BLM – Beware the Trojan Horse

Despite most of the world being in lockdown to stop the spread of a virus with a mortality rate of .00001% (give or take), hundreds of thousands of protestors recently filled the streets of Western nations to support Black Lives Matter. This strangely named organisation, which gives precedence to one race over another while campaigning against perceived racism, is all over social media with would-be influencers clamoring to demonstrate their support. Posting black squares on Instagram made people feel like they were contributing to the public discourse.

On the surface, BLM is a feel-good cause. It purports to fight injustice and hold police departments to account for acts of racial discrimination and brutality. Left-leaning celebrities have jumped on the bandwagon. Progressive politicians have also voiced their support, happy to overlook the violence, the looting, the destruction of private property, and the spread of the virus.       

While it’s true that black Americans are disproportionately represented in the legal system, and incarcerated at higher rates than other racial groups, it is also true that they commit more crime. Whether that is the result of societal prejudice will never be known. What is known, however, is that roughly 25% of black American children are raised in single-parent homes. This formative handicap leads to higher rates of teenage pregnancy, lower rates of high school graduation, lower rates of tertiary education, higher rates of crime, higher incarceration rates, lower paid jobs, and less successful lives. 

In contrast, Asian American families are on the other end of this spectrum, with over 80% growing up with two-parent homes. This racial group consequently enjoys lower rates of teenage pregnancy, higher test scores, vastly higher educational outcomes, lower involvement in crime, lower rates of incarceration, higher paying jobs, and more successful careers. 

White American families fall somewhere in the middle, despite the myths associated with “white privilege”.  

The BLM manifesto is a strange and rambling document. It includes the desire to dismantle cisgender privilege, dismantle patriarchal practice, disrupt the western nuclear family structure requirement, and raise children in “villages”.     

Why this movement would seek to dismantle the family structure is curious, to say the least. Children raised in stable nuclear families with positive role models perform higher on almost every known measure of success. There exists no data for “village” raised children, so this is an ambitious experiment to conduct on future generations. Perhaps villages produce well rounded, balanced, successful individuals. Who knows? 

BLM is, by its admission, a Marxist organisation. It is quietly determined to smash capitalism, destroy the “patriarchy”, dismantle the nuclear family, and create its own version of Utopia. This has been tried many times during history with disastrous results. The modern system of society certainly has its flaws. Corruption is an ever-present threat to any structure and is certainly prevalent in western governments. However, smashing the system, dismantling families, closing police forces, and radically restructuring society is an extremely dangerous idea. 

What started as an organisation to protest black deaths in custody, which are incidentally dwarfed by crime-related deaths, harbours grand hopes that need to be closely examined. Blindly supporting such causes is folly. Just because the celebrity class is stooping from their lofty towers to lend their meaningless endorsement doesn’t mean a cause is just and noble. A free-thinker should rebel against this type of group-think. 

As with any complex issue, the rules remain the same. Read for yourself. Question everything. Follow facts and data. Reject the urge to go with the flow. Herd mentality is historically calamitous.      

Jackson Byrne