Conservatives have long viewed the Black Lives Matter movement with skepticism and questioned the group’s tactics, but this week pundits grabbed hold of a new label for the organization: hate group.
After the Friday shooting death of a sheriff’s deputy in Texas and a Black Lives Matter protest at the Minnesota State Fair on Saturday, conservatives doubled down in their criticism. Numerous hosts at Fox News took issue with the group’s recent chant in Minnesota, “pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon,” tying that protest to recent deaths of police officers.
During a segment on the shooting and protest on Monday morning, “Fox and Friend” co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck asked why Black Lives Matter has not yet been labeled a hate group.
“Why has the Black Lives Matter movement not been classified yet as a hate group?” she asked conservative African-American writer Kevin Jackson. “How much more has to go in this direction before someone actually labels it as such?”
Jackson agreed with Hasselbeck’s suggestion that the movement is a hate group. Following media coverage of her comment on Monday, Hasselbeck published a tweet on Tuesday noting that it’s her job to ask questions.
My calling @foxandfriends is to ask questions and my calling as a #Christian is to #LoveAllGodsPeople -I give my best to do both each day.
— elisabeth hasselbeck (@ehasselbeck) September 1, 2015
Conservatives continued on Monday and Tuesday to link the Black Lives Matter movement to violence against police officers.
On Monday night, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly said he was sure that the shooting and the protest were in some way connected, and he labeled Black Lives Matter a “hate group” because “they hate police officers” and “want them dead.”
“These people, after the death, the murder of this deputy, went out and said, ‘We want more police officers killed,'” he said.
“They’re a hate group, and I’m going to tell you right now, I’m going to put them out of business,” O’Reilly added later.
On Tuesday night, O’Reilly brought on two guests to discuss whether Black Lives Matter should be linked to violence against cops.
“Do you believe that the Black Lives Matter crew and and other radicals are igniting violence against cops?” he asked. Yet neither guest agreed with the Fox host that the group should be linked to the recent shooting death of police officers.
Later on Tuesday night, conservative writer Katie Pavlich told Fox’s Megyn Kelly that Black Lives Matter “promotes the execution of police officers.”
During a Monday appearance on Fox News’ “The Five,” comedian Tom Shillue said that Black Lives Matter is a “violent group.”
“I mean, this is like a criminal organization,” he said. “I think it’s time to arrest these leaders because they’re threatening people and they’re causing violence.”
During the same segment, Fox host Eric Bolling speculated that Black Lives Matter protests “probably had some effect on” the Friday night shooting.
Although conservative outrage over the Black Lives Matter protest in Minnesota bubbled over into talk of hate groups just this week, the hosts at Fox News have been shaking their fists at the organization for a while, with O’Reilly leading the charge. In July, he said Black Lives Matter activists were engaging in “Gestapo tactics” and that they are “only interested in condemning white society.” He also suggested that the organization is “an anarchistic group” that “wants to tear down the country.”
Of course they’re convinced BLM is a hate group. Anything less might legitimize them.
The conservative movement has been overcome by racist fear that the US will soon no longer be a “white” dominated nation. Among the many things they don’t understand is that it is already too late.
For years, most conservatives were able to keep their smug racism hidden because the US political process was dominated by white politicians. Things have changed.
And to those that might think it matters, I am a 40 something very white professional.
PS: as a 40 something white professional, I get entry by those who don’t really know me into private candid conversations by others of my ‘class’ who assume I think as they do. It’s both fascinating and disturbing. Smug is the word. Many never dreamed Obama had any chance of winning the election. If I suggested otherwise, I was smugly dismissed as naive. It was widely assumed among this group that people in large numbers lied to pollsters out of white guilt but of course would vote in overwhelming numbers for the white guy in the privacy of the voting booth. It’s hard to exaggerate how large and certain this group was. We even saw it in 2012. The reactions we have witnessed since Obama’s election is a reflection of the very real shock that hit these smug assholes right in the face.
Why does O’Reilly hate white people so much? Really. How could you think that telling police officers not to kill black people indiscriminately is a racial attack unless you think that white police officers are a bunch of racist murderers?
Same manufactured outrage as the GOP/Fox News past election cycle coverage of Acorn and the Black Panthers. Next thing you know theyll charge them with voter intimidation at the polls.
It’s classic right-wing media spin at work here. Plant the seed in the a.m., get a big name like O’Reilly to repeat it in the p.m., Limbaugh will no doubt repeat it on air today, and voila! You’ve got a bullshit right-wing talking point that sticks as political fact. But the thing is, these days this shit only sticks with the choir they’re singing to - scared witless old white religious nuts. Of course some equally full-of-shit “news” organization like CNN will entertain the idea because “both sides!”. But to everybody else it’s obvious propaganda, and aimed yet again at demographics the GOP needs to remain viable. All they’re going to do with this is alienate everybody else at the expense of the ratings from rage-aholics and terrified geriatrics.
This needs to be repeated. I married into a very conservative family, and at one point worked several years for a fairly conservative organization. As another white male that gets overlooked as a liberal, I’ve seen the “inside” - so to speak - of how these people see the world and what they really think. Honest racism runs absolutely rampant in these circles of people. The idea that the Republican party isn’t chalk-full of outright racists is laughable. It’s at the core of the majority of their motives.
Sorry but to me it is the Conservatives who are the hate group. Plenty of evidence to back that statement up too.
The thug police actions have brought on whatever is happening to the police being killed not the black lives matter movement. That is long overdue. The cops are to blame and we need to keep the pressure on them to stop giving citizens a death sentence for misdemeanor “crimes”.
Cops are the ones killing, robbing and raping people with impunity. They are killing us in their jails by withholding insulin and other necessary medications. People in jail for putting their feet up on a subway. It is insane. The person arrested for that was injecting insulin into their thigh. They died in the hands of the cops. This is what is pissing everyone off. No one should have to die for something as stupid as a lane change with no signal, jaywalking, walking on the road, etc.
If the cops want to stop what is happening then they need to be held accountable for their thug, criminal actions.