On his Tuesday night show, with the help of Kelly Riddell of the Washington Times, Bill O'Reilly of Fox News described how the "Black Lives Matter" movement sustains itself. The rest of the press wants readers, listeners and viewers to presume that it is a self-sustaining, grass-roots movement. It isn't.
O'Reilly also noted that megastars Jay-Z and Beyoncé, numbers 28 and 29, respectively, on the Forbes list of top-paid celebrities, are supporting the movement, which describes itself as "grass-roots" but is really the ultimate in Astroturf. Also at the end of this post, following up on one I did on ESPN's Stephen A. Smith last week, I have posted Smith's original six-minute radio-show rant on how selective and tyrannical the movement is.
First, O'Reilly:
Transcript:
BILL O'REILLY: Factor investigation segment tonight. A group that calls itself "Black Lives Matter."
One leader of the crew, Alicia Garza, issued a statement that says, "When we say Black Lives Matter, we are talking about the ways in which Black people are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity. It is an acknowledgment black poverty and genocide is state violence."
Garza and her cohorts believing that America is committing genocide against some black citizens. In addition, the group is vowing to disrupt the upcoming Republican convention.
(cut away to a recent MSNBC broadcast)
PATRISSE CULLORS, Director of Truth and Reinvestment for the Ella Baker Center: And trust and believe that any opportunity we have to shut down the Republican convention, we will. (in-MSNBC studio laughter) We will make sure that our voices are made loud and clear.
(return to studio)
O'REILLY: Now the laughter you just heard came from MSNBC anchorpeople.
So, who's funding Black Lives Matter?
One of the big donors seems to be George Soros, our old pal, who gives big money to affiliates of Black Lives Matter, groups that do direct business with them.
Also giving money directly to the group, entertainers Jay-Z and Beyoncé. There they are.
Joining us now from Washington, Kelly Riddell, an investigative reporter for the Washington Times. Is this just a fringe group or should we take them seriously?
KELLY RIDDELL: Well, I think you've got to take them seriously. I mean, look what happened to Martin O'Malley a couple of weeks ago at the Netroots convention, when he basically said all lives matter, and was practically booed off the stage, and then had to issue an apology. I mean —
O'REILLY: Well, he didn't have to issue an apology. He chose to. But that's O'Malley's problem for even going to the Netroots convention.
RIDDELL: Well, Hillary Clinton has been there before. A lot of – Elizabeth Warren – a lot of liberal activists go to this on a yearly basis
O'REILLY: I understand that. But I don't know whether this crew, Black Lives Matter, have any constituency other than the radical left, the real fringe nuts that run around the country saying crazy things. Have they made any inroads into a more established position?
RIDDELL: Well, I mean you've got to look, Black Lives Matter is really an umbrella slogan kind of group that encompasses a lot of social justice workers and a lot of social justice organizations. And it's a group that was started by three women that work at Soros-backed organizations that are into community organizing, into kind of riling up activists.
And what all of the social justice groups have in common is basically three things.
The first is that they believe fundamentally that it's social policy and "the man" and the professional political class that is out to get them with unjust policies — the basically all of their social woes, all of their economic woes, can be based on unfair policies.
Second, is that they're very well organized. You have a bunch of different separate organizations that basically — there's think tanks that put out the narrative, the narrative that is followed by all of these organizations. They have Twitter, they have Facebook, where they create an echo chamber, echoing each other. They've got professional protesters that go to places like Ferguson, Baltimore, Charleston South Carolina, to basically rile up whatever the local vibe is there.
And then lastly, they are all, all of these organizations from a certain standpoint are funded by George Soros's Open Society Foundation. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. I found that within one year, George Soros dedicated $33 million to these types of organizations. So there really well-funded.
O'REILLY: So $33 million from Soros, to agitators who are organized to disrupt, and then the national convention for the Republicans in Cleveland seems to be a target.
What about Jay-Z and Beyoncé? I mean, here are two extremely famous individuals. Do you think they know that giving money to an anarchist a group like this that wants to tear down the country and, you know, was talking about genocide and really, really extreme things, do you think they have any idea what they're doing?
RIDDELL: I do actually. One of the activists that said that Jay-Z and Beyoncé were giving tens of thousands of dollars to the movement — her name is Dream Hampton, and she was a cowriter on Jay-Z's memoir. And she's part of this Malcolm X grass-roots organization that is very, is very extreme. And so she's part of their inner circle and was the activist that first reported that there were giving money. Because Jay-Z and Beyoncé were getting a lot of flak from these groups for not — I mean, Jay-Z raps about it in his lyrics, and they wear, y'know, the memorabilia or the y'know the Black Lives Matter T-shirts. But they weren't giving any money. And so, yeah —
O'REILLY: We've invited Jay Z and Beyoncé if they have a statement they'd like to make or come in and expain why they're doing what they're doing. Thank you, Ms. Riddell, we appreciate it.
Jay-Z's and Beyoncé's support for "Black Lives Matter," if it indeed endures, is especially problematic, as it seems likely that they could use their star power to quietly coerce other black artists into falling in line — or, if they don't, watching their careers go up in smoke.
Now to Stephen A. Smith's original July 21 audio, where, among other things, he calls out the "Black Lives Matter" movement for its indifference to blacks killing blacks throughout the nation, and sharply criticizes those who have a problem with any politician who dares to say that "all lives matter":
Highlights (but listen to the whole thing):
"All lives do matter."
"Where's the noise about 'black lives matter' when black folks are killing black folks? You see, that's where you lose me."
"But we got black folks dying at the hands of black folks in this country. But we're not hearing that."
"I just can't let this slide. All lives do matter."
"Does anybody think about how it makes us look when we force somebody to apologize for saying that 'All lives matter'?"
The "Black Lives Matter" true believers clearly don't care, or they would go about things quite differently.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
