A "show of unity" they call it. A man is killed by police in America and Bradford lights up its buildings in tasteful purple - solidarity, unity, Black Lives Matter. Hundreds engage in a 'socially-distanced' protest where they, completely out of any context or understanding, 'take a knee'. These scenes are repeated across the country, local leaders fall over each other to make noble-sounding statements about the evils or racism and how black lives matter. Companies issue tendentious statements of solidarity and endorsement, then rebadge their products, cups or containers in the appropriate, approved colours.
Elsewhere thousands grasping badly written placards descend on cities to shout and march. Solidarity, their supporters tells us, as they daub slogans all over statues and memorials, then throw things at the police before the most enthusiastic start a full blown riot. Hundreds of people hurt - 27 police officers in London yesterday - and thousands upset, looking on, at the disrespect for those who died in wars or for the men and women we remember as great leaders. Watching Black Lives Matter campaigners vandalise a statue of Abraham Lincoln, a man who lierally went to war because black lives mattered, brings on a sort of pained despair at the awfulness of this campaign.
Those tastefully lit buildings in Bradford provide cover for the thugs, communists and violent anarchists that have latched onto the terrible killing of a black man to excuse their destructive ideas. "Defund the police" they cry, often the same people who not so long ago were saying London's knife crime problems were down to cuts in police spending. The very same progressive leaders who bemoaned austerity now trapped by their left-wing fan base calling for cuts. All those righteous leaders, previously so keen to get their bit in the papers showing how down they are with the young people, scuttle off to their corners, keep their heads down and wait for it to blow over.
Meanwhile the achingly trendy progressives take to Twitter to explain that "antifa" just means anti-fascist and "aren't we all antifascist". Then, just like those progressive city mayors and councillors, they disappear back into silence as they see the violence unfold, the vandalism and the destruction. Perhaps (I live in hope) they realise that "antifa" doesn't just mean anti-fascist but is about planned and targeted political violence - the very thing that was always the badge of fascists, communists and their assorted anti-democratic fellow travellers.
We need to wake up and realise that, by indulging the exploitation of campaigns like Black Lives Matter, we do the cause of racial justice more harm than good. Yet the statement is so bland, so obviously right, that to say you don't support Black Lives Matter requires a nuanced explanation made more difficult by how saying 'all lives matter' has become (in the eyes of the righteous) a racist statement that can get a man sacked. Like Stop The War and Stand Up To Racism, Black Lives Matter is such a banal badge that it allows the extremists who, in effect, control the BLM brand a sort of licence that Anarchy Now or Smash The System doesn't quite carry.
If you're lighting up your city hall, sending out self-important emails for your brand, or changing the colour of your coffee cups so as to endorse Black Lives Matter, you probably need to stop and think for a second. Look at what you're enabling - from the valorising of riot through to the defunding of law enforcement - and perhaps hold off on getting down with the kids. This isn't an endorsement of racism or injustice but a recognition that just having a well-chosen brand doesn't make something good. Instead, when you get back to your offices, sit down and ask sensible questions about racism - are there problems with policing, is our recrutment 'colour-blind', are black people more likely to get stopped. If the evidence tells you things could be better (hint - it's not quite a straightforward as you think) then do something about it. Yes black lives matter but please stop the virtue-signalling with lights.
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