The idea that Black Lives Matter (BLM) is simply an organization concerned about black people is beginning to unravel as the group gets increasingly bold, with said boldness due largely because of all the support they are receiving from corporate America and other powerful institutions such as the mainstream media and professional sports leagues, and even some naïve Christians and Jews.
BLM is an organization founded by self-proclaimed Marxists who oppose the idea of America, private property, and the nuclear family, and the group is now making statements that appear strongly anti-Semitic.
This is illustrated by the attack by BLM activists on an elite private school, Park School in Baltimore, which was founded by Jews in 1912, a time when Jewish persons were banned from enrolling in the city’s private schools. A group calling itself “Black at Park Organizing Collective” is demanding that Park School examine its history, including “its inception, early exclusions, culture of whiteness and wealth hoarding, its tolerance of Zionism, and its parasitic relationship to Baltimore City.”
Zionism is a word that describes the desire of Jews to establish a Jewish community in Palestine, the location of the ancient Jewish states of Judah and Israel. Jewish people were ousted from the region multiple times, including after losing a war in their attempt to get out from under the control of the Roman Empire in the First Century. Jews then settled across Europe, and later North America, in what has been called the diaspora (the “dispersion” of Jews beyond Israel, or the ancient Jewish homeland in the Middle East).
The desire to establish a Jewish homeland in the Middle East picked up momentum in the late 19th Century, and became particularly intense after the Holocaust engineered by Adolf Hitler and his National Socialists during the Second World War. Finally, Israel was declared an independent nation in Palestine in 1948, despite much opposition from Arabs in the region.
In a letter to Park School, BLM activists accused the Jewish private school of promoting “anti-black violence.” They demanded that the school change its curriculum, admissions practices, and its hiring of faculty and staff. According to the BLM activists, the school is composed of “white supremacist structures and environments of learning, teaching, and community-making.” Using this allegation, they demand that the administration “atone for the deep and painful anti-black violence our black peers have experienced.”
When one considers the attacks upon Jewish-related buildings, such as synagogues, during the BLM-inspired riots across America, these accusations are not surprising. Protesters have defaced Jewish buildings and have demanded that Israel be condemned by American Jews. Others have supported the anti-Semitic rantings of Nation of Islam (Black Muslim) leader Louis Farrakhan. Regarding the state of Israel, Farrakhan said in 1984, “Israel has not had any peace in 40 years and she will never have any peace for there can be no peace structured on lying, murder, and injustice, using the name of Allah [God] as a shield for your dirty religion.” He later argued that he was referring to the “machinations of those who hide behind the shield of Judaism while using unjust political means to achieve their objectives.”
Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg, who has been a leader of Baltimore’s Beth Tfiloh synagogue for four decades, is concerned about the rhetoric of the BLM-associated “Collective,” saying, “There are a lot of code words here that have been associated with anti-Semitic tropes” in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon. “But I don’t like calling people anti-Semitic unless I know them and know that to be true. However, [with] those tropes of ‘parasites’ and ‘wealth hoarding,’ combined with ‘tolerance of Zionism,’ you have to question the motives of these people.”
But instead of simply rejecting the Collective’s fiery rhetoric, the school is, like so many other American institutions, buckling to the demands of the leftist group. Officials with the school have said that they are working with the Collective to institute some reforms, including changes to its “diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.”
Why would the BLM-associated group attack a Jewish school in the first place? Simply put, Jews are often associated with banking, small-business enterprises, and religion, all hated by Marxists. Karl Marx himself, though a Jew, was strongly anti-Semitic and anti-Christian, dismissing religion as “the opiate of the masses,” which he claimed was deadening the economic pain of the proletariat so as to reduce their desire for a violent Marxist revolution.
In one essay, Marx said, “What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man — and turns them into commodities…. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew.”
So, it is not surprising that a Marxist movement such as Black Lives Matter would share Karl Marx’s hatred of private enterprise. Unfortunately, many Jews — and Christians — continue to either support BLM or at least excuse its attacks upon private property across the country. They both need to wake up to the Marxist ideology of BLM.
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Steve Byas is a university instructor of history and government, and the author of History’s Greatest Libels. He may be contacted at [email protected].
