Cullors’ response to the inquiry so far has been to deflect criticism by accusing skeptics of “anti-Black” sentiment and “right wing” bias. But much of the criticism is coming from liberals—even from those she claims to speak on behalf of.
Joining liberal strongholds like California in criticizing BLM are Samaria Rice, the mother of 12-year-old Tamir Rice who was killed by cops while playing with a toy gun, and Lisa Simpson, the mother of 18-year-old Richard Risher shot in Watts. The two mothers released a joint statement in 2021 admonishing BLM and other celebrity activists like Tamika Mallory and Shaun King for profiting from the spectacle of police brutality. They, too, brought up the lack of transparency regarding fund distribution across BLM chapters, organizers and communities.
“We never hired them to be the representatives in the fight for justice for our dead loved ones murdered by the police,” Tamir Rice’s mother said. “The ‘activists’ have events in our cities and have not given us anything substantial for using our loved ones’ images and names on their flyers.”
The statement goes on: “We don’t want or need y’all parading in the streets accumulating donations, platforms, movie deals, etc. off the death of our loved ones, while the families and communities are left clueless and broken.”
Yet when Cullors was asked about the growing scrutiny and criticism in an interview with Morehouse College, Cullors dismissed the backlash as “anti-Black sentiment.” “What’s so effective about the right-wing media disinformation and misinformation strategy is that they deploy it inside the Black community,” Cullors said, specifically smearing her Black critics as being the puppets of a right wing disinformation campaign.
“To see them post about me, and then the Black media—I put in quotes, not all black media is actually Black—spread those rumors… I was naive to think Black journalists and Black media would be interested in talking to me first versus spreading misinformation and disinformation,” Cullors said.
Cullors’ use of emotionally charged phrases like “anti-Blackness” and “disinformation” in order to obfuscate valid state and community concerns is disturbing. But it’s not unique. Rather, it’s a particularly egregious example of what has become commonplace on the Left.
Pervasive misuse of the term “disinformation” is currently the favored instrument for “progressive” organizations, politicians and media figures to stave off accountability by implying that detractors are aligned with or influenced by extreme ideas or dangerous prejudices. It’s a clever sleight of hand that invalidates skepticism by casting it as a moral failure.
This deceptive tactic was at play during Joe Biden’s presidential campaign when then-candidate Biden infamously accused African American voters of not being Black if they were not on his side. In so doing, he was implying that a failure to support the “right” candidate was tantamount to betrayal of the Black community.
You can see the same tactic in the corporate liberal media’s claims that anyone opposed to U.S. intervention in Ukraine is guilty of “Putin Apologia.” You can see it at work in the conflation of anti-mandate sentiment with anti-vax sentiment, as in the coverage of the Canadian truckers’ convoy.
It’s rather brilliant: Turn legitimate criticism into a moral failure of the critic and evade having to respond to it. It’s especially effective at hiding the fact that the criticism is coming from your own side.
And there’s the rub: Public skepticism of modern progressive and social justice movements is not just a favorite pastime of the “far right,” as leftists, progressives and Democratic loyalists would have you believe. It has become increasingly common across cultural and party lines in a climate where ordinary Americans are witnessing frequent examples of progressives in power hiding an unprincipled will to power behind a deceptive moral camouflage.
Patrice Cullors’ casual use of the term “disinformation” is clearly employed to have a similarly disarming impact by subtly implying that even the most sincere skeptics of BLM are somehow traitors, moral failures, or tacitly endorsing harmful racial ideologies.
But the public statements of the BLM co-founder are an unfortunate example of the extreme cognitive dissonance it requires to successfully mirror the deceptive mode of the liberal establishment while claiming to represent deprived communities. The lack of principle demonstrated by liberal elites encourages activists like Cullors to weaponize guilt and fear in order to mask growing disillusionment with the BLM movement and potential legal and moral culpability for accumulating millions during an intense period of racial trauma and tension.
It is incredibly dangerous for the moral credibility of any movement or organization to hinge on shifting the blame for its contradictions to emotionally charged specters or—worse—it’s own constituency. The more this happens, the more intense the backlash will be as people grow tired of the moral grandstanding and emotional manipulation that is being weaponized by the liberal establishment.
Angie Speaks is a cultural commentator and cohost of the Low Society Podcast.
The views in this article are the writer’s own.
