Vicious Conservative Bashing of Black Lives Matter Is a Dangerous Proposition

[99th_Monkey]

Vicious Conservative Bashing of Black Lives Matter Is a Dangerous Proposition
Police brutality is real. It happens. When it happens, it's wrong.
By Shaun King * Daily Kos * September 12, 2015

Over the past few weeks, conservative opinion toward the Black Lives Matter movement has taken a harsh and ugly turn. It has never been supportive, but now it has taken a decidedly strong bent toward dehumanization, dishonesty, and dangerous accusations that run the risk of getting one of us killed.

By defaming, discrediting, and dehumanizing us with lies, memes, and false accusations, it makes us out to be something more akin to an enemy—when we aren't. We fight for what we fight for because we want to see a fair and just America. We fight because we care for this country and our people. We fight because we've seen seismic changes happen in this nation before and we believe they can happen again.

Police brutality is real. It happens. When it happens, it's wrong.

This is not a partisan idea. This is not liberal or conservative idea. This is a human rights issue. In fact, if a Muslim country somewhere else in the world had thousands of people killed by police, and the officers regularly called the people they killed the ugliest, most inhumane names imaginable, the United States would call that place a repressive regime.

Yet those of us who are calling for serious reforms on the issue of police brutality are being treated like we are a real physical threat to police. Not only that, but the issue has jumped the fence from conservative media outlets calling us a threat to actual police departments and prosecutors calling us a threat.

This is extremely dangerous and reckless. Keep reading to examine the reasons why.

MORE: http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/vicious-conservative-bashing-black-lives-matter-dangerous-proposition

[Chemisse]

2. The police in this country will do anything to resist any change in their police culture.

Unfortunately that old standby - racism - gives them a foothold in a way to get out of this mess. It took a little longer this time. Even many racists were stunned by the footage we have all seen in the past year. But they came around, and the conservative media rebounded.

At this point, they would just LOVE to see cops being targeted by BLM. So much so, that CNN led the story of a cop shooting incident last week by asking, 'are police being targeted?' several days in a row. They didn't have to say by who - that was just hanging out there, unspoken, ready to be lapped up by those who want to believe.

Thankfully, we have some prosecutions coming up, which will remind everybody of why BLM exists.

[99th_Monkey]

4. Have you seen this FBI report "White Supremacists Infiltrate Law Enforcement"?

Last edited Sun Sep 13, 2015, 06:42 PM - Edit history (1)

It's an eye-opener, or was for me. I've been tracking it awhile.
http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/402521/doc-26-white-supremacist-infiltration.pdf

It was just a blip on an obscure website "grio", and Kos once.
http://thegrio.com/2015/05/12/fbi-white-supremacists-law-enforcement/

It's not too difficult to read between the Blue Lines, what's going on.

[Chemisse]

5. Ghost skins?

And here I thought that the profession just attracted the dumbest, and the most power-hungry, violent and racist among us.

From the second link, about white supremacist groups, "In fact, the FBI reports that of the 511 law enforcement officers killed during felony incidents from 2004 to 2013, white citizens killed the majority of them."

This really emphasizes it's racism behind the rush to judge BLM in the (completely unrelated) string of police shootings, rather than take a look at the more typical cop killers.

[99th_Monkey]

7. Yes, scapegoating blm, while ignoring the actual perps.

when you add the private prisons 'industry' into the mix, it's a toxic brew,
I'd rather not think about, but damn, we can't afford to ignore this shit any
longer, so I force myself to look at it, and keep bringing it up whenever there's
an opportunity.

I've posted those links on DU at least twice before, only to get a 'meh' kind
of response; which was almost as shocking as the information itself.

[brer cat]

6. White supremacy and patriarchy

fit the police culture because the bottom line is always about power. BLM cannot raise awareness or be successful without in-your-face confrontation of the racism and sexism in that culture, which is a major threat to their power, and by extension, the power held by the conservatives who have rushed to denigrate BLM. That is why it is going to take a revolution of sorts to introduce new personnel not just "retrain" the current police force. Power will not be given up easily, and racism and sexism cannot be washed away with pretty words.

[99th_Monkey]

8. Agreed. .. a revolution of sorts is sorely required IMHO, or else it's Game Over.

We the People need ALL of us, or at least a land-slide majority, first to win GE, and
then to stay active to make a real difference after the election as well. This stuff
isn't likely to go away quietly into the night.

I think the vast majority of Americans want a BIG change from business as usual,
and it's incumbent on each us to step up, as best we can.