Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Accuracy in Academia’s website.
While conservatives identify the Orlando massacre as an Islamic terrorist attack and the left blames a variety of factors including conservatives and guns, the Black Lives Matter movement has published its own unique perspective on the cause of this atrocity.
“Despite the media’s framing of this as a terrorist attack, we are very clear that this terror is completely homegrown, born from the anti-Black white supremacy, patriarchy and homophobia of [sic] the conservative right and of those who would use religious extremism as a weapon to gain power for the few and take power from the rest.”
Although the Orlando killer had been investigated by the FBI as a possible terror threat, and despite his declaration of allegiance to ISIS during the attack, Black Lives Matter emphatically asserts that, “The enemy is now and has always been the four threats of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and militarism. These forces and not Islam create terrorism.”
The group repeatedly rejects the notion that Islamic doctrine motivated the murderer. “We will not allow a false narrative of ‘Islamic terrorism’ to be dictated by white supremacists and corporate media.” While denying any linkage between the attack and Islam, the article also states, “Religious extremism is not new to America and is not unique to Islam. For centuries, religion has been used to subjugate queer people of color and lay the groundwork for our deaths.”
Even the left’s attempt to restructure the public discourse into an argument about gun control fails to satisfy Black Lives Matter:
“We will not allow our movement to be dominated by white progressives that still attempt to define our solutions and limit our leadership. We will not allow the vision to be stunted by a gun control agenda with neither racial context nor a clear history of the relationship between white supremacy and guns in the United States.”
The article further explains that while Black Lives Matter agrees with the calls for gun control, “You cannot decry guns without also decrying how those guns were used to take Native land, to enslave Black bodies, to remake ‘Latin America’, and to redefine the western hemisphere. We need more than legislation, more than vigils and prayers, more than donations — we need a deep transformation at the cellular levels of this nation.”
Part of this crusade for societal “transformation,” includes the mainstreaming of LGBTQ lifestyles. Black Lives Matter’s LGBTQ agenda appears in the title of its article: “In Honor of Our Dead: Latinx, Queer, Trans, Muslim, Black — We Will Be Free.” The term “Latinx,” represents a gender-neutral formof the word Latino/Latina.
Black Lives Matter’s article about the Orlando massacre does not comport with the available facts of the case, it only echoes the movement’s preexisting ideology.
Alex Nitzberg is an intern at the American Journalism Center at Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia. Follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
