Did you know that Black Lives Matter is not an African American organization?

@Lila15 Go to their website. Listen to their leaders. They claim to be 'trained Marxists'. Those are their words not mine. They made the claim.

@hippyjoe1955 What does "trained Marxist" even mean? Most people who support BLM are interested in the police not killing Black people; it doesn't matter what egghead philosophy the leadership claims to be into.

It's obvious that right wingers just wish everyone would STFU and stop complaining. You hated when Colin Kaepernick protested quietly by kneeling, and now that there's an organization dedicated to the same goal, you hate that too. Anyway, there's no point in discussing this because you don't view it as a problem.

@Lila15 If you think this has anything to do with racism beyond the tried and true Marxist strategy of divide and conquer then maybe you should go back to school.

@hippyjoe1955 A thought, having read that exchange, that whatever the reality of the Black Lives Matter campaign, a rise in Marxist groups generally would not surprise me.

I can't say what proportion of the "movement", if it is indeed that, are Marxist, nor who might have "trained" those claim that political allegiance and trained them in what, but it would not surprise me if some are; and not just in the USA.

Let's go back a bit.

During the Cold War the USSR discreetly but actively supported all sorts of hard-Left organisations in the "West". For example, it was assiduously courting some of the more hard-line union leaders and dafter student groups in Britain even though most of the union membership would have voted Labour but most certainly not Communist.

(There is a "Communist Party of Britain", superseding the "Communist Party of Great Britain" after an internal split; but only ever small, peaking at 60 000 members in 1945. It was always tolerated officially, but presumably kept under watch. Though membership of any extreme political group can affect certain employment opportunities, the UK never copied the House Un-American Activities Committee!)

Around this time, the 1970s-80s, the UK saw a rise in extreme-Right Wing organisations like the National Front, whose public face was of a noisy bunch of vexatious, ignorant, rabble-rousing racists. The Marxist groups were generally, though not universally, much more subtle.

I recall a conversation with a Police Officer who said the extreme Left was seen as the greater threat, by its stealthier approach and support from the USSR whose aim was world domination. The Far Right were seen as trouble-makers but not a serious national threat.


Hard-left, Marxist groups; some actively helped by the USSR, were very active around the world. In Europe, memories of World War Two were too raw for the hard-Right to make much impression. Austria made "Holocaust Denial" a criminal offence. Germany was so ashamed of its Nazi era it tried never to mention it. Neutral, oh-so-law-abiding Switzerland kept very quiet about its anti-Romany pogrom, eerily preceding that against the Uyghurs in China now.

With the end of the USSR, "The West" enjoyed a few decades of little real Right/Left extremism. The People's Republic of China after Chairman Mao's death seemed cautiously friendly - leading to the West unwittingly helping her patient climb to vie with the USA as the world's Number One power. In this time, the new threat to America and Europe was not Communism but the politico-religious aims of hard-line Islamicists, reacting to what they saw as non-Muslim interference in Muslim countries, cultures and power-struggles.

.

Since then, for fairly clear reasons in Europe at least, extreme Right-Wing groups have arisen, some openly espousing Nazi ideology. These people trade particularly on common fears of two forces: large-scale immigration from very different cultures, and perceived loss of national culture and even sovereignty to major international organisations, treaties and links. Attacks by Islamiscist terrorists fuelled those fears, and the hard-Right were not slow to exploit them.

So we now, we do not have large numbers of Marxist ideologues tramping around Europe, the USA and some other countries. Rather, ones worshipping deeply isolationist nationalism, division and even Nazi or Fascist dogma.

Most have not organised themselves into discreet political "parties", but exist in nebulous networks of small groups and individuals of very varied ideas around common love of unquestioned xenophobia, racism and authoritarianism. These networks are international, thanks to the Internet - we now know for example, that some in the UK are influenced by one particular man living in California.



("Nazi" is an abbreviated from the German words for its full title, "National Socialism"; invented by Adolf Hitler and not socialist in the Marxist sense. "Fascism" was the name of Benito Mussolini's dictatorship of Italy; from the Roman [i]fasces[/i], an image of a bundle of rods around an axe, symbolising severe authority.)

.

Extremes tend to beget opposing extremes.

I cannot say how much the Black Lives Matter campaign is led or infiltrated by out-and-out Communists; but does anyone know who is really behind it, or who might only be claiming that? It taps into a festering sore American society finds very hard to heal, and elicits sympathy in many other countries where racism is also seen even if on a much lower scale; but despite laudable public [i]aims[/i] though reprehensible [i]methods[/i], and apparent spontaneity, [i]someone[/i] must have invented at least the name.

Was the BLM campaign genuinely originated by a Marxist group, or are those Marxists claiming that, merely doing so to help their opposition to Right-wing extremists - in the USA or anywhere else?

Irrespective of BLM, but perhaps helped by it, I think we may see a rise in extreme-Left ideologies, reacting to the rise of their bitter opponents on the far-Right. If so, BLM may become merely a facet of that.

Don't be surprised either if the People's Republic of China would watch and discreetly support any such new Marxist groups - though it might have its own reasons to keep carefully clear of the BLM campaigners.

@ArishMell The fact is that the American education establishment from kindergarten to university is now full leftist. The graduates are so ingrained in leftism that they have no idea of the history of Christianity, Renaissance, Reformation or the advent of classic liberal thought and how it changed the world and how it has led to the 'freedoms' now found in Western society. Those same educated people full of leftist indoctrination are convinced that good is evil and evil is good. As for your story about extreme right in Europe I won't comment since I know nothing about them or if they are not agents of the far left. In the US there was going to be a big Left/Right riot. The participants on both sides rode in the same chartered bus to the site of the riot. When the ruckus (it wasn't much of a riot) was over but the demoncraps in the US made great political hay out of it) the rioters got back on the same buses and rode home together.

@hippyjoe1955 Well, as I say, extremism tends to be met by extremism from its opponents, and the picture you paint there looks desperate.

However I have gained the impression that "Right" and "Left" have different shades of meaning in the US from their British or European equivalents, perhaps moving the "Centre" which is always a vague term anyway, relatively one way or the other; and I don't claim to understand the details and nuances fully.

Essentially, the UK's Labour and Conservative Parties are "Left" and "Right" respectively, with a broad spectrum of views with each, but most of their members are far from being "hard" Left or Right; and generally speaking, both sides value the history and democracy you describe. They also respect each other even if disagreeing strongly on policies. I think this is pretty well true for most of their European equivalents.

If things turn really nasty the politicians support each other, such as when the Labour Member of Parliament, Jo Cox, was murdered by a Right-wing extremist. The killing was condemned by everyone, irrespective of Party loyalty and dogma, and that condemnation was sincere.

I don't think most extreme-right people East of the Atlantic are agents of Marxist groups, though I suppose a few might be, and their networks might infiltrate each other's murky little world. If anything they are rivals and sworn enemies, although since both glorify authoritarian regimes, in practical terms the difference between them is more of political theory than practice.

At the moment, it is the Far-Right that is seen as the greater threat in Europe and elsewhere; but that's not to say we should ignore the Far-Left.

It is ironical indeed that Russia, and one or two other Eastern European nations that finally shook off Communism, are now under increasingly authoritarian far-Right rule, but with considerable public support.