Where’s the Omelet? Black Lives Matter Chicago Answers George Orwell’s Question – Wirepoints

By: Mark Glennon*

“You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” In George Orwell’s day — the 1930s — that’s what supporters of violent, Marxist revolution often said in justification.

Orwell, the stunningly prescient author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, had a simple response: “Where’s the omelet?”

An honest look at the omelet offered by Black Lives Matter is long overdue, particularly for BLM Chicago. What do they want? Do its supporters and apologists know?

Where’s their omelet?

In an interview about Black Lives Matter, its national co-founder Patrisse Cullors said, “We actually do have an ideological frame. “Myself and Alicia [Alicia Garza, another co-founder] in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists.”

Chicago BLMers are likewise trained.

Watch the video meeting they hosted last week titled, “Black Abolitionist Huddle: On How We Win Police Abolition.” You will see that many of them are very fluent with Marxist rhetoric, particularly the modern version focused on toppling “late stage capitalism.”

On Twitter, BLM Chicago said this, which you could imagine coming from a reincarnated, woke, twenty-something Vladimir Lenin:

Stay in the streets! The system is throwing every diversionary and de-mobilizing tactic at us. We are fighting to end policing and prisons as a system which necessitates fighting white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchial imperialism. Vet your comrades and stay focused.

That BLM Chicago video and its other statements should also put to bed lingering spin that its demand to defund police actually means just reimagining how policing works and partial redirection of resources.

They mean abolish the police. That’s their word for it.

Abolish prisons, too. Here’s their separate post on that.

Don’t stop there. The entire Department of Corrections must end. On Twitter, BLM Chicago said,

We say #DefundThePolice and #DefundDepOfCorrections because they work in tandem. The rise of mass incarceration occurred alongside the rise of militarized and mass policing. They must be abolished as a system.

What they don’t say is perhaps more important than what they say. There’s no condemnation of violence. With BLM graffiti covering so much of Chicago, there’s no doubt many members and supporters participated in the vandalism.

BLM’s evolution with Marxism was described nicely by The Federalist in 2016, which showed how parts of BLM’s platform read like they were lifted straight from the pages of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. BLM faded in popularity around then and politicians began to shy away from mentioning it, mostly because of its controversial positions like that.

BLM nevertheless became mainstream just in the past couple months. It’s easy to find BLM yard signs and seemingly reasonable people who have marched with BLMers or carried its signs.

I know some of the apologists and supporters, and you may, too. Some marched. Some are friends. They are peaceful and principled just like most protesters were, genuinely fed up with racial inequality and police misconduct.

But they, too, must answer Orwell’s question. Where’s the omelet? More precisely, what is the omelet they think BLM hopes to serve up? Why the indifference to support for a violent, Marxist revolution and the anarchy of abolishing police and prisons?

The least charitable explanations are that they are just foolish or uninformed – unaware of what BLM is about. Others understand fully and approve. Those explanations do account for some of BLM’s support.

A more charitable explanation probably covers most who embrace BLM, which is that they seek only to make a statement about police misconduct and racial justice, and they might point to some of BLM’s other deeds, like food banks.

“Black Lives Matter” is also just a phrase, they might say might say; never mind the organization. And the organization has many chapters that aren’t all singing the same tune. They might point to BLM’s own Facebook page that says, “This group is one of many iterations of #BlackLivesMatter: a movement, a rebellion, an affirmation, an intervention… and so much more.”

But that murkiness about phrasing, organization and diffused power is precisely what makes BLM dangerous. It allows peaceful protesters to be used as pawns who carry their signs and draw law enforcement away from rioters. It sucks in the well-intentioned but gullible, especially the young. Most importantly, its disbursed leadership and the vague distinction from an ambiguous phrase are the perfect cocktail for intoxicating society into the stupor essential for violent revolutions to succeed: chaos.

Let’s put that more bluntly: Well-intentioned BLM supporters are getting had. The majority of those either using the BLM phrase or supporting the organization are being used on behalf of a violent, chaotic insurrection.

They are also supporting, deliberately or not, the nonviolent but vicious mob now running unchallenged across America.

Though twice as many Americans and a majority of black Americans prefer the All Lives Matter phrase over Black Lives Matter, saying so can get you fired. Grant Napear,  a 32-year veteran TV voice of the Sacramento Kings, lost his job simply for saying, “All Lives Matter, every single one.”

Similar stories now fill the news.

The poll therefore only highlights the size of the potential purge by the mob.

Tear down a statue of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson and spray it with BLM? No problem. The police stand aside. But questioning BLM will put your career and reputation at risk.

Don’t expect BLM supporters to answer Orwell’s question about the omelet they think they’ll get from breaking some eggs because they see questions, too, as racist.

If you want Orwell’s answer, here it is, from Nineteen Eighty-Four:

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped.

One thing BLM says should be universally accepted, though for different reasons. “Silence is violence,” they say.

Indeed it is.

If the two-thirds of Americans who believe all lives matter continue to remain silent, expect more violence from many causes:

• Racism will surge thanks to passions deliberately inflamed by identity politics. Poverty will soar as businesses flee Chicago and other big cities.
• Shrunken budgets and emptied prisons will overload police departments.
• The Ferguson effect will embolden thugs, initially, but bad apples in the police will later respond with a vengeance.
• And trained Marxists will pursue their dream of violent insurrection.

There’s your omelet.

*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.