Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Republicans are running out of time before the election to create a racist, white supremacist backlash against Black Lives Matter and they know it.

For a brief moment after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis policeman in late May, some members of the GOP joined calls for change as protests exploded onto streets across the country. That moment is over.

Facing possible electoral calamity, Republicans are now turning to a familiar playbook: stoking fear by trying to redefine the Black Lives Matter movement as a radical leftist mob looking to sabotage the white, suburban lifestyle.

Republicans are using two lines of attack: the Trump administration, candidates in safe red seats and right-wing social media channels seek to label the entire movement “Marxist” and anti-family as they try to energize their conservative base. Republicans running in swing districts and states, meanwhile, are tying their Democratic opponents to activists’ demands to defund police departments, while avoiding explicitly mentioning Black Lives Matter. Instead, Republicans running in competitive general election races have focused recent ads on more abstract targets like “left-wing radicals" and the "liberal mob."

It’s a distinction Democratic pollsters and lawmakers attribute to the dramatic shift in public views on police brutality, and who and what people associate with the declaration that “Black Lives Matter.” The new broad support for the movement, they say, makes it harder to tie Black Lives Matter to one person, organization or ideology.

“People putting ‘Black Lives Matter’ signs on their lawns, it's not an endorsement of a particular organization so much as a value statement uniting a lot of people from many backgrounds,” said Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowksi, whose predominantly white New Jersey district was held by Republicans for decades before he won in 2018.

That hasn't deterred Republicans, who have increased their criticism of the movement over the past month. On the same day President Donald Trump tweeted that Black Lives Matter was “a symbol of hate,” his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, declared to a group of reporters at the White House that "Black Lives Matter is a Marxist organization … Black Lives Matter has been planning to destroy the police for three years.”

Other Trump administration officials and Republican lawmakers, particularly those running in tough primaries, followed suit, warning, in addition, that the movement wanted to destroy the “nuclear family.” Fox News hosts, conservative talk radio personalities and think tanks such as The Heritage Foundation joined in, as well. Prager University’s “Black Lives Matter is a Marxist Movement” video released this month has over a million views on YouTube and is one of several popular videos it has produced on the topic.

So far, the GOP attempts to discredit the movement have yet to stick. With just under three months until the election, Black Lives Matter has won mainstream support across racial and partisan lines that would have been almost unthinkable six months ago. But the battle to define the movement is not over, as Trump bets he can turn the suburbs, lost to Republicans in 2018, in his favor by attempting to cast a movement for racial equality as a threat to white voters.

“We recognize that this is not simply an issue fight, this isn't simply a narrative war — what we think we're experiencing is a social and cultural and political realignment,” said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party and a leader with the Movement for Black Lives coalition. “We continue to give that backlash the adequate concern and respect one would give any dangerous opponent, even one that clearly is on the wrong side of history.” 

The latest iteration of this is concern trolling by Republicans that Black Lives Matter will drive Black voters who fear the "liberal mob" more than police brutality into Trump's arms as LAW AND ORDER!!1! president, a narrative that still isn't supported by actual numbers but is being packaged for White suburban consumption.

When this fails to materialize, how far will the regime go to manufacture it?