After the deplorable racist and violent incidents that happened over the weekend in Charlottesville, Va., many have spoken out against the white supremacists involved and called for action to be taken. One state senator in North Carolina took it a step beyond by calling Black Lives Matter a “violent, racist movement” and comparing it to those waving Nazi flags.
Dan Bishop is a Republican who represents Senate District 39 in Mecklenburg County. On Sunday he took to his Twitter account to condemn the events that happened in Charlottesville, which he called terrorism. He then said that those involved must be stopped, right along with members of the anti-fascist and Black Lives Matter movements.
“Must declare even if unilaterally,” Biship wrote. “1) That was terrorism 2) Racist alt-right must be condemned 3) Antifa, BLM also.”
Bishop ended his tweet with the #Charlottesville hashtag.
Twitter user Jeb Stuart (@jebstuart) immediately asked Bishop if he was equating Black Lives Matter with those waving Nazi flags.
“Yes. Both violent, racist movements,” Bishop replied.
“What is racist about acknowledging the humanity of black people?” Stuart asked.
“I had in mind their chant: ‘pigs in a blanket, fry em like bacon.’ But knew better than to expect reciprocal decency,” Bishop wrote.
Stuart went on to ask Bishop if the fundamental purposes of the two movements are morally equivalent. Bishop never answered that question.
I’m going to guess that the reason Bishop avoided answering that question is that he knows the two movements are nothing alike, and this latest push to create fault “on both sides” is just another derailment meant to make the racist right look less evil than it really is.
The whole “pigs in a blanket, fry em like bacon” is nothing that I have ever heard chanted at a Black Lives Matter demonstration, and I’ve been to plenty of them. It is an overused rumor meant to cast a negative light on a movement that simply wants acknowledgment that black people deserve to live just like everyone else.
No one is ever able to point to any concrete evidence of BLM demonstrations actually using that chant; nor are they able to list any any actual acts of domestic terrorism committed by any member of Black Lives Matter.
We do have, as Twitter user @NCleftist points out, a real list of acts of domestic terror committed by right-wing terrorists—60 of them since 1995, to be exact.
People who see Black Lives Matter as a racist group just by virtue of the name are, in fact, racists themselves.
If the fight for the humanity of black people is one that disturbs you, you need to analyze your own problems and leave the rest of us alone.