewing this issue could be seen by more people. I had a terrible time finding anything on the internet to support my views.
      Thank you thank you!

    • Can someone provide a list of pro blm organisations so that I can boycott them?

  • I think you’re a bit harsh on Little Britain. Walliams and Lucas were superb comedic actors, and in the glorious tradition of Brit Comedy (a tradition that has died because of woke-ism) they mercilessly ripped the proverbial out of any group they saw fit via outrageous and absurd characters.

    Still, give an inch to the BLM narrative and they’ll take a mile, cancel everything they dislike, and the woke left will eat itself – as Walliams and Lucas found out!

• I was thinking of starting a campaign WNWCLM — white northern working class lives matter. When it comes to deprivation and early death this group suffer more than most other groups in the country. We should start to rip down statues of mine owners and industrialists. Send donations to Dave. I would put an address but I don’t expect much support.

  • No word of a lie, my father gathered us all (via messaging) to tell us he has drafted up a legal document to sit aside his will, that includes multiple references to and evidence of his mining related health issues. Why? Because he came from nothing, worked himself into a withered shadow of himself for his country for many years as a miner then for the NHS when forced to retrain, and he is terrified his own Government will use any trick in the book to use Covid related death (should it happen) to deny his family the proceeds of his pension etc.

    The far right are using the fears and isolation of working class people who have been left behind as the perfect example of why all immigrants are bad, the far left are using this fear of immigrants as an excuse to try to overturn the EU referendum result. All that’s left behind are entire communities of working class people who are disenfranchised and taught to blame people by the political and media elite when really the blame lies at the feet of successive Labour, Conservative and coalition Governments who have abandoned these communities to their fates. The lurch away from Labour in many of these communities in recent years is the proof in the (Yorkshire) pudding.

    The more Labour lurches left, the more those communities lurch to the right.

  • Great comment, especially about the effect this will have on Eastern European immigrants. Something I hadn’t thought of. Unfortunately at present, our east European friends don’t have much influence politically.

• Superb piece of writing.
  I wish I had done it myself.

• Besides the obvious power grab and grift for a copy pasta manifesto with primary causes changed. This could easily be for extinction Rebellion, just change race references to Environment. they are praying on the good nature of people in the country and deliberately dividing communities by choosing divisive topics.

  All of a sudden you don’t want Greys Monument removed, or Captain Cook, or you support the work of the police force, then you must be inherently racist, and that means fascist. at which point they can point at you Label you Far Right, get you fired and ostracised, because you cannot understand why a memorial to Lord Leverhulme was removed.

  This is forcibly dividing communities along a line that hardly ever existed, and through forcing one action they can force the next, it will become a long string of purity tests,

  Declare that Black Lives matter
  Slavery is Bad
  Monuments to Slavery must be torn down
  Modern instruments of Oppression must be revised
  The Police are an oppressive force
  the structure of govt needs to promote our voices more
  Elevation of Lobby group status
  Forced say on Committee and Board decisions to ensure goals fully represented
  Vote to have Mandatory inclusion in All future Law decision and revision of existing poilicies
  Elevation of movement as a political entity
  Election

  The moment you fail at any of these steps you will be “othered”

  The BLM movement / Organisation comes with so much political baggage that it cannot be ignored as well, “that is just a few people,”. this IS a Political Power group, and even if they never establish the party they will continue to proceed with social pressure, till that everyone will just accept that the have tacit approval.

  This cannot come to pass, it is bad enough having already Powerful over reaching lobby groups that think their farts don’t stink (eg Greenpeace) and a agenda driven publicly funded media powerhouse behind them. they need to be given full honest exposure to the masses of what their actual aims are, what they actually stand for, and how they are going to achieve them. BLM need to do this without causing rifts in communities that NEVER existed before, and they need to de-escalate the manufactured outrage that they have created IMMEDIATELY.

  As to the Discussions on statues, Fine Have them, in each community, as for reformation of police practices if required have them where applicable, the Majority of the UK is not London (shocker I know). Decisions have already been made that hadn’t entered the heads of the MPs Mayors etc 48 hours earlier, and now they are top priority and being enacted with a speed I didn’t even know a public servant was capable of.

  The British People would be more than happy to help stop Racism and Slavery in the world today, BLM is not Interested, instead it is creating mindless doctrinal drones, for their own exploitation and capital gain, (Companies assist us with your profits), and as far as I know hasn’t even mentioned modern day actual slavery,

  Every refresh of Twitter currently holds news of, another celebrity donating or kneeling, another company promising funds and Jobs, or even swapping out existing employees for Black people, and on the other side, people refusing to take the knee are being doxxed harassed forced to resign sacked by companies or silenced, this is not cultural acceptance or integration it is the formation of a self policing supplicant class to be ran by a Star chamber court.

  Legitimate concerns from this organisation should be addressed, but as it stands this current surrender to BLM is morally and culturally unacceptable in Britain and should be treated as an insurrectionist movement

• Totally agree with all of the above. Thank you for writing this.

• The problem we have to wrestle with is that for all the drivel BLM has on its gofundme site there is some justification for the attack on the targets they are currently choosing.

  For Colston, the case is pretty clear. The fact that the statue was erected in 1895, 174 years after Colston’s death and at a time when there was no moral ambiguity about slavery, tells us unambiguously that its erection was a political choice. Its demolition was too, even though it was accomplished in an unacceptable manner.

  So Colston is easy. But to get at the nub of the question, we have to be prepared to go deeper. So let’s take a look at Churchill. Was Churchill a racist and an imperialist? Yes of course, to his very marrow he was both these things. But he was also probably the only man who was capable of ensuring that Britain didn’t lose the war immediately, and consequently that Eurasia wasn’t plunged indefinitely into the wicked and eliminationist racist barbarism of Nazism. He really was the man who rescued and preserved civilization at a time when it seemed lost. Did he do it for the Jews, the Slavs and all the other collection of ‘untermenschen’ Hitler wanted enslaved or dead? Not really, he did it because he recognized evil when he saw it, and knew that fighting it went hand in glove with his secondary treasured project – preserving the British Empire.

  If the question asked is: ‘Which is more important, Churchill’s role in rescuing and preserving civilization, or the fact that he held racist and imperialist instinct when he did it?’ then the answer should, must, be clear. Particularly so if you belong to one of the many ethnic groups that Hitler saw as ‘untermenschen’.

  What, then, fires the attack on Churchill by BLM or its hangers-on? Any explanation must include ‘thoughtlessness’. I think we also have to acknowledge that this thoughtlessness goes hand in glove with a joy in anger and hatred, and the exultation which comes with mob violence.

  I think it is not wrong to point out the similarities of this attack on history, this righteous attack on civility as sharing the same characteristics with China’s Cultural Revolutionaries. The denigration of national history, the power of the mob, the totalitarian demand for public abasement of the supposed ‘leaders’ to ‘take a knee’, and, no doubt coming soon, we’ll have the abject ‘self-criticisms’ demanded, written and published by leading academics, civic leaders, media types. How long before some elderly academic collapses under the force of the attack? Perhaps we’ll see train fares waived as BLM leaders travel the country to extend their mission to places so far left unmolested.

  Nor should we ignore that people have been working diligently and imaginatively over decades to reach this point. This is not so much about the triumph of ‘cultural Marxism’ as a re-surfacing of ever-present human instincts we’d prefer to ignore. For those with time on their hands, I’d recommend ‘The Cultivation of Hatred’, by Peter Gay as a guide to how these instincts played out in the middle classes in the Victorian era. Hatred has been, and is, being cultivated in the middle classes, and we begin to see its fruits.

  We should recognize the instinct is totalitarian, which is the opposite and enemy of civilization. In the SDP we seek to foster and support those institutions which go to support and build society for all its people, of whatever race, class, age or accomplishment. So we must oppose the righteous justification of the mob, condemn and isolate those pandaring to it, most importantly in our public institutions.

  But at the same time, since we know humanity is messy, our timber crooked, we shouldn’t be afraid of the argument, even to the point of accepting it in some cases (ie, like Colston). Isaiah Berlin wrote, ‘total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs, total liberty of the powerful, the gifted, is not compatible with the rights to a decent existence of the weak and the less gifted.’ Right now power is with the mob: we should protect the lambs.

  • Nice thoughts Michael. Agreeing 100%. I’ve always thought there was a case for taking down some statues and one of the few positives about this movement is that we’re debating it in public life, albeit leavened with far too much hysteria and mob rule. Cheers, Ben

  • On your points about the ‘messy’ nature of BLM and other assorted ‘hangers on’ I totally agree. And yes, thoughtlessness is a big part of this. The call for the removal of statues, renaming of streets because of their ties to various cultural and social atrocities in the past by people who will ironically will likely use products and services created by companies and individuals who created wealth from slavery, the opium trade, the holocaust and so on is not lost on me.

    I fully support the call for a more rounded education to be taught, to allow Britons of all backgrounds to understand the legacy of figures from our shared past, but worry that mindless mob rule leading the tearing down of statues shows that many in that mob are really as uneducated as anyone.

    This is highlighted by the guidance given by Anthony Joshua this week for black people to use black services and shops, whilst taking in millions of pounds in sponsorship from Hugo Boss et al, who have very well documented links to actual fascism. How long will it be until the mob realise that many companies and institutions around the world have very clear and easily traced links to slavery etc and call for boycotts of them? A United Kingdom without Coca-Cola, Barclays, Audi etc will be a United Kingdom with an economy issue.

    I don’t for a moment think the far left will go that far, because it’s plainly ridiculous but it has given me food for thought as business after business have spent the last fortnight desperately trying to appear ‘woke’ to the masses on social media, just how wary they are that the left will realise that there is not a corner of the United Kingdom that has not in some way benefited from Empire and the ills of it.

• BLM has a problem on its hands in the UK with regards to every silent ‘high achieving’ black individual across all spheres who has caught the black cab to white Buckingham Palace to accept an honour. From Trevor McDonald to Anthony Joshua, they’ve all taken a knee and it’s high time BLM’s leaders (whoever they are) take a good look at the hypocrisy in their own ranks before attempting, futilely, to whip up white collective guilt.

• Thank you. Spot on.

  • so well put. I know a few myself

• I enjoyed the article and agreed with it. I’m glad that people like Ben are able to write, for the time being at least, these articles that give an alternative to the BBC liberal elite viewpoint. It’s not just the BBC though, I have just been watching the Jeremy Vine show where JV himself and 3 panelists all took the same track, that taking down statues all over Britain is a great idea and needs to happen. No alternative viewpoint presented.

  Yet I saw a poll yesterday that showed there is no majority anywhere in the UK for taking down the statues. But once again the alt liberal viewpoint is presented as being the will of the people and the majority is shut out from having a say.

  It seems Black lives Matter is just another subgroup of a wider movement which is Destroy Western Culture.

  I am totally opposed to slavery everywhere.

• Excellent article.
  It explains everything I’ve been thinking, everything that has irritated me, everything that has infuriated me for the past week.
  I am ashamed of certain factions in my country in their lemming-like, genuflecting response to a total sham.
  Thank you for writing it: I feel a lot better for the first time in a while.

• I AGREE. BLM IS A SET UP TO DIVIDE US. THE LIVE AND LET LIVE SOCIETY HAS BEEN HIJACKED BY HARD LEFT ACTIVISTS. INTENT ON DESTROYING WESTERN SOCIETY. FOLLOWED BY THE BRAINWASHED ELITE.

• The piece, and subsequent comments, echo my own thoughts and those of so many. We’re afraid of standing up, but now we have to. Slavery is and was wrong. Racism is wrong. Erasing history because you don’t like it, equally so.

  Democracy MUST prevail, or all is lost. What we’re seeing isn’t democracy, it’s not a majority, it’s a minority, not in the ethnic but political sense, that is using a climate of finger pointing fear to force through an agenda that benefits no one except their cause. It won’t fix inner city gang culture. It won’t fix issues brought about by closed cultural communities. It won’t fix an economy that we’re going to shortly find out is on it’s knees.

  This is solely and completely about driving a wedge, and the majority must resist, rise above the noise and take back the high ground.

• Brilliant article.

  You have encapsulated the whole malady so well and I hope this piece will get circulated widely, albeit somewhat clandestinely (can’t believe I just wrote that – an indication of where we are at!).

• I’m not an SDP member but have been following you for a while. I would suspect that your ideas would resonate with a great many people (maybe even a majority) but you need to seriously raise your profile to get heard. It’s OK bouncing ideas around on here but you are preaching to the converted (me included). Make some more fuss and noise and start getting noticed…please!

  • Every journey starts with a single step. Take out a membership now (£5 I think), and help build the party. Britain needs an opposition, and neither the ‘Labour’ party nor the ‘LibDems’ are in any fit state to provide it. You would be very welcome.

• Whilst I agree with some of the context, I do feel it needs to be a little more balanced. There is absolutely inequality in the worl (some places more than others) and the issue to be resolved is that people have to”fight” for that equality. I’m not just talking about BLM I’m talking about all types of discrimination – sex, disability, race etc etc. Some people believe that as there are “laws’ that are there to protect us, then it doesn’t exist. To that I say – absolute tosh! It is still endemic, and I witness it multiple times a day. Working in a corporate environment, working with major consultancies – not just on social media. Only this week I was mentoring somebody who was struggling to deal with somebody who was leaving the organisation as he was sick of dealing with comments such as “you’re pretty good for a brown guy”. Whilst most people would agree that this is an out and out racist remark, there are a lot who think racism is when you call people names, or refer to the colour of their skin. What they don’t get is the overall context of inequality – if you are deaf and have to have a drs appointment, you have to fight to have a signer there, if you are female, you have to fight to make yourself heard in “the old boys club”.

  Anybody who thinks this isn’t real needs to look more than superficially.

  • Oh absolutely. I’m gay and was never able to be out in my former workplaces, in one of which I would hear work colleagues throw around words like “Paki” and “poof”. The glass ceiling and pink ceiling are real. That’s not even mentioning US police brutality and impunity, which is absolutely horrific in a way that I think is hard for people outside America to understand. What happened to Floyd is disgusting and stomach-churning, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg. At the same time, I think BLM’s strategy (as with most social justice campaigns in the past several years) is incredibly counterproductive and is only going to lead to a huge backlash from the middle of society. On top of which, the panicky corporate response by all kinds of organizations desperately trying to make themselves look as anti-racist as possible is perhaps causing even more harm than the actual campaign, certainly with respect to public perception. From all the time I’ve spent in eastern Europe, I’m extremely concerned about the ideological Maoist feel to all of this. Tearing down statues one day, broadcasters pulling Little Britain and Gone With The Wind from streaming services the next, NPR running articles on how to “decolonize your bookshelf”… the scope for anything and everything (including people) to be declared haram is infinite. Unrelated to BLM but part of the same phenomenon, there’s already a huge and embittered campaign against JK Rowling for her various political stances. Ironic that in the 90s it was US Christian fundamentalists burning her books because they contained “witchcraft”, now it’s the secular left-wing millennials who grew up cherishing her books who’re lining up to denounce her. I’ve certainly disagreed with her in the past but I respect her honesty and sincerity – the level of hate and ignorance directed towards her for espousing The Wrong Opinion is extraordinary.

    • Douglas Murray brings up the interesting point that gays on average out-earn straight people in modern western society. He jokes about “gay privilege”. (Don’t forget he is allowed to because he’s actually gay). I for one work in environments where there is no disadvantage being brown or gay or whatever. All people care about is if you can do your job and can get along in a team. We have had a few people who couldn’t blame their lack of success on their colour or sex or whatever, but if you look on average our failures were evenly spread amongst hetero, white, black, women, men, whatever. It’s just that certain people had less potential excuses.

    • “What happened to Floyd is disgusting and stomach-churning, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg”.
      Worse things happen every single day in Sub Saharan Africa. George Floyd was hardly another Martin Luther King

• Thank you for your well balanced article, I personally am so angry by this lemming reaction that I actually don’t know what to do next. When I have put up posts and Facebook from black people who haven’t followed the movement for very valid reasons, as you say I get no reaction or likes as people are reluctant to flow in the opposite direction.
  As a country we have bent over backwards to accept and include people from all over the world to have an inclusive society, where hard work and endeavour will give you every chance to succeed. It’s not perfect of course it’s not but it’s better than most.
  But I am beginning to feel as a white male in the UK my voice and influence is getting less and has less merit because I am of a certain age, and if I voice an opinion I am a racist and people of colour can say and do as they please.
  Anyway at least I have had an opportunity to get this off my chest.
  Thanks for that.
  Regards
  Lee

• …I’m a pragmatist and don’t adhere to any extremist agenda. But what I don’t do is become an apologist for things that are intrinsically morally and ethically right so to me black lives matter .

• Whenever confronted by BLM in the media we need to demand an explicit statement of that organisation’s aims. I’m hoping that a lot of people will be horrified as a result. And we need to tell our MPs they’ll lose our votes if they virtue signal about BLM.

  • More white people are killed in police custody in the US than black people. You just don’t hear about it from the left wing media.

    More white people die in police custody in the UK than Black people. Even when figures are adjusted for numbers and demographics etc, you are still more likely to die in police custody in the UK if you are WHITE!

    To me, ALL LIVES MATTER! And this isn’t about race.

    And until the BLM movement acknowledge this and truly stand for equality rather than non-white superiority then they won’t get my support.

    • Sorry but the USA is the prime example of a Multi Racial society. They have always had race problems and always will, it has never worked and never will just like Communism. I find Political Correctness and BLM very provoking they try to force people to accept what they do not want, but it just generates more hate.

• , ?
  Which BBC presenters now openly propagate radical identity politics

• My God I’ve finally found some people who agree with me

• BLACK LIVES MATTER. All that is being said and all that needs to be said. Think about it and I mean really think about it.

  • We all know that and agree with it. Of course they matter. They matter in the context of terrifying US police brutality, they matter in the context of the history of transatlantic slavery, they matter in the context of NHS staff and other key/frontline workers (many of whom are black or minority ethnic) not being given adequate PPE, and they matter in every other context too.

    That’s not what this is about. Ben set that out very clearly and many of the comments do too. Simply repeating a slogan is not an argument.

• Dear Ben,

  This is an excellent article thank you.

  “Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a masterpiece of political marketing.

  It’s a slogan with a campaign attached, linked to some pretty heavy racial ideology and propaganda. None of it can be criticised without appearing to oppose the idea that black lives do indeed matter.

  BLM is a classic and effective piece of rhetorical blackmail. Either get on board or you’re a racist: that is the logic of it – a logic driven by fear.”

  The question i have for us all then is what is the rhetorical language we should be using that:
  1) disarms this slogan
  2) embarrasses the liberal media to think about all those who are disadvantaged – especially the forgotten white working class – who rightly abandoned labour last year.
  3) works to increase our partys profile and recruit more members.

  Perhaps this is something we should be discussing in our branch meetings.

  • I’m more optimistic than Ben and I think this is perhaps a turning point for identity politics reaching a level of mainstream exposure that will cause it to rupture and meet with a huge backlash. No-one is better at destroying the left than the left – and the more the woke left overreaches, the more extreme their demands become and the more airtime they’re given, the more ordinary people will turn strongly away from it and the more brands and companies will realise that actually they don’t want to advocate or be associated with these campaigns. It’s the “get woke, go broke” thing. The BLM hysteria in Europe is actually only a small subset of people but because brands are jumping on board and the media is giving it huge coverage, it’s being given a momentum it would never have gained otherwise. I can’t speak for America, but I certainly feel that in Europe, once BLM clearly starts going too far and the whole issue becomes toxic, there will be a shift in the corporate response to it. Similar to the way the general public attitude towards Extinction Rebellion changed after they attacked that tube (full of ordinary people on their way to work) and destroyed that lawn in Cambridge. Judging by its actions so far, BLM is bound to soon act in ways that will force brands to greatly distance themselves from it while still supporting anti-racism generally.

• I agree whole heartedly with this writer. Very cogent piece. I’ve been putting up with being “educated” about tolerance, diversity etc all my adult life and now it’s come to exactly where I thought it would because our political leaders have been so supine all along. Enough with this victim hood. Other minorities have risen to the top in society. Why have the Black community not? Perhaps it’s their fault?

  • There are plenty of black Brits who’ve risen to successful positions in their chosen fields, not to mention all the black working-class people who basically keep London running. But the stats on educational outcomes are interesting – in the UK, black African boys do well in school (as good as or better than white boys) but black Caribbean boys do badly. So there’s a big cultural difference in households between black African and black Caribbean families (relating to attitudes toward education, family stability, religion, and whether or not a father is present). This is why I think it’s unhelpful that it’s the *left* that lumps them all in together as “black”, and essentially presents all black British people as monolithic and as victims – as you say, “the black community”, when really there’s no such thing. It’s really a lot to do with black Caribbean boys growing up without male role models and without any value framework, whereas black African households normally have a strong family unit and set of values – typically churchgoing two-parent households who make sure their kids study hard, are quite strict and pay close attention to who their kids hang out with so they don’t get led astray.

    • Back in 2011 the head of the Jamaican Teachers’ Association said the reason those boys do badly (both in the UK and Jamaica) is that Jamaican society is very homophobic and they deliberately under-perform to avoid being branded as gay. Of course, criticize and aspect of Afro-Caribbean culture and you’ll have BLM branding you a racist.

  • wolfstar I am starting to agree with you. In my coerced silence, I find myself thinking that by being passive and silent and allowing BLM to push as far as they want, with the assistance of their friends in the media. government, police and business, they will just overreach badly.

    In fact I think they overreached on day one but if we do as we’ve been told to do, by BLM and their supporters; surrender!

    Don’t speak unless it’s as an “ally”, and obey.

    They will not only cause their own downfall, they will probably drag down all their cheerleaders and water carriers in the establishment. Every statue that falls, TV show that gets removed, black power salute displayed, iphone footage of lawlessness and mob beat downs?

    Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people wake up and think, “where are the police, why is the BBC not reporting this madness but instead seems to be supporting it, why is Boris so supine and why can’t I express my opposition without being punished?”

    BLM’s radicalism, violence they way opposing them has effectively been banned and BLM’s attempt to hijack Britain and erase her history, (SUPPORTED by most of the establishment) is going to be the catalyst that might actually shake up our entire system from the BBC to policing to government. No more progressive political hegemony, no more bias and bye bye to the two main parties.

    The field will be wide open. Hopefully the far right don’t fill that void but that’s another matter.

    Incidentally, the recent unrest being instantly branded as “far right” is yet another half truth told by the media. Of course there were plenty of ordinary people going to protect statues, a fair few football hooligans and there was a small but genuinely far right fringe, but the actual far right. I mean people like Nazi sympathiser Mark Collett and his group of ethnonationalists and national socialists called the Patriotic Alternative, they said, didn’t go. The Patriotic Alternative, Nazi fanboy consensus was that it was a trap to create bad PR and dismiss anyone to the right of Boris as a Hitler saluting meat head who brawls in the street because he hates black people.

    And they were correct.

    The majority of the far right present, were more the Tommy Robinson crowd, who whilst not exactly model citizens, they do not have hatred for black people but they do have hatred for Nazis. So once again, we’ve been sold a pup by the media.

    Funny thing is, when BLM smashed things up we were admonished not to equate the largely peaceful “anti racist protest” with a tiny violent fringe but one or two possible Nazi salutes on Saturday and suddenly everyone involved is a far right extremist.

    Tsk tsk this won’t end well for the media that’s for sure.

• Excellent article. Coming at the unfolding events from a slightly different angle, but very good as always, is Brendan O’Neill’s piece on it today: https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/06/10/this-has-become-a-neo-maoist-war-on-the-past/

• 2 of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is Conquest and Black Lives Matter fit the role oh so perfectly

• Good article.
  As an ageing white male I’m getting fed up with being accused of things of which I am innocent, like racism (and then being told that if I fail to acknowledge my guilt I am even guiltier because I am in denial).
  Having young hotheads accuse me of ‘male privilege’ or ‘white privilege’ makes me bristle. It provokes the very ‘fuck-you’ feelings that these people say they are opposing. In other words, it creates the problem for which they claim to be the solution.
  I’m also fed up with seeing police officers run away from mobs of protesters; and seeing police officers stand aside as mobs demolish statues, deface public monuments, or (as in earlier Extinction Rebellion demos) take over bridges across the Thames, or dig up university lawns. I resent the fact that there appears to be one law for them and another for me.
  It distresses me to see police officers get down on one knee when commanded to do so by a mob. It reminds me of the shame of the England football team giving the Nazi salute in Berlin in the 1930s, and it makes me realise that our police are no longer neutral enforcers of the law, but have taken sides.
  I am sickened by what’s happening to this country.

• All lives matter. True racism barely exists in the UK today, integrate, abide by the law, be kind, that’s all that is required for total acceptance and equality. Stop making this about race, it causes hate.

• Racism hardly exists in the UK today. Stop making this about race it causes division and hate. This is political and needs to stop.

• This rioting, protesting and looting began because George Floyd, an American criminal who was fleeing arrest, was detained by the police, who should not have used such extreme force causing him to die. He was not an innocent man,

  However, I remember the horrific case of Drummer Lee Rigby a young man walking on the street in broad daylight. He was hacked to death by a black savage wielding a machete. Why was there no mass protesting, riots or damage done after this ? Was it because he was a English white man perhaps? Maybe that makes it acceptable??

• I was genuinely sorry for George Floyd and his family, it was an unforgivable crime and I hope the Police men involved will face the full wait of the law.

  What we have seen though is this steam train at full speed of the left finding another issue, (after Brexit) to get their teeth into. We are fighting a worldwide pandemic with thousands of people dying and businesses and jobs disappearing (including mine) We are supposed to be staying close to home and doing our bit. Instead we see rioting, defacing of war memorials, statues toppled and Police officers injured. A terrible state of affairs. Great article though.

• Pretty dubious arguments to me from an author of dubious background. Social Democrat is hardy a defining term these days – Neo-Con seems a more likely placing.
  Churchill was indeed a racist – a fairly casual racist because of his breeding into a family of superior beings. His amazing lack of vision on India is usually the basis for such charges. But I find his advocacy, as Colonial Secretary, of controlling Iraqi tribesmen by bombing with mustard gas left over from WWI totally racist.

• Excellent article, Ben.

• Excellent article which should be circulated widely. The BLM con is very gradually getting unmasked but most MSM will usually be the last to admit their mistakes when an organisation shows itself to be harmful rather than benign. Intersectionality linking with groups like ANTIFA give BLM added muscle on the streets, but may be their undoing as this group’s tactics become more violent, destructive but also visible.
  Currently the Government is doing its best to ignore what’s happening but this will probably get harder to do as people’s patience wears thin and counter demonstrations become violent. Not an easy time ahead when we could all be concentrating on dealing with covid19 and getting the country back to some sort of normality.

• In the atmosphere of this well put together piece of writing,,, I am venturing to put my thoughts to paper reluctantly as I am genuinely scared that anything I say will be put down as racist for not agreeing and support the BLM ,,, the fact of coarse is that I do support black lives matter ,,, all lives matter . let’s start at the beginning with facts ,, everyone wants to live in the western countries because viewed from the moon that would appear to be where the best living standards are , the system with all its faults was put down initially by the indigenous people who lived on these countries at the time of the industrial revolution and has been been developed further by the further generations,, communities from other countries have come to these western countries from their countries quite rightly to achieve a better life for them and their families and they have every right too ,,
  These people are no better or worse than the original indigenous people who were originally here ,,
  The colour of there skin really has no bearing on where they eventually find their position in these countries,,, black people have proved that they are more than capable of rising to the top an anything they choose to do ,, the ones who are achieving in 99%of situations come from well balanced homes ,, Similarly just like successful white peoples,
  The key too better living standards for blacks and whites is a stable family home with a strong emphasis on education education education!!
  Knocking down statues will not sort the problems for black kids ,,
  My black lady friend said to me that “ the problem lies with the black fathers who leave there wives early into their marriages deserting the family and leaving the children and wives in pain ,, these children unfortunately grow up with no moral male compass in the house ,,, have a low self asteem,,, drop out early from school and then struggle to get good jobs ,,, my friend said untill this cycle is broken nothing will change sadly. Please don’t call me a racist ,,, because I am not ,,

• I am a new member of the SDP. I joined because of what BLM is doing. By chance a day later I read this brave article. I am filled with joy that the SDP are articulating what is so wrong with B:M.
  The centre view has been completely blind sided by this left wing counter attack. The woke brigade lost the EU referendum and then their messiah lost two elections. I thought the argument was done. On the contrary, they have regrouped and our weak cultural elite are dropping like flies in the face of BLM.
  The Labour 2019 manifesto promised to create a committee to review British history and atone for any wrongdoing to any country or people in the world. They are now implementing this across all Labour councils. I am a mixed race British man who loves what this country stands for and am proud of its history which I very much feel is my history. I am gravely concerned for what the coming months bring given the pace of this.

• Thank you thank you thank you. My thoughts & fears exactly, but more clearly expressed than I have been capable of. Again, thank you.

  • Great comment Marcus. I keep getting closer and closer to joining the SDP. Think I might have to do it.

  • Thanks for your interesting reply to a very insightful article. I feel there is something intrinsically counter-productive about BLM. I’m talking specifically about the organisation, not the concept of black lives mattering. I do indeed, think black lives matter. I’ve been sometimes quite vocal about this. In my mid 20s, I’d sometimes ‘correct’ people if they said something I felt they shouldn’t but this, of course, never yielded anything. People have egos and don’t like to be told they’re saying or thinking the wrong thing. BLM is doing what I used to do but on a massive scale. I now think that identity politics is horribly divisive and that this could completely backfire. BLM might stir up a lot of (sadly) dormant racist sentiment – which is not right – but it will. I’ve lived all over the country and racism is unfortunately alive and well. I wish that wasn’t the case. BLM could create a toxic situation where the far-right rise or even, far-right parties are voted in. The joke of these ‘woke’ tea companies posting support for BLM on social media is lost on most people. Has anyone read how many tea companies treat their Indian workers on tea plantations? I have white friends who are on FB, posting videos sympathetic to rioters burning down businesses in America. Some of which, have been black owned.

• An excellent article. BLM has nothing to do with the UK; it is a very undesirable import. It is also a heaven-sent opportunity for revenge by the Left, who are still smarting over having lost the argument over Brexit; lost the referendum; lost the election; and (in many respects) lost the plot. They are milking it for all that they are worth: posturing, screaming, virtue-signalling and ranting. The media love it and are giving them air-time; careerist senior police officers are caving in. Slavery still exists in the modern world, but you will not hear a word about that, as most of the slave owners are Muslim and it is dangerous to criticise Muslims. Christians are being persecuted and slaughtered in a range of countries, including Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq…. in fact, Christianity is the most-persecuted faith in the world. Not a peep out of the UK human rights industry, the media or – disgracefully – any politicians. And how far back exactly does the process of ‘reparation’ end? The Normans committed atrocities when they conquered England. So did the Romans. Should we now be engaging with France and Italy about these? The process could be endless.

• Makes complete sense to me. I saw an a trailer for the Discovery channel last night which displayed the words Black lives matter. This organisation accused us whites of racism but they are the racists

  • The police top brass aren’t caving.

    Everything they do from Pride March to diversity quotas to arresting people for Tweets to recording “non crime hate incidents”, all are part of the same ultra progressive, social justice cloth BLM are cut from. Indeed police top brass like Cressida Dick, tend to have been diversity hires or chosen for their commitment to progressive values, rather than their extensive experience on the beat.

    BLM and the modern British police force share a sort of social and political kinship. This is why so much of the establishment supports BLM unconditionally. Of course the MET don’t want to abolish capitalism, and… themselves, but they do see racism everywhere and routing it out is their fervent calling.

    I was challenged by someone yesterday to name a British establishment that wasn’t progressive.

    I couldn’t.

    Even the police and church are deeply progressive.

    So in a funny was BLM aren’t the revolution storming the barricades.

    They are the progressive revolutionary guard trying to protect the revolution from a counter revolution in the form of Brexit and the desire of many to reverse the liberal revolution Blair ushered in.

    It’s Blair’s revolution which gave us an incredibly progressive police force…cough…service, & a progressive clergy.

    So I think of the BLM thugs who attacked police and defaced Churchill as more like the immune system of a successful revolution which is losing it’s grip via the ballot box.

    When you have a successful, bloodless revolution in a democracy, there’s no guarantees the electorate won’t vote to reverse it and when they do, violent, radical responses will naturally manifest in the parts of society which benefited most from the revolution, and fear a counter revolution most.

    No conspiracy needed.

    Many minorities saw Brexit and Boris as the progress they made being reversed, ditto for the left. If it hadn’t been BLM flipping on the back of George Floyd’s tragic death, it would’ve been something else.

    I kind of see the mobbing of Cummings as a precursor to this. It had a touch of the Medieval mob about it, and, hey presto, a few weeks later there are scenes in Bristol reminiscent of Baghdad!

    The minority and left coalition are the beneficiaries of the revolution and the revolutionary guard, backed up by an establishment which bares no resemblance to the traditional British establishment. The idea that the British establishment is some fuddy duddy, conservative bastion hasn’t been true for decades.

    This establishment is the baby of the Cool Britannia revolution.

    The Archbishop and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner would be more at home at Glastonbury grooving to some African tunes and wearing a rainbow for Pride, than teaching about traditional, conservative Christianity or getting tough on gang culture in the inner cities.

    This establishment fears more than anything, an electorate that actually wouldn’t mind a bit of good old traditional religion and tough law and order.

    That goes against everything this Blairite revolutionary establishment stands for.

    Therefore, BLM are like knights in shining armour, coming over the horizon to beat back the hordes of backwards, racist gammon/orks at Helms Deep. The establishment see allies, in BLM. Taking the knee and policing softly isn’t them caving, it’s them greeting liberators with flowers.

• Brilliant and true, well done Ben.

• The problem with this article is the title – particularly the word “respond” – which instanty sets up conflict and panders to right wing beliefs. If instead the title (and emphasis of the piece) had been “Black Lives Matter – How Can We Help?”, then the opportunity might have been there to show that “all lives matter” in a way that would be healing. This article is devisive, and, worse than that, seems knowingly to wish to stir up bad feeling while appearing to be innocent..

  • “respond” is completely neutral and free of any preconception or value judgement – it’s just like asking how we should respond to any kind of protest movement. If the headline had used the verb “combat” your argument would stand. “how do we combat” and “how do we help” are both ideological starting points (one negative, one positive), so “respond” is the best choice as it’s completely open. It’s like you think the only option is to agree with the movement. There are tons and tons of people of all ethnicities (including lots of black people) who absolutely think black lives matter (of course they do!) and who are committed to combating discrimination wherever they encounter it, but who disagree with the goals and methods of Black Lives Matter the political campaigning organization.

• Great analysis of a complex situation – how do I join the SDP – sounds like your policies may actually represent the real feelings and views of the “ silent majority “

  • https://membermojo.co.uk/sdp

• A well needed dose of sanity during insane times.

  Blackmail politics indeed. They keep using terms like ‘whataboutism’ and the such in an attempt to completely undermine a relevant response to some of this nonsense.

  Calling people ‘racist’ or ‘fascist’ seems to be the favourite choice.

  Let’s not be cowards in the face of this..

• Very interesting and soundly reasoned.

• I am in my 60’s …have worked hard all my life, pay my taxes, abide by the law, treat everyone regardless of race, colour or religion with respect. I have never before witnessed so much hostility in this Country ! A guy was murdered in USA by a cop ! all of sudden the world goes out of control whilst going through Pandemic ! The press seem intent on destroying the Ruling Party and undermining the science … what can some one like myself do ? I feel like a lone impotent voice. My friends, colleagues and family feel as I do, but how do we have our say ? I have written and emailed the Government and scientists with support. I have emailed the relevant news agency with my concerns regarding the negative demoralising impact of the journalists …..what else can some one like myself do ? I am to old to go protesting against the protesters, I am not fit enough to protect my history and heritage physically ….HELP! Point me in the direction of freedom and liberty , that’s what I thought I was doing every time I hit the voting booth .

• What a load of privileged bullshit this article is. Absolutely fucking biased.

  • What’s your argument?

    • I find this BLM movement extremely worrying, the way that they have been behaving, and the way the establishment seem powerless or even reluctant to take action and enforce the rule of law, brings to mind the way that the Brown Shirts behaved in the 1930’s bringing Hitler to power and the silence of the majority of the German people when atrocities were then perpetrated in their name.

  • I understand your frustration Jan. I’m a relatively young and fit man but I have been forced to keep silent and know if I were in the UK and were to do anything to protect our history and heritage from this lunacy, I would just be dismissed as far right by the journalists.

    Unfortunately, the progressive capture of all our institutions kind of has us all in checkmate.

    If you say anything, you’re a racist, if you do anything you’re a far right thug.

    They can get us fired, smear us, silence us and beat us and there’s nothing we can do because the whole machine and the moral judgment of the chattering classes will squash us if we try.

    The only thing to do is actually allow BLM to push it as far as they possibly can.

    Pull down as many statues as they want, until even the progressive media has to say ENOUGH and the police can no longer go softly on one side and hard on the other.

    Once the media does that, and the police cease to be supine for BLM, then the danger of losing everything for dissenting will disappear and the silent majority will be able to speak again.

    But unfortunately, until then we must take the Gandhi approach and be totally passive. We’ve seen what confronting them looks like and it looks like a bunch of drunk football hooligans fighting minorities, with violence all round.

    NO.

    The only answer to BLM is to silently wait. Let them push it so far that even the establishment cannot continue to support them. Then and only then can we rid ourselves of this extremist group and start putting back together what they pull down.

    And boy oh boy will the establishment have lost a lot of it’s credibility. I think, if we can avoid conflict with BLM and let them push it to the limit, it really could be the end of the progressive status quo in the political and media class.

    For now, we’re all in political, social, moral and physical checkmate and must be passive. BLM have the talking stick and will do for a while yet.

    Keep strong and vote SDP in defiance. Let’s get change like that.

• Well written article and certainly brings clarity to the recent tensions we are seeing unfold. Can the activists working to agitate racial tensions not be brought to justice for inciting racism?

• BLM is an intolerant illiberal politicised movement that has reduced an incredibly complex argument to populist sound bites. They are patronising and, dare I say it, racist in their belief that all black people agree with their narrative and indeed want them to speak on their behalf.
  All lives matter and basic human rights should be for all.
  Mainstream media is running scared of rigorous thoughtful debate just as they did on extreme Islam.

• Whoa! I didn’t even know the SDP was still around, much less that its members, or one of them, was so sensible.

• Coming hard on the heels of the BLM demos is now the craziness of destroying all statues that they find repugnant. This is yet again an attack not only on cultural identity but also an erosion of freedom of expression. Why should these non accountable individuals be allowed to get away with cultural vandalism?

• Good read.
  There is a lack of moral courage, that’s for sure. I’m pretty sure I’d be sacked in an instant for my beliefs, which are ultimately driven by a fear that BLM harm black people, as well as communities.

  We all know the crime stats – 90% of black murder victims are from black offenders and black people murder at 6 times the rate of white people etc. So, it simply seems at the outset that BLM is more about attacking white people that protecting black lives, as evidently focusses the attention on white people and police, rather than the causes of the great majority of black murder victims.

  But also, telling black people that those problem is in the hearts of all the white people around them can’t do much but fuel both anger and an abdication of responsibility. To commit any crime, if you are not a psychopath, requires some degree of self-justification. So, I can’t help but feel that the US rioting occurred when black people, in the main, no longer felt any responsibility to have empathy. which was the point that that they believed no morality had been shown towards them. The fact that Asians top the US earning rate, not whites, and there are rafts of genuine dedicated pathways for black youngsters to progress, suggests the US is not an intrinsically racist nation in the regard it holds back non-white people. So, the BLM’s narrative is divisive, false and inciteful.

  All this becomes part of fuelling a cycle, I feel: suspicion, resentment, hopelessness, poorer life outcomes, anger, violence, the poorer opinions of others, and the accusations others have racist beliefs: which helps the cycle to start over. On top of this, it clashes with the cycle of other poorer groups – take white nationalists for instance – and leads to a dynamic we now know as competitive victimhood. The two or more cycles feed from each other then.

  In the UK, the dynamic is a little different as the black outcomes are not so stark, but we do now have white boys at the bottom of the educational attainment class. Again, it hardly speaks of a racist nation that holds back non whites as Asians and Chinese top the entrance rates for university.

  Im not sure how you quantify “privilege”, other than to note people are born into situations where they inherit greater or lesser opportunity, given family structure and wealth. I’m not sure where being black comes into it thereafter as meriting further disadvantage, particularly given that there is then 18 years of free education to level the playing field. In the UK, 1 in 4 suffer poor mental health each year. Meanwhile, at some point in life, we will suffer disease and lose loved ones. We will be the victims of crime et al – and generally suffer forms of trauma that might render us incapacitated for a time. The idea that reparation be given because 300-400 years ago, people with your skin colour, that you never knew or met, had desperately bad lives at the hands of a handful of noblemen with white skins, represent a particular form of disadvantage over those very other very tangible and traumatic issues people face in life is an argument i’ve never seen. However, very rightly, that’s the one that Labour and BLM et al are inherently making and it going unquestioned.

  Ultimately, though, i do fear that poor black children will suffer the most from BLM, as the BLM’s message to them is – at its core – one that they are held back intentionally by those around them because of their skin colour and that are pre-determined to fail without special assistance not present in the world today: that is surely a terrible mindset to give a child, or indeed anyone, particularly when its not true.

• Can we not pass a law (quickly) to invalidate and disempower the racism card. So that any british person, regardless of colour cannot claim racism as white british already cant. Can we also gag newspapers on tbe reporting of anything to do with racism/protests and not give them the platform they require. Are we SO WEAK, that government cant do anything that tbe public pay them for..it is OUR money, afterall and we demand a government with backbone.Dont matter what the rest of the world thinks. We demand action. And NOW!!

  • Debra,
    You are right to suggest that a lot of newspaper reporting does nothing to help the current situation, often making it worse. Resorting to censorship however is not to way to win.

    Rather, the counter-argument needs to be given a strong a strong voice. We need politicians who are unafraid to speak truth, to challenge the current orthodoxy.

  • Amazing comment

    • Not censorship but prosecution under race relations law. If Nick Griffin can be prosecuted for talking about grooming gangs recklessly, then the media organisations and activist journalists can and should be prosecuted for recklessly implying white racism is an omnipresent deadly force. right here, right now, and BAME violence and racism a non-issue.

      It’s a sophisticated form of Radio Rwanda, in Britain 2020. It’s leading to racial Balkanisation and MUST stop before the wheels come off.

      My dad (a life long moderate centrist), is convinced black people are being oppressed RIGHT NOW and we really must allow BLM the space to force change and tear down statues if needs be.

      Because he believes this, he also believes dissent is akin to being a dissenter during the civil rights movement in the 60s. Not that it should be banned but that it’s clearly immoral and on the wrong side of history and invites negative consequences. He’s not saying to me he believes my dissent should be punished, just that it will be as the arc of justice progresses.

      Therefore, for those of us who disagree, it’s up to us to stop listening to dangerous, unreliable or biased right wing sources, look at what the trusted sources say and adjust our position to what is clearly the correct position.

      I tried to show him articles and podcasts involving liberals, black liberals and academics from across the political spectrum, using data to show the racism panic is exactly that, a moral panic. At best something we should be circumspect about and at worst a total myth.

      Yet he doesn’t accept a youtube link, a conservative outlet, podcasts and voices not recognised in establishment circles.

      He is of a vintage that trusts the BBC implicitly and he personally considers the Economist the benchmark of balanced written journalism. If the BBC and the Economist shun opposing views or argue against them, then no amount of data will penetrate. It has to come from a “trusted” source.

      So if not legal sanctions against mainstream media, how do we get them to stop being biased activists?

      It’s deadly.

• A large amount of the BLM people are Marxists which in itself demonstrates they don’t read Marx. He was a terrible person he hates Jews and blacks (called them n——), to demonstrate here is a quote;

  “Without slavery, North America, the most progressive nation, would he transformed into a patriarchal country. Only wipe North America off the map and you will get anarchy, the complete decay of trade and modern civilisation. But to do away with slavery would be to wipe America off the map.”
  Karl Marx

  We DO NOT want Marxism operating in the UK power structure Karl Marx was as bad as Hitler and communism is WORSE than the Nazis.

  People protesting is fine, let them, if anyone is caught vandalising, burning or fighting then they need to be arrested and held to justice (real justice not any of that ‘social justice’ nonsense.

• Brilliant article.

• Very well written Sir.

  I’m a Conservative Party member and will be displaying this article if that’s ok?

  I am most certainly not a racist but feel there’s a wedge being forced between us which will not make matters better.

  What are we really supposed to do to heal this?

  Regards

• Very well written Sir,

  I am a Conservative Party member and, with your permission, like to copy this article.

  I am most definitely not a racist and feel this is driving a wedge between us and is only going to make matters worse.

  What can we do to prevent this happening?

  Regards

• Perfect summation

• What a refreshing article. Thank you for being brave enough to write it in these hysterical times

• No-one in their right minds could disagree with any of what you say.
  It would seem that making amends will take many years of getting the facts through to the up and coming generations.
  But it’s clear that many teachers today do not support good sense: nor do they wish to persevere and put in double the energy and will power to make the difference.
  So where do we go from here?
  SCO

• I find this BLM movement extremely frightening, this reminds me very much of how the Brown Shirts behaved in Germany in the 1930’s and brought Hitler to power and all of the atrocities that followed thereafter.

• Thankyou for your excellent article, it fills out some of the gaps in my knowledge and reafirms my suspicions about BLM..I believe in freedom and democracy BLM is neither.

• Excellent article thankyou,reafirms my suspicions and gives me more knowledge..education is the key.

• Brilliantly written piece which gets to the crux of the matter. Sadly the main stream media will not touch this very balanced view.

• Who do we vote next election?

• Who do we vote next election? Iv no faith in boris anymore he’s allowing this to happen

• An excellent article, alas not one the BBC will air.
  Now Premiership Football has swallowed the whole nonsense and will be virtue signalling with gusto – we were making progress with diversity but now this insistence that white British history must be erased will lead to trouble. These naive young people don’t seem to realise that they are very much a minority in this country. I hope the Gov has more grit than the kneeling Labour politicians.

  BLM says nothing about black on black homicide (7000 per year in the USA) but seizes opportunistically on one minor black ex criminal killed by a white cop (9 unarmed black men killed by cops last year in USA). They wish to defund the police, which will expose black neighbourhoods to even more violence. They are left wing anarchists.

• I am in total agreement with this statement.
  Particularly sad that if you question any of the BLM activities you are immediately branded a racist.
  All very frustrating and unsettling.
  I’m very concerned about where all this is heading and the future of our country

• This article needs to go mainstream. The ordinary people and the big corporations who are blindly contributing and bowing to this movement should stop, take a breath and actually bother to research what the intentions of this group are. it’s an extremely dangerous ideology and we are seeing in the US, these lawless “free zones” and the defunding of police. The British press are hardly talking about it. The trend of the statue pulling started in Bristol and followed to the US and elsewhere. The “autonomous zones” have started in the US and that trend is likely to follow in other countries too.

• Defund the BBC

• As I just said to Ben on Twitter. I’ve never had death threats before or been ostracised by family or friends, despite having some pretty robust and contrarian online debates. I’ve been a proudly opinionated outspoken person online since before 2005.

  I’ve expressed controversial opinions about everything from Islam and mass immigration to, Brexit and my dislike of Labour. Despite coming from London and almost everyone I know being an insufferable Labour stalwart, I’ve never had a problem beyond a robust discussion or perhaps a few barbs.

  A few years ago I even had a long thread on Facebook discussing the truth about crime statistics and race and how they clearly showed, black people weren’t being shot because they were black and they most certainly, were not being hunted.

  Even that passed by without a hitch.

  I was still able to meet and drink with black friends and navigate the social world without rancour. I had absolutely zero fear that I might find myself ostracised or someone might physically attack me for my views.

  But since I started posting about my opposition to BLM’s anti capitalism, quite frankly racist views, shoddy evidence, violent, totalitarian tendencies, and opposing the vandalism of statues, there has been a mob like reaction.

  Sure my comments were contrarian but clearly not racist or hateful and I took pains to say George Floyd was clearly murdered and the police involved should face the music.

  Nevertheless I have been incredibly uneasy since.

  I have been bombarded by black friends writing litanies of the racism they’ve experienced demanding I apologise. Almost demanding I show guilt and contrition as if I had been the racist! They were using their anecdotes as a way to shame and guilt me into not only agreeing with them, but surrendering.

  I’ve had Indian friends saying Britain is one of the most vile countries ever and I should be ashamed to oppose the vandalism of the statues. I’ve had old old school friends call me a Tommy Robinson bile spewing right winger and others tell me I’m a disgrace to my family.

  I’m pretty sure I have lost five friends I’ve known since school and five extended family members. The kind of situation where I will never see those friends ever ever again and the extended family would probably refuse to be in the same room with me.

  I live in Thailand and my dad is nursing my step mum who is dying of cancer, yet he took the time to make a worried phone call to me out here in Thailand, to beg me not to say more as he fears people may try to find me & get me fired or worse.

  I’m quite frankly shell shocked. After all these years robustly debating ideas and breaking taboos, I make a couple of carefully, considered, backed up critiques of BLM and suddenly I’m in Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. They’ve all become a hardliner BLM hive mind and I’m a contagion which must be neutralized without prejudice!

  It’s like overnight the entirety of Britain became a one party state and I had said unforgivable counter revolutionary things.

  Are we not seeing the rise of a totalitarian movement akin to The Cultural Revolution?

  • It’s a mass psychological phenomenon. It has a lot to do with class, a kind of conspicuous do-gooding – being seen to care as a form of currency. I’m more optimistic than Ben because I think the more it goes mainstream and is exposed to broad daylight, the more it will burn out. These things hijack people’s desire to be Good People, but go down any suburban street in middle England outside the M25 and most people don’t care. It will actually push mainstream politics further right at the ballot box.

• I think I have just found what I was looking for. Excellent and brave article and thanks to google brought my attention back to the SDP. Black lives do matter and you may have just won my vote.

  • Thank you for replying. Yes it’s certainly a kind of mass psychosis. Many of the people who have told me not to say what I’m saying, (including my dad) are the most moderate, liberal people I know, yet they don’t seem to be too perturbed by the idea that disagreement is verboten.

    Not racism, hatred or incitement to violence, but a decent and fair political challenge.

    Banned!

    Punishable by social, financial and perhaps even physical consequences.

    This hasn’t phased the kind of soft woolly, Archers listening middle class moderates in the slightest. The disagreement with BLM perturbs them more than the demand with menaces to shut up.

    For the softest most liberal part of society to so blithely acquiesce to such an extreme position. The position of political absolutism backed by force; and not just to acquiesce but to even contribute to it! Astonishing.

    It will be something written about and thought about for decades to come.

    I think the reason why the most woolly and moderate people in our society seem to have become willing to reinforce totalitarian demands, is because of what you mention. Class but I might add religion or lack thereof.

    The class you speak of. The woolly middle classes, mostly lost their religion but replaced it of the religion of “decency”. Decency above all else is the religion of the woolly middle classes.

    Both my parents are of that class and raised me ALWAYS to think of other people’s feelings. Don’t be offensive, be decent.

    Being a racist in modern Britain is probably the worst, most indecent thing you could be and as Ben point’s out, the genius of the phrase “Black Lives Matter”, is to put you in the impossible situation where to disagree immediately makes one seem racist.

    “So you don’t think black lives matter?”

    So BLM is kind of parasitic on the woolly middle class religion of decency.

    If decency is the highest good, racism the most indecent thing in the world and disagreeing with BLM racist by default?

    It goes without saying, those who value kindness, decency and caring about “the other” the most, would find themselves unwittingly becoming extremely intolerant and authoritarian.

    BLM has managed to hijack millions of harmless middle class men and women who would usually never dream of getting behind a movement which threatens those who dissent, let alone join that movement in demanding people stop dissenting themselves.

    Do-gooders who never hurt a fly, hold every single liberal value under the sun and make homemade marmalade whilst listening to Radio 4, are now blithely endorsing the menacing totalitarian ultimatum of…

    YOU CAN’T SAY THAT AND IF YOU DO, YOU’LL BE SORRY

    When if such an ultimatum were to come from anyone to the right of Amber Rudd, they would be thinking about the rise of fascism and ringing the alarm rather than nodding in agreement.

    BLM hijacks liberalism and decency and turns even woolly people into their foot soldiers.

    Interesting but worrying times.

• Spot on! Yes, society would be a better place if it were devoid of overt or subtle racism, but this action will only inflame division. I wouldn’t ‘take the knee’ for many reasons: the first, as you say, is that it’s blackmail; the second, that the black and brown people I know well are accomplished and successful and I suspect they would consider it patronising; the third, that I’m just fed up with being blamed for everything. I’m a white, grey-haired male pensioner so I must be a racist, misogynist, homophobic git robbing the younger generation, right? No. I have treated people with generosity, respect and courtesy my whole life and I don’t deserve this stereotyping.

• Full disclosure, I was sent here via a comment on a BLM post.

  I read the article with interest – good to break out of echo chambers – but struggled to find much that was persuasive.

  The claims of favouritism in immediate media representation seems to skip over the more important question of whether structural racism is an issue that merits attention. It is not new that people saying things worthy of attention get airtime, so without this consideration it’s just conjecture whether these interviews are “favouritism”, or simply news.

  And by focusing on the very small number of activists you claim are disproportionately gaining organisational dominance (with no sources), you ignore the much larger question of what is happening to everyone else. I don’t know if this is tactics or ignorance, but if you look at stats on things like employment outcomes and deaths in police custody I can see why you might not make that the focus, or offer any sources with such data, given the rest of the article.

  Finally – cultural, voluntary “totalitarianism” is not totalitarianism, it’s just successful political messaging. The kind you are advocating for SDP doing more of. Except BLM’s is working.

• Start shouting from the rooftops
  ‼️ LIVES MATTER ‼️
  WHO COULD PROTEST AGAINST THAT ⁉️
  we are all on this world together.. If we work together we will survive and if we don’t its just a matter of time before we ALL perish.
  Fingers crossed for our future ? ?❤️

  • Noel, that’s the thing, the media is clearly biased and criminally so.

    There are very strong data driven arguments against concepts such as structural racism, that our terrestrial media just ignores. You have to go to podcasts like Glenn Loury’s or Sam Harris’s to find out the mountain of evidence that exists to the contrary, and most people don’t have time for a 2 hour podcast or are of a vintage where the idea of consuming your media through the computer, rather than goggle box just isn’t going to catch on. So for a great many people, the facts, or at least many facts, are just unknown.

    For instance, Harvard economist Dr Roland Fryer (a black academic) surveyed an entire state police force expecting to find white cops were more likely to shoot black men, but found the opposite. Black and Latino officers were far more likely to do so than their white counterparts, who were quite rationally afraid to be that next viral video of the racist cop. A situation which would ruin their life, so most white officers are actually quite keen to avoid shooting black men.

    There were 7,407 black homicide victims in the US in 2018, assuming a comparable number in 2019, the nine unarmed men killed by police would represent just 0.1 percent of black homicides and many, if not most were justified shootings. Hardly an epidemic of racist killer cops worthy of a worldwide revolution in the name of BLM.

    By contrast cops are 18% more likely to die at the hands of a black man than visa versa.

    While black Americans are involved in two times more police shootings than their percentage of the population, they commit 53 percent of murders and 60 percent of robberies well over four times their percentage of the population, which is 13%

    As for non cop related, straight up racist attacks. Perhaps that’s where the rump of white racism is?

    In fact whites are the overwhelming victims of interracial violence.

    Between 2012 and 2015, blacks committed 85.5 percent of all black-white interracial violent interactions. That works out to 540,360 assaults on whites. Whites committed 14.4 percent of all interracial violent victimization, or 91,470 assaults on blacks. Blacks are 13 percent of the national population…

    Now this is not to say, there’s no problem at all. The sheer amount of crime in black areas is bound to effect the perception of black people in the eyes of certain hardened cops. Roland Fryer’s research found that young black men were far more likely to be handled roughly by cops. Less likely to be shot but more likely to be disrespected, pushed, shoved and manhandled, so there’s certainly a conversation to be had but it would involve ALL of that other contrary evidence I lay out above. Evidence that would most certainly invalidate racial uprisings from London to Los Angeles.

    The BBC and pretty much all other mainstream media outlets are completely uninterested in having that conversation. They want to stay on message.

    America is racist, black people are oppressed and black men are being hunted in the streets.

    This is bias.

    It’s a dereliction of duty, and as racial violence begins to spill out onto our streets, and I cannot criticise BLM smashing up London without death threats, I believe that bias displayed by organisations such as the BBC, is potentially criminal.

    We charged Nick Griffin for inciting racial violence for talking about Muslim grooming gangs in 2004. Yet in hindsight it turns out that he was correct but he was charged partly because he was reckless.

    The BBC’s bias in talking about the plight of black people in countries like America is reckless and it’s refusal to give equal airtime to contrary data, has almost certainly played a role in the racial unrest we are seeing on London’s streets now. They should be treated like Nick Griffin and hopefully they will learn that they MUST do their jobs properly.

    No more media bias. It is causing things to fall apart.

  • Consider Floyd’s victims. Please look at how all this looks from their space. Floyd has convictions from 2007.

    • They only cared about Floyd for a week,if that?
      This was all planned ages ago!

• Reading this article and comments section brings me some relief to know that I’m not barking mad for not falling in line and for being quite worried at where this level of desperate conformity will lead to. I have renewed my SDP membership; these articles and discussions are vital so thanks to everyone involved – keep it up and do your best not to fear the ‘far right’ umbrella smear label.

  • Few of the commenters here understand what’s going on. The crowds of mostly young and mostly white people are not supporters of BLM as such. The slogan has been adopted because it carries a message. And you all need to think hard about why these folks are out there marching. They are marching because they instinctively sense that there are things that society needs to fix, has needed to fix for a long time, and the Floyd murder was the spark that finally set off the mass protests. Making this all about the BLM movement is simply a convenient excuse to push back.

• Much informed talk in the US on what this is all about. I’d suggest George Webb (YT), but many others who have dug deep into the funding sources and deeper alliances. The UK is really just riding on the coat-tails of the US here.
  One doc which has been referred to over there is their own armed force’s pocket book on irregular warfare, insurgency and counter-insurgency. It’s publicly available at:
  https://www.soc.mil/ARIS/books/pdf/Unconventional%20Warfare%20Pocket%20Guide_v1%200_Final_6%20April%202016.pdf
  although you may find things like ‘server unavailable’ unless you use a VPN to access via a US IP address..

• Well from my observation they are saying black lives matter, but then went out in their thousands to infect each other knowing the deadly coronavirus discriminates and attacks BAME groups more so than others. Then they went home to their families to infected them.. errrr kind of baffled in their plight and logic that black lives matter. Obviously not by their selfish, uneducated stupidity as they have probably infected themselves, the others around them and their families, some of which may even die.
  The correct definition of racism is to believe one’s race is superior to ALL others; in current society the term has been hijacked to use as a weapon against anyone who doesn’t allow someone to do whatever they want, whenever they want and used as a get out of jail card free whenever needed.
  I have news for you all, doesn’t matter what colour you identify as, in the 21st century a nasty nob head is a nasty nob head full stop, and you will be treated as such. Get over yourself and look at the bigger picture of suffering going on with children, disabled, vulnerable, elderly etc etc etc.
  And lastly something for everyone to look up is that BLM happily self-identifies as a neo-Marxist movement with various far left objectives.

• I’m here on this website as I’m desperately trying to find an opposition to BLM; to find others who see them for what they are; Marxist terrorists intent on destroying our shared values And way of life.

  In all of my life, I have never seen such support or polarisation for an organisation which is blatantly racist.

  Thank you for publishing this article. I can only hope that all other mainstream political parties also join this sentiment before it is too late.

• Yes, I agree. I am an Asian who have worked in predominantly black people environment in U K. Let me tell tell you honestly, that I have experienced lot of prejudice and discrimination working with mainly black African people in England. They get together and speak in their language in work environment and all were very hostile to mainly Asian people. They hate Asian people and make nasty comments. Who said black people are NOT racist, they are and I can give many examples. I have worked with them now for 15 years and know them very well. Black African people have money, they are not poor and discriminated as the media makes out, certainly not in UK, many own more than few houses and know how to obtain council houses etc.
  I fear that if BLM takes hold in U K, it will be very bad for the country, British people are generally very tolerant.What has happened to British Media? What has happened to British Police?
  Something does not feel right, when people are being sacked for Speaking truth. Nigel Farage was sacked from LBC radio for being honest and speaking the truth.
  Please explain what is happening.

• Race is a construct. In reality, all human beings are much the same, and therefore it is daft to treat people differently on the basis of which “race” they can be attached to. However, we do have to recognise that some people do, and have throughout history. We do have serious issues here when it comes to understanding our history.

  For example, I learnt about the Slave Trade at school, under the impression it was the product of opportunistic sea captains looking for a return cargo. The reality is it was little less than Government policy at the time, conducted by the Royal African Company (the clue is in the name) under a Royal Charter granting a monopoly to that company. Prince James, Duke of York and later James II, was one of the main investors. What could appear more respectable to society at the time than a company of such standing? Edward Colston was not some dodgy dealer, but a man participating in a national endeavour authorised at the highest level. In today’s terms, he’d be a senior executive in a private company servicing a government franchise.

  That doesn’t diminish the terrible things his company did, but it does show the guilt was not his alone but the nation’s as a whole, and I think it is time we understood that. It illustrates how history is not a story of heroes and villains, but of real people living through times of conflict and sometimes doing terrible things. There are few if any great British leaders who have not made questionable decisions or participated in dodgy national projects, but that is likely to be true of every other nation as well. Human beings have to live in the real world. Politics is the art of the possible.

  That’s not to say Identity Politics is not dangerous and destabilising – of course it is. Building a fairer society can’t be done by singling certain groups out for special treatment – only by promoting the ideal of fairness for all. The moment you identify a group as underdogs and give them privileges in an attempt to compensate them they cease to be the underdog and become privileged. The moment you discount members of a certain group as “privileged” they become a despised underdog no one listens to. Fairness has not been achieved. The injustice has just been reversed.

  Conflict does not build peace, and privilege does not build equality, however well meant. The only way forward is to concentrate on fairness or justice for all as the goal and produce policies to protect that.

  As for protecting people from aggressive persecution on the basis of some real or perceived identity, the way to do that is not to outlaw criticism or negative opinions, but to outlaw intimidation, bullying, slander and other negative tactics. Politicians will not do that, because that is precisely what they like to do themselves. Stirring up trouble and narrowing issues to knee-jerk responses is such an easy way to generate a loyal tribal following, and votes based on that are so much easier to obtain than ones based on sound reason about ideas.

• I think that Protester’s should have been told that any protests would be banned during the pandemic after all they were breaking the law and were supposed to be 2 metres apart and not spreading it and that anyone destroying property and buildings would feel the full force of the law and then give some stiff sentencing. It started in another Country – WE DID NOT choke George Floyd here and most decent human beings have understood their outrage. The War Veteran protecting our monuments and the Black Lady having a discussion did say that they would not sort things by violence and actually in some quarters it is doing more harm than good. There were lots of things in our History that were wrong like most other Countries but you cannot erase it only try and make things better and I believe that this Country has done quite a bit in that respect. Poor Boris I have to feel sorry for him what with Brexit, Pandemic, himself on death’s door and now this!

• This really articlulates many of the most important and concerning issue with this movement. Data and statistics frequently do not support claims they have made, or have been misconstrued in order for them to support the required narrative, however as the articles outline individuals, corporations, media and government are either unable or unwilling to challenge. The consequences of allowing this to go unchecked could be profoundly damaging to society.

  • If you would like to hear (or read) the facts and evidence: go to the Hoover institute and their interviews with Thomas Sowell – the black american economist – a wonderful, lucid and empirical economist.

    He refutes all the left-liberal nonsense and the damage that their programmes and the welfare state have done to the black (and other) communities in the US (and as set out by Theordore Dalymple in his book Life at the Bottom: the world view that makes the underclass).

    He looks at the facts going over the 20th century and highlights things like the changes and trends in family and community life, and economic progress up to the 1960s and the subsequent decades. The facts are the complete opposite of what people in general know/believe.

    He is now 90yrs old but if you listen to the interviews just two years ago he is sharp and clear as ever. The current state of affairs is not just a matter of saying the liberal-left are mistaken they are culpable as they have pursued five decades presiding over social degeneration/pathology caused or enabled by their programmes.

    His recent tweet 3 Jun 2020: ” Racism is not dead, it is on life support, kept alive mainly by people who use if for an excuse or to keep the minority communities fearful or resentful enough to turn out as a voting bloc on election day”.

    His books are many:-
    Intellectuals and Race
    Intellectuals and Society
    Wealth Poverty and Politics
    Discrimination and Disparities
    Economic Facts and Fallacies
    The Myths of Economic Inequality
    Basic Economics
    Basic Economics
    etc

    I checked out what the BLM organisation and the three founders stand for – see below. I think everyone should write to their MP and ask them if this is what they support.
    If they don’t formally disassociate themselves then they need to be called out.

    Based on research on the internet the following can be found either on BLM’s website or the background activities/statements/associations of the three founders and others.
    They all seem to be valid.
    BLM and associates:
    – want to ‘defund the police’
    – want to ‘dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work’
    – want to ‘disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” ‘
    – support revolutionary Marxist ideology. 
    – want to abolish capitalism
    – have supported and lauded the fugitive Assata Shakur*
    – support black queer and trans folks because they: “bear a unique burden in a hetero-patriarchal society that disposes of us like garbage and simultaneously fetishizes us and profits off of us”
    – have associations with the socialist and Marxist-Leninist group, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization
    – see Palestine as a victim and are against Israel whose detention of Palestinians is like the incarceration of blacks in the United States
    – appear to have had links with the US terrorist group, Weather Underground Organization, which bombed a building in Greenwich, NY, the U.S. Capitol building, The U.S. State Department building and the Pentagon during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
    – seek regime change and the end of the rule of law

    * Shakur is a Marxist revolutionary, a member of the Black Liberation Army, and a former Black Panther. In 1972, Shakur and an associate shot and killed a New Jersey State Trooper and injured another. In 1977, Shakur was convicted of seven felonies, including the murder of the State Trooper. In 1979, Shakur escaped prison and fled to Cuba in 1984, where she sought political asylum. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie called for her extradition earlier in 2016.

• Agree with your comments entirely but the media have fallen for mixing equality up with the aims of the BLM which if their manifesto is implemented It’ll not only take ones FREEDOM but destroy the essence of our way of life completely, it foul ,it’ll imprison individuals and one will become SERVANTS to the BNP hierarchy

  • i came on here as i wanted to see what other peoples views are as i am well aware that given my internet search history i will always get directed to sites supporting my political views. I am a black lives matter supporting left leaning liberal that you are all very opposed to. I expected to come on here and see a load of racist , uneducated red necks which is of course is reflecting a bias in me that is pretty shameful. What I have been surprised to see is that we all have the same fears and acknowledgments about the causes of some of the hideous things we are seeing in society today. I too hate the bbc and other media outlets who frame messages in certain ways and are generally biased towards the political ideology that represents their views. I too am concerned that we are no longer living in a trully democratic world given that there is so much scope for thr media to sway peoples voting behaviour and views. I too believe that there is a clear disparity in opportunities between the working class and ruling class right down to education, health, employment legal representation and that in order to get to the same level of these people you need to work three times as hard. I do believe that all lives matter and me saying black lives matter is not saying that i disagree with this line of thinking that all lives matter. I dont believe people saying all lives matter is racist I just believe that black lives matter too and this is often not the case. I fear that we are living in a divided society and people are becoming more extreme in their views and i worry that this could lead to more violence and targetting of particular groups of people. I also worry like yourselves that we will end up like nazi germany and no longer able to express our views without being shunned or worse killed. I believe in freedom of expression but I do not believe that we should allow for expressions that incite hatred and division and violence. I have come to the conclusion that although we share different political views we all have the same fears and desires and that desire is to live in a fair and equal society in which we feel safe. Too often the media will pit us against each other and demonise our political views which ultimately only serves the elites . You have been taught to think someone like myself is a tree hugging, guardian reading, smug self righteous moralistic do gooder. I have been taught to think you are all racist, ignorant uneducated bafoons who always vote against your own interests and follow the flock like sheep. This is all wrong, we need to all unite together and come up with a shared understanding of how to resolve these issues as while we spend our energy targetting each other the real criminals in all this are getting away with murder!

• Thanks so much for writing this great article. Like so many people here, I am heartened to know that I am not alone! I am mixed race (one parent white, one parent black), which has very little relevance as far as I’m concerned – we’re all the same. But I wanted to make sure it is known that not all “non white” people support BLM. It scares the living daylights out of me that these ideas are being pushed and promoted by everything mainstream here in the UK, and that no one seens to do due diligence and simply check out the “what we believe” section of the BLM website.

  I had qualms about the movement before I knew anything about its radical feminist and hard left ideology. All I knew is that the slogan made me feel uncomfortable.

  First of all, it made race and racial differences into something, when they are not. Second, black and mixed and other non white people do not need someone to tell them their lives matter. It is pushing a narrative of oppression and victim hood that surely can be no good for anyone. I for one will not bow down to it.

  Thanks for reading my comment and again, so heartened to hear that I’m not alone. It is not racist to resist this racist, divisive, and deceptive movement. Let’s just be the change we want to see by continuing to treat everyone with respect. And let’s not give up our freedom of speech on things that are so very important as this. Ideas matter and bad ones need to be challenged.

• I think the issue is much wider than just the politics of the UK or of this or that political opinions.

  It has been happening for decades in culture and academia, and now it is showing its true face – totalitarian dictatorship.

  Theories, that it all is based on, are racist and fascist.

  There should be an organized international opposition to this. Our society is very conformist, people are silent, but so much has been written about how conformism helped totalitarian regimes to be installed.

  • Thanks so much for this. I am white. Therefore, don’t have experience of being black or mixed race. But I have lived in some affluent AND very deprived areas of the UK. I think this has some relevance because I understand that discrimination can take other forms, i.e. class. Not just colour. So people from affluent areas stay clear of poor areas and so on. Because they perceive poor people as different to them. In my very humble opinion, from limited life experience, I think that racism is extinguished once everyone sees skin colour is as unimportant as eye colour. I would love to see some good come from the BLM movement. But all I see is that it is gonna divide us. It is reactionary and although largely peaceful, the violent aspects of it are completely counter-productive. I honestly think it’s net effect will be turning back the clock, even if many people who attend marches think they are doing good.

• I agree 100% – people I have talked with only correlate BLM to mean anti-racism. If you look at their US website it becomes evident that this it is not the case.

  In a US election year, the Democratic Party is using BLM to win the Black vote. Joe Biden said “If you don’t know who to vote for…then you ain’t black” trying to turn black voters into single-issue voters. #3 of BLM 2020 Campaign goals also targets the vote from Generation Z, which is 52% white, hence the #White Privilege and #Silence Is Violence. There were 235 black people shot by US police last year – why did BLM media not trend then? BLM last trended in the media in the year prior to the last US Presidential election and then has since declined. Is it coincidence that they are trending now? again, they had 235 opportunities last year. 15,500 homicides occurred in the US last year – what were the demographics of those? The US media is highly politically aligned eg major news networks: CNN to Democrats and FOX New Network to Republican – maybe that’s why they are trending now?

  In the UK they have protested but for what? Removal of statues? The EPL has put the name of a US Socialist organisation on their shirts (for free) and are kneeling to that organisation before both games so far. SKY is broadcasting pro-BLM ads. Where is the BLM UK website? Why do they not have one yet as they have been in the UK since 2016. Why are they not a registered charity in the UK?

  Why are they only targeting the US, UK and Canada as stated on their US website? Why not Nigeria where a 2017 article from StearsBusiness states that “the country’s five richest men – worth $29.9 billion – could lift 86 million Nigerians out of extreme poverty for one year”.

  This article in my opinion clearly states the reasons!!!! People need to to understand what they stand for and what their true motives are. Thank you for writing.

• I’m not a member of your political party and happened to stumble across this article on the internet but agree with all of the points that you make. Currently there seems to be a collective blindness to what this movement actually stands for – of course any right-minded person would agree with the 3 simple words that ‘black lives matter’ but that is a very long way from wanting to dismantle capitalism and white supremacy (whatever that is), defund the police and tear down any statues that this movement deem offensive.

  I think it is up to the majority of people in Britain to decide what side of the argument they stand on here – whether they generally support the values and culture upon which this country has been based for centuries or whether they really do agree with dismantling those structures, organisations and culture in an attempt to supposedly eradicate racism against black people.

  I hope they pick the right side and I hope, further, that they have the bravery to stand up and dissent in the face of this insidious, intimidating, intolerant movement.

• If my Football Club allow “BLM” to be printed on their shirts, and kneel before matches, then I will disown them forever. Keeping Politics out of sport is so important. Where will it all end?

• The whole message they portray is one of supremacy not equality. They are the mirror of that which they purport to despise. I’ve noticed that most blm gatherings seem to be overwhelmingly white younger people spouting slogans. If we analyse the situation, celebrities are carrying out some unbelievable virtue signalling, Lewis hamilton one of the best examples, spouting the mantra whilst sponsored by companies that used Jewish slave labour. Then there is the irony of taking a knee for George, really? A knee. Then the Cecil Rhodes statue, are they going to stop the Rhodes scholarship? It’s not as cut and dried as blm want us to believe and as for the media and the likes of saddiq Khan, it suddenly becomes the right wings fault regardless because he’s busy protecting his own interest. Most British people accept wrong doing in the past, but why should we respect one man’s cultural heritage as he demands we destroy our own? Also most British people are colour blind, they don’t see a person’s skin, they see a person.

• Ok i get the fact that youre political but gods above and below talk about not seeing the wood for the trees!
  Youre piece is full of resentment. Wah wah wah other people than us are doing sonething and its working and people like it! Wah wah wah why arent people listening to US.
  Youre entire piece sounds like a jealous rant because their political activists are better than yours.
  Not one word in your piece deals with the fact this is a reaction to event the entire world witnesses and was appalled by. That is what thousands marched about in America. What is worse you dont seem to deal with the fact that the polls show 84% of americans support the protests even with covid!
  In this country thousands black and white marched because of their experiences, their mates experiences and because they genuinely believe racism is wrong and there are both racists abd racism in this country.
  You are perfectly entitled to believe the opposite if you wish but both the stats and peoples experiences dont agree with you and whether you like it or not while you dont accept that how can you be part of the change that removes those experiences

  • “This is a reaction to event the entire world witnesses and was appalled by.”

    The world saw what the media wanted us to see – and yes, we were appalled. But the footage that preceded that event and gave it context was withheld. And when it became available, the media didn’t want to know because it didn’t fit with their agenda. You really have to seek out that footage and the medical evidence if you care enough to want to know the truth. But the media and people don’t seem to want the truth, just hatred and division and avoidance of real issues.

• Concise, perceptive and well written I just wish it could be aired across the media. People are sleep walking into this thinking BLM is just a phrase to reflect ant racism, they haven’t a clue what they’re signing up for and if they have these are very dangerous people. Divide and conquer is a well tried and successful method !

  • it’s interesting to read Rob’s comment. I didn’t know so many Americans supported the protests. Maybe a lot of them see it how my dad sees it then. Although he does’t for one minute agree with the movement or what it stands for (see their website), the protests and all the support they’ve garnered might be a mechanism or catalyst for some positive change where change is still needed.

    • I think it’s understandable that the protests are much more widely supported in America, as the problems with ingrained racism, police brutality, the carceral state, gun culture etc. are far more extreme there and not really comparable to any other country. I hope your dad is right.

• Doesn’t BLM also stand for destroying the family unit – father, mother, children, etc., putting them all into ‘villages’ (communes) communes? Very scary and the public aren’t educating themselves properly about the organisation.

• Simple a new political party BLM!

  • But then they’d lose all the support and momentum they’re getting from the Democratic Party! Similarly, our own parties here in the UK might stop pandering to them!

• We have the same issues in Canada, but mainly with indigenous peoples. Indigenous folks (male and female) are much more likely to be murdered. We had a 100 million dollar public inquiry on “missing and murdered indigenous women” that concluded “because racism”. The problem with that conclusion is that the vast majority of murdered indigenous women are murdered by indigenous men.
  So rather than looking into why indigenous communities are so socially deranged, we try to fix a non-existent racism problem (or one that is so minor as to be non-contributory). And the problems on reserves (welfare dependence, alcoholism, single teen motherhood, drug use, violence, unemployment) are perpetuated. And the longer they last the more sure The Wokerati is that this must be because of racism. And nothing ever gets fixed.
  Thanks for a well written, interesting perspective.

• Good article. ‪Youth rebellion against the system is trendy and nothing new. The difference now is that the same youths are working in today’s tech and media giants (BBC,Google, Facebook etc). But the silent majority are not stupid and will not buy this woke pro-BLM propaganda.

• Good article. Youth rebellion against the system is trendy and nothing new. The difference now is that the same youths are working in today’s tech and media giants (BBC,Google,Facebook etc). But the silent majority are not stupid and won’t buy all this woke pro-BLM propaganda.

• I am black couldn’t agree more

  They came with the transgender grift didn’t work
  Now their back to the original grift

  What you gonna do grifters gonna grift

• I work for a large UK corporate company. In normal times the comments that get made on items on the internal news site are so woke it would even embarrass the BBC. But its gone up a gear since they started posting articles on BLM. The level of virtue signalling has to be seen to be believed. And don’t you dare try make even the slightest criticism of BLM or try to push back a tiny wincy bit. Even the “moderators” join in with the attempts to shame, or try to goad individuals into going a bit further. The attitude is very much one of “I can say what I like and the company will back me but if you dare to say something I don’t like you’ll be in the sh!t”. The stuff about dismantling capitalism and defunding the police? Not true apparently. The most interesting bit for me was when someone complained that is alll about “black empowerment” and shouldn’t it be about “BAME”. He was told “Nope not on this occasion. This time we’re specifically addressing racism against black people”. So there you have it – one of our biggest companies wants to put the rights and demands of one ethnic minority group over all other ethnic minority groups. That could get interesting.

  • “one of our biggest companies wants to put the rights and demands of one ethnic minority group over all other ethnic minority groups” – apropos that, my friend in Yorkshire (who is one of the only other people I know who sees through all this, and who like me has never voted for a right-wing party in his life) works for a company that employs about 250 people. When this all kicked off, the company issued an apology for not having any black people on their executive board. But the company is in a part of Yorkshire where there are many times more British Asians and eastern Europeans than there are black people. Why is not having specifically a black person on their board a failure or to be presented as such? The panicky corporate overreach is ridiculous. It’s like they’re apologising for not engaging in patronising tokenism, as if the only reason a black person wouldn’t be on the board of a niche SME in provincial Yorkshire would be racism. It’s so paternalistic and insulting.

    I really feel the increasing use of acronyms is unhelpful too. As a gay guy I used to have no problem with the term LGBT until the past few years, as it’s been fairly well-established since the 90s/2000s. I was even open to its expansion with additional letters and symbols (like LGBT+ or LGBTQIA). But sticking your head outside the bubble and looking at how differently ordinary people react to acronyms or unwieldy terms compared to plain speech is really incisive. There are already a number of studies that show public opinion on gay rights differs quite significantly depending on whether the wording “gay” or “homosexual” is used in the survey question – of course they mean the same thing, but people respond markedly less positively when asked “Do you think homosexuals should be able to marry?” than when asked “Do you think gay people should be able to marry?”. The same thing applies to LGBT to a perhaps even greater degree, and it’s something that people in the West aren’t that aware of. At an LGBT-themed conference a few years ago I had to deal with an eastern European girl who thought LGBT was some kind of formal organization, even thought she was LGBT herself. During a couple of the talks she kept asking questions that showed she had a real lack of understanding of the terminology and issues, and instead of supporting her and easing her into the topic, the others there reacted with irritation at her not knowing the right lingo and apparently asking the wrong questions, as if annoyed she wasn’t one of the tribe. It fell to me to actually listen to her, engage with her in plain speech and bring her up to speed, first during the conference when others failed to, then at the dinner afterwards. This belief that LGBT is some kind of shadowy organized network is increasingly widespread in eastern Europe, as it’s an idea promoted by various populist governments in the same way as the Soros thing. Even people with benign, live-and-let-live attitudes to gay and lesbian people in their own countries are increasingly turning against gay rights because “LGBT” is widely understood and promoted as some kind of nefarious, imperialist cultural threat imported from the West, to the extent it’s almost become a slur. This isn’t even going into the issue of how comfortably the LGB belongs with the T these days.

    I think the BAME acronym, which has only recently become widely used in the UK media (it’s certainly newer than LGBT), is starting to come over in the same way. Broadcast, online and print media in the UK used to refer to black people, Asian people, ethnic minorities etc. until fairly recently, which is understandable plain speech – now BAME is used as a sort of media-class in-group cant as if everyone understands what it means, in a way that confounds a lot of ordinary viewers/listeners, shuts them out from the discussion and lumps people from wildly diverse backgrounds into a single category. As a gay guy I absolutely don’t identify as “LGBT” anymore or associate myself with that movement, and I wouldn’t have said that four years ago. It almost feels like a loss. And it’s hardly progress if people with specific cultural backgrounds, like Ghanaian Brits or Jamaican Brits, are expected to identify as generically black or homogenously “BAME” instead. One of my old expat friends from Kenya, who’d lived in a few countries, said that she’d never identified as black or thought of herself as such until she moved to America. A week or two ago on Radio 4 there was a feature with a primary-age girl, whose parents had come to the UK from Uganda, reading out a poem (that she’d obviously been encouraged to write at school) on how wonderful it was being black. It was cute at first but felt more and more disturbing the longer I listened to it, coming from such a young girl, if you’d substituted the word “white” it’d have been absolutely incendiary. If she’d read out the exact same poem but it had been about being Ugandan rather than “black”, it’d have been absolutely lovely. And it feels like a loss, because I’d much rather white people too in this country identified first and foremost as northern or Cornish or Scouse or Scots or Polish, rather than being increasingly radicalized by the incessant focus on race into identifying as “white”. I dread a situation where we’re increasingly all goaded and inculcated into picking a “team”, but it’s already happening. I reassure myself that it’s still mostly a middle-class silly-season media-propagated phenomenon that hasn’t significantly filtered down to ordinary people and middle England, but it’s still disturbing.

• Excellent article. Like other people who have responded, I’m relieved to know I’m not alone. I’m still not sure what can be done about it – but thank you for the glimmer of hope.

• I totally agree with you and if ever put to the vote the silent majority of the UK public would also agree. The BLM movement is making racism worse it is segregating one group from another. All lives matter we all want to be treated the same whatever colour race or creed we are, the BLM movement in what it’s doing is being racist as it totally discounts any other race. What about the 6 million Jews killed in the holocaust the slavery which is happening now affecting all races whether they are black or white. Change will only come from our hearts sadly there is good and bad in every race

• Sadly the BLM is contributing to racism and segregation. They are concentrating on one group of people. All races have endured prejudice and slavery during the past and the present, the holocaust killed 6 million Jews, slavery is rife worldwide at this very moment one could go on and on about the atrocities and injustices happening all around us they are not confined to just black people they affecting all sorts of people irrespective of their colour or creed in all different parts of our world. All lives matter whatever race or creed.
  What is making the situation dangerous are the media who have jumped on the BLM bandwagon especially the BBC who are meant to be impartial but through their bias are stirring up racial tensions

• They dont want us to be silent watching our tv’s and sulking because they may well be in their thousands but we are in our millions.

• I was tempted to make a donation to BLM and found your site when googling for details of BLM governance, accounts and regulatory approvals. How do I get assurance that donations are going to worthy causes and not into private pockets?

• I am so angry with Churchill’s statue and the cenotaph having to be protected don’t they realize that if Churchill hadn’t gotten us through the war and Germany had won they wouldn’t be here demonstrating you can’t erase history I’m afraid as a 75 year old that we won’t be allowed to have our say l do not believe in slavery but the way they are behaving makes me dislike them poor old soldiers who died for our freedom must be turning in their graves the kneeling fist punch l find very intimidating l fear for my grand children and great grand children as Britain is going to be a horrible place to live is my address 100 Churchill crescent deemed offensive if they try to change it l will protest Great Britain is no longer great god help us

• I do not believe in these demos leave our history alone

• Racism has always been a 2way-street but black racism against whites is ignored.

• Articles against BLM: http://moderntokyotimes.com/should-blm-change-its-name-or-is-arab-slavery-and-ethnic-massacres-in-africa-fine/ And http://moderntokyotimes.com/anti-us-media-bias-discrimination-in-china-cuba-indonesia-nigeria-saudi-and-turkey/

• Try being a White Scottish Male.
  Theres no rungs in the ladder below us.
  I may as well have a banner above me declaring “White, Scottish Male. Therefore I must be a Rascist homophobic, Pedo Wife beater”!
  I can see right through BLM.
  For the record there are tens of millions “non rascist” white people who may be weak willed and are being driven to becoming rascist due to this bombardment of utter BS.
  Let’s not forget that Black ppl were treated appallingly. By white traders who purchased from Black sellers by the way.
  Not my generation. Not by me.
  I am not thankful easily led and remain non rascist however I now have a different way of looking at black ppl which I never had until this last month or so.
  That is the real shame in this current con which the media is spewing. All the hard work by true activists against racism being undone by small minded snowdrops who now call the shots.
  History has lessons to learn. Mostly on how not to repeat mistakes. I wonder where this will be put in time to come?

• Ask of course inevitably from the BLMUK Twitter account -“As Israel moves forward with the annexation of the West Bank, and mainstream British politics is gagged of the right to critique Zionism, and Israel’s settler colonial pursuits, we loudly and clearly stand beside our Palestinian comrades. FREE PALESTINE.” I was wondering how long it would take till they started to blame the Jews. So sad & depressing.

• Here we go, inevitably from the BLMUK Twitter account:

  “As Israel moves forward with the annexation of the West Bank, and mainstream British politics is gagged of the right to critique Zionism, and Israel’s settler colonial pursuits, we loudly and clearly stand beside our Palestinian comrades. FREE PALESTINE.”

  Really importance after all to ensure we all know who the real enemy is, don’t we? Sad and depressingly familiar.

• The best understanding of what is going on at the deepest philosophical level is provided by Helen Pluckrose and James Linday (although they try and keep it all in simple language). Please follow them and buy their upcoming book.

• https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/findings/highlights/

• A very useful article. I’m sure I’ll use your arguments in forthcoming discussions. I was a member of the SDP last year, let my membership lapse. This has made me consider rejoining.

• The BLM website asks for bitcoin and paypal donations: http://blacklivesmatteruk.com/contact/. It is not regulated by the Fundraising regulator. http://blacklivesmatteruk.com/contact/ and there is no description of what the money will be used for and no audit reports.

• Just heard that the England Cricket Team are you wear a “BLM” logo.

  So I will have to find something else to watch then.

  Never mind.

• BLM is a modern marxist movement, with a facsimile ideology, based upon what? Yes, Britain enslaved thousands and yes, Britain exploited millions however, that was a long time ago. That is history and I know work with an equal amount of black, Asian and female workers with good access to education etc. We are all the same and slaves to the taxman.

  What is the issue is modern slavery – woman, children and men of all colours and religions being exploited – that is what matters!

• ALL lives should matter-not just black! The UK public has been so brainwashed by the UK media (who are so biased in favour of all ethnics but especially black people) and most people don’t question anything!Study the figures..in the USA one is actually more likely to be killed by the police if one is white-not black!All lives matter,white people’s just as much!The reason that a higher percentage of blacks get killed is because a higher percentage of them commit crime-people might not like hearing it,but that’s just the truth but,apparently,one can’t say certain truths anymore as the media regard the slightest little thing as racist-they keep playing the race card!The media lies and most go along with it!Terrible-as is the killing of any people,be they black or white!!

• I cant believe this country allows people petitioning for black lives matter which obviously is designed too cause racial tension, are allowed to openly confront shoppers in our towns & cities.let alone the previous anti social and riotous behaviour, when people resist arrest and police forces are put in a position that they are not allowed to enforce the laws of the land ,for one and all of society, then god help us all, if you believe in god, pardon the phrase.

• The leftist agenda espoused by BLM must be exposed at every opportunity, my wife is a teacher and her black colleagues have insisted that BLM aims must be put on the curriculum.
  The head teacher whilst agreeing that in fact black lives do indeed matter , has said the school needs to be impartial in political matters , much to the anger of the black staff.
  They’ve called for him to apologize publicly, and withdraw his statement , and have refused to speak on any other matter other than BLM.
  Sanity must be restored.

• Quite!

• My dad was a half Welsh half Chinese boy brought up in the slums and yes slums of Oxford and I got abused by all the older kids in our neighborhood! Only black haired slanty eyed kid in the area! But it wasn’t nasty just like casual! Until a Chinese takeaway opened near us! My white friends of who i had many sent me there to get chips! And bless them they gave me chips and food food they thought I was an adopted Chinese child! When my dad found out he marched me there and made me apologise! Still got free chips after though!

• as appalling as the death of George Floyd was yet again why are We adopting as a Nation another fad from America BLM are just as intolerant as Corbyn’s momentum morons

• Thanks for opening eyes to this nonsense, it offends me to see the sheep kneeling at the start of all premier league matches, do any of them understand or have the balls to be an independent human with their own views, or is it the case, any who dare not to take the knee will be classed as racist, trapped without a voice.
  Nice to see some F1 drivers do have an opinion and won’t be bullied into the Lewis Hamilton crusade, lets hope he doesn’t make the podium again, It doesn’t sit well with myself seeing him make the black power salute, Does he realise that is a gesture with offensive connotations.

• The ‘fight’ is not looking to deal with inconvinient issues that keep black communities from achieving their potential; single parent households, criminality, low engagement in education, domestic violence, rampant homophobia and sexism… there is also zero acceptance of the role that African nations played in enabling and continuing slavery. The opportunities that black people have in the west far exceed those in black governed countries. South and East Asian communities have escaped their victim mentalities… BLM needs a mirror more than a megaphone if it really cares about the lives of black people.

• This is so refreshing, thank you for having the courage to speak out against this racist terrorist organisation that is BLM.

  What can people do to hurt BLM in some way?

• I must say that this is a very insightful article. Going against the grain is a difficult path but I believe that in the long run it pays off. The world today sometimes reminds me of the parable of king and the poisoned well. The well from which we’re all drinking has been contaminated with destructive ideologies.

  The poison was released into the human world by various agents, among them the Frankfurt school, Marx, Lenin, Mao, The British Fabian Society etc. There’s lots of different names and superficially intellectual theories but ultimately it all boils down to the same thing, totalitarian rule on a global scale by a one world Communist government.

  The people today who have faith in the divine are increasingly marginalized. ostracized, labelled, criminalized and silenced. Ultimately the pendulum will swing back and natural God given order will return. I think it’s important as you stated to think for yourself and go against the grain. Remember as well that when you swim up current you grow strong. God bless

• Agreed.

  Please make some **practical** suggestions as to how we can resist the BLM/antifa/leftist agenda. Things most concerned individual citizens can do.

  Thanks,

  Karen

• You say we are losing impartiality- as a nation, I think not. However, we are getting the ability to laugh at the absurd squeezed out of us. Whatever happened to satire?

• They are a tiny minority

• I think this is nonsense; it is created to divide the country and create war. I have friends of all different races, what I do not agree with are people destroying , looting, attacking people to prove a point – lame excuse. also this is going to make people resentful and it will create a war. It needs to stop. The more we go on about one race/culture is actually racist.
  In regards to the comments on here, some are far fetched. Unless you have researched and done fact checking it is pointless

• Just had the catalogue of women’s clothes ‘White Stuff’ and cannot quite understand the models they have used and the constant overwhelming of black lives matter in a business that I have been happy to buy all my clothes from. I am 67, white and British. Hardly ever a proportion of models of course. Seriously this is getting ridiculous.

• Thanks for your article. Our hope is a renewal of Christianity.

• I swear I couldn’t have said this better myself! Brilliantly framed.

• I have a lot of supportive comments but there is not enough room for all Mt pent up comments.

• Hitler would not have got anywhere if he hadn’t been backed by German Industrialists and Bankers. BLM is just the Front Organisation, there to convince the Public of its “worthy” aims……just a thought.

• How many of you in the comments section have a BBC subscription? Otherwise known as a TV Licence? What a lot of you don’t realise is these agendas are set at the international, unelected level. Elections in Britain are rigged and the candidates are bought before they even win.

• This is the best and most articulate article I’ve read on the subject and comforts me that my worries and concerns are valid and shared. As you say, there’s no clear end to this and over representation and favouritism of people because of their colour is dangerous and hypocritical. I was born in London and spent most of my life surrounded by and unable to escape from certain groups of people who were violent, destructive and ruined my life, and now being promoted into positions of authority simply because of their colour. It’s so wrong and will lead to even worse problems in society.

• Black Lives Do matter but no more so than any other lives from minorities or indeed majorities. The BLM movement is tearing at the very fabric of the system that has allowed them to voice their opinions, a form of Anarchy that is permitted as to do otherwise would look like racism.
  Hamilton is undeniably a great car driver, I would go to him for advice on how to tune my car’s suspension but regarding politics and historical accuracy I would go elsewhere. As one of the elite in terms of money he has in fact most to lose if the fabric of this country and others were to be replaced with BLM policies.

• Poor old Marx would be spinning in his grave with his name being associated with this establishment sponsored rabble. The function of BLM is to divide those in whose interest it is to make massive changes to our capitalist society into that of a Social Democratic economically based society. It is noticable that year after year we have some “issue” foisted upon on us in the most confrontational terms whether it be Brexit, race relations and now Covid. Rational discussion flies out of the window. And most of it comes from the USA, fast descending into chaos and collapse.

• All you racist worms should be publically executed. You’re evil and irrational, and society has no need for you.

• Sky Sports have promoted BLM taking advantage of the lockdown. Had the crowds been in attendance the “taking the knee” would not have been tolerated. It is about George Floyd a criminal in the USA. This has nothing to do with the UK or any other European nation. When Millwall fans booed the media came up with the usual nonsense but found that more public in general agreed with it. I find BLM very provoking. When the guy at Burnley in the plane had the banner “White Lives Matter” he did nothing wrong if it is OK to say Black Lives Matter then we have a double standard. He even lost his job. The UK is not yet the 51st State and is an entirely different nation, with both History and Culture. Both Black and White are not natural to the USA the indigenous people are the Native Americans. The situation in the UK is entirely different

• i served two tours of northern Ireland back in the 80’s, so any organizations, media’s and music bands that supported or funded the IRA in any form i would neither listen, buy or entertain in any manner ( that was my protest). With black lives matter I do the same, the very obvious over representation of black programming and advertisement and again media input supporting this disturbing group,( I switch off, turn over and do not read), for example; I receive a regular fashion catalogue and I am usually happy “until” 3/4 of the models were black or of mixed race, i cancelled this service. I WILL NOT BE PUSHED in what I see is a kind of bullying of our minds. This has made me very angered and i would like to say i agree with every statement you make. SO IF THIS MAKES ME A RACISIST SO BE IT…..

• This WOKE cancel culture is extremely disturbing. All that matters is if they are offended by anything then it must be removed from existence. How about the millions offended by anti White racism? Cross dressing men sharing the same public toilets as women and young girls? Trans men in womens sports. NORMAL peoples values are not considered.
  What the hell are these pro nouns these cretins are using ‘they / them’ do they have multi personality disorder? There are only 2 genders, if people want to believe they are of a different gender then so be it, but keep it to yourselves. I really hope this has triggered some of those freaks, I despise them

• Every time I hear that phrase, I ask myself, just who in hell do Black Lives Matter too?

• Sensibly, And well put, We need MORE honest and Brave voices as yours,
  God Bless

• We were all made in the same image of god, or so I was thought. If anyone throws their own views on you it’s their own insecuritys. And I was a uk soldier and have been about, and received racism for being white, In London!. The black fella,s sucking their teeth at me?. It’s the human condition we’re all fucking mad. Roll on nuclear war!!!

• Black Lives Matter is racist.
  Down with BLM!

• BLM is stirring up racism like we never had in this country, BLM should be banned and if these riots sorry protests keep happening then the government should come down hard on them with stronger sentences, as these “protesters “ are nothing more than criminals

• I come from a White poor background I’m talking 8 people living in a roach infested 2 bedroom 1bath house aka POVERTY..and I for one am so grossly tired of hearing about BLM right now it makes mee naseusious There aren’t any White College funds or any similar “WHITE” funds out there that am aware of we were on welfare before food stamps and believe me we struggled… on just sick of everyone’s complaining about being victims I was always taught There are no victims only volunteers. And on top of the story I’m gay too. I am definitely not a racist perhaps I’m more of a realist I had nothing to do with slavery and I think it was s terrible thing. But other black tribes captured people from other tribes and sold them to whom ever wanted. I mean hebrews were slaves to. Just how far into history do we need to go.