Why its Black Lives not All Lives that Matter

The Response of Liberal Racists is to Downplay the Specificity of the Murder of Black People

Black Lives Matter has grown up in the United States in response to the continued murder of Black people, men in particular, by the racist police forces in the United States.  In reaction to a movement that has grown up in opposition to racism, the usual liberals and overt white racists have been saying ‘All lives matter’.  Which of course they do but it’s not whites who are the target of racist police forces but Black lives.

We also see the nature of Obama – the Black President who is politically White.  When 5 cops were gunned down in Dallas Obama hotfooted it back to the memorial service.  Likewise he didn’t hesitate to condemn the  shooting of 3 cops in Baten Rouge where 2 Black men had previously been murdered.  He wasn’t however able to make it in person to Fergusson in Louisiana when Michael Brown was murdered nor has be spoken up about the literally hundreds of Black people who have been murdered by US cops.  But when Black people seek retribution for those murders then Obama says that violence against the state can never be justified.

Liberals like to portray the US as a democracy but we see how the power that spreads dictatorships throughout the world, from Latin America to the Middle East, is itself thoroughly undemocratic.

The US Police forces are themselves like mini armies.  They have tanks, armoured personnel carriers, tanks and airplanes even.  And if this is not enough there are the National Guard in each state, in essence a wing of the army and the SWAT teams.  In all the United States if the most militarised society in the world. 

Democracy is paper thin in the USA.  Elections are conducted between two capitalist parties – Democrats and Republicans.  They are peas in a pod.  That is why people were energised by the campaign of Bernie Sanders, a traditional social democrat from Vermont who found himself alongside the Democrats.  Big business and capital was mobilised to stop someone who was talking about redistributing wealth, a unified national health service and questioning some aspects of the US’s military role overseas.

The election we have now between Hilary Clinton, the embodiment of a US multi-national and the racist Donald Trump is one that all progressives should avoid.  It is no choice and I would vote for an alternative such as the Green party candidate. 

Tony Greenstein