According to recent polls, 65% of all Americans now support Black Lives Matter (BLM). Why do so many Americans support an “organization” that is avowedly dedicated to the proposition that America is evil and must be fundamentally transformed? Because the Republican establishment has made remarkably little effort to expose BLM as the revolutionary and totalitarian movement that it is.

Leading Republicans do not seem to understand that George Floyd’s death was the excuse for the current crisis, not the cause of it. The chaos in our streets—led by BLM, supported by Democrats, and propelled by higher education—is for all intents and purposes an effort to destroy the American way of life. Almost all Republicans, however, are stupefied, spectators to this tragedy.

“We’re trained Marxists,” Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors has proudly admitted. On CNN just the other day, Cullors said emphatically, “Our goal is to get Trump out”—not in November, but “immediately.” BLM is on record in 2016 marching to the tune of “Pigs in a blanket. Fry ’Em Like Bacon! KILL THE COPS.” Today, BLM is the drum major in the Democrats’ band. BLM calls for the destruction of our history and the traditional family, the dismantling of “cisgender privilege,” open borders, reparations, socialism, and of course, abolishing the police. When Biden and “mainstream” Democrats get off their knees, they will not be able to resist falling into step.

Unlike Democrats, Republicans do not kneel before their captors, but they are certainly not standing up to them. Republicans denounce BLM’s extremes (the violence and police defunding), but they leave unchallenged its central goal: the destruction of the American way of life. As the poll numbers attest, BLM is succeeding and stands virtually unopposed. If it succeeds, it will be fatal to America.

In this time of national insanity, what is needed is clarity and firmness. Republicans must stop saying America is racist. It’s not true, and it does terrible damage to give any credibility to BLM. Republicans should tell the truth, without any attempt to appease the woke: BLM is racist, not America. In America, all lives matter. Cops are no more likely to kill black suspects than they are to kill white suspects. The existence of the black underclass has virtually nothing to do with racism, and a great deal to do with liberal wokeness, which, with its ethos of guilt and victimhood, does not seem to give a damn about black lives.

Republicans should be spending their time making it clear that the Democrats are the party of BLM, that the choice is between BLM and America, and that America is the best and only hope for us all. Republicans should not be negotiating anything until peace is restored. Then, instead of negotiating over the names of military bases or police training, Republicans should be negotiating over the most effective ways of exposing corporate subsidies of BLM and protecting the American people from the Big Tech thought police, currently aiding and abetting the destruction of Western civilization.

If our leaders on the Right stand unflinchingly for the America of 1776—the America of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr.—a majority of her citizens, whatever the color of their skin or party affiliation, will stand with them.

Thomas D. Klingenstein
Chairman

Ryan P. Williams
President

The Claremont Institute