Simply repackage the same ideas and methodology, but use different words to redefine reality. No, really. That is exactly what is happening today.
In the underground movie, “The Prestige”, the magician starts with the Pledge. The Pledge is where the magician starts by showing the audience something ordinary to connect them into the story.
BLM’s Pledge started with Trayvon Martin. Sorry, the BLM false narrative began with Trayvon Martin. You remember him, right?
On February 26, 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon was walking home through a neighborhood community when George Zimmerman, a private neighborhood watch volunteer, called police stating someone looked suspicious and they needed to come out. The police advised Zimmerman to stop following the person and advised they didn’t need to come out.
Zimmerman took it upon himself to leave his vehicle, ignore the advice of the police, and confront Martin. The shot(s) heard ‘round the world took place in that encounter as Zimmerman fatally shot Martin. The weeks to follow upheld a core principle of criminal justice in our country - innocent until proven guilty.
The Chief of Police remarked charges could not be levied against Zimmerman on March 12th due to a lack of probable cause. Much like the other losses of life throughout the country in 2012, this was a tragedy. But this was something that happened and the elements of the criminal justice system were in place.
However, what made this different was shaped from an encounter in 2008 between Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley and Henry Gates. The arrest of a someone based on legitimate probable cause.
The arrest by a white police officer of a black man - a black man who was a close friend of then-President Obama. When then-President Obama stated the police “acted stupidly” in their arrest of Gates, he arranged the racial tension bonfire that was just waiting for a spark to set it ablaze.
Read more on this in Dr. Travis Yates groundbreaking book, The Courageous Police Leader, for a more complete analysis on how the spin began.
So, moving to the Pledge. Organized structured protestors - the likes of which we have seen bused in from Berkley to Ferguson - were not content that probable cause was not established.
Cowardly leaders rolled over to meet the demands of these “activists” and their assertions, which now were being portrayed as the slaying of an unarmed black teenager at the hands of a white cop. Now enter the Turn.
The Turn
The magician takes the relatively ordinary and makes it do something extraordinary causing a ripple in the consciousness of those watching.
See what turn this situation took! A Hispanic volunteer neighborhood watch member shot and killed a black teenager. Mere months later activists intentionally turned the ordinary story into an extraordinary murder of an unarmed black boy at the heavy hands of the white cops.
And that was the spark needed to ignite the Obama haystack of race rioting, “us vs. them” attitudes, and a complete breakdown in the moral fabric of our society.
From this turn was launched the Black Lives Matter group. In 2020, The Heritage Foundation looked back and put forth an editorial commentary on BLM’s beginnings and goals first published in the New York Post.
The following is an excerpt of that article where the three founders were interviewed:
"…BLM leaders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tomet in a revealing 2015 interview, Cullors said, 'Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists.'
That same year, Tomet was hobnobbing with Venezuela’s Marxist dictator Nicolás Maduro, of whose regime she wrote: 'In these last 17 years, we have witnessed the Bolivarian Revolution champion participatory democracy and construct a fair, transparent election system recognized as among the best in the world.'
"Millions of Venezuelans suffering under Maduro’s murderous misrule presumably couldn’t be reached for comment.
"Visit the Black Lives Matter website, and the first frame you get is a large crowd with fists raised and the slogan “Now We Transform.” Read the list of demands, and you get a sense of how deep a transformation they seek.
"One proclaims: 'We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear-family-structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another.'
"A partner organization, the Movement for Black Lives, or M4BL, calls for abolishing all police and all prisons. It also calls for a 'progressive restructuring of tax codes at the local, state and federal levels to ensure a radical and sustainable redistribution of wealth.'
"Another M4BL demand is 'the retroactive decriminalization, immediate release and record expungement of all drug-related offenses and prostitution and reparations for the devastating impact of the ‘war on drugs’ and criminalization of prostitution.'
"This agenda isn’t what most people signed up for when they bought their Spanx or registered for Airbnb. Nor is it what most people understood when they expressed sympathy with the slogan that Black Lives Matter.
"Garza first coined the phrase in a July 14, 2013, Facebook post the day George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin. Her friend Cullors put the hashtag in front and joined the words, so it could travel through social media. Tometi thought of creating an actual digital platform, BlackLivesMatter.com.
"The group became a self-styled global network in 2014 and a “fiscally sponsored project” of a separate progressive nonprofit in 2016, according to Robert Stilson of the Capital Research Center. This evolution has helped embolden an agenda vastly more ambitious than just #DefundthePolice.
"The goals of the Black Lives Matter organization go far beyond what most people think. But they are hiding in plain sight, there for the world to see, if only we read beyond the slogans and the innocuous-sounding media accounts of the movement.
"The group’s radical Marxist agenda would supplant the basic building block of society—the family—with the state and destroy the economic system that has lifted more people from poverty than any other. Black lives, and all lives, would be harmed.
"Theirs is a blueprint for misery, not justice. It must be rejected."
And Hocus-Pocus…Abracadabra! The Turn redirected people from the truth into a created narrative intentionally crafted to destabilize our country so it could be rebuilt into a Marxist regime.
No, the flag flying you see isn’t another Black Lives Matter call to action, it’s an ISIS terrorist cell flag audaciously mocking freedom in favor of fear tactics and murder. And its similarities are not a coincidence.
Don’t believe me? On May 23, 2023, Rev. Amos Brown, a “reparations task force member” was quoted as saying, “You cannot put a dollar sign on what has been done to Black people."
This was said by Dr. Amos Brown, a civil rights activist and reverend of the Third Baptist Church, to Fox News Digital. "Our sin bill in this nation has been so high, and because of the long years of doing nothing, the interest has grown.”
To what, you might ask? How about $800 billion dollars. That’s right. $1.2 million dollars per person. California is currently facing a $32 billion dollar deficit in their own budget. Where would the money come from, you say?
Doesn’t matter, proponents argue. This is what extorting a state actor looks like, by the way. Our country doesn’t cut deals with terrorists, unless they call themselves activists I guess. Now we’ve entered the Prestige.
The Prestige
In the Prestige, the magician revels in the mystery of the Turn and recommits the audience to an even more audacious trick: Make that which had disappeared reappear yet again.
As mentioned in the opening paragraph, the wave of support creating the most anti-police rhetoric seen in recent history was fueled off the half-truths and outright lies put forth in and through the media on the police-involved shootings involving white cops and black victims.
It’s not up for debate anymore on this reality. One of the founders, Patrise Cullors, was eviscerated in 2022 when the IRS demanded proper financial accounting for the approximate $42 million dollars raised in assets for the organization - of which Cullors offered none.
Further, their revenue dropped 88% in 2022 after self-enrichment scandals and other infighting over money were brought to the surface.
The approximate $90 million dollars made through the “foundation” was earned igniting race riots across the country based on how white cops kill black people. You know, exactly how George Zimmerman did against Trayvon Martin.
A new board for BLM is putting the pieces back together with alleged transparency but the horse is already out of the barn and people have come to see the Marxism that drove that entire philosophy. News flash - It was never about black lives that matter. It was always about power and control.
Don’t believe me? In a free marketplace of ideas propagated by a constitutional republic in a democracy, dissenting opinions are necessary to cull the best discussions to the forefront.
We will see what the new version of this Marxist-leaning, United States of America destroying hate group will masquerade as next. But as public as they make their rebrand, they cannot escape the cultural shift taking place now or overcome the indelible stain left by their movement founded in the bowels of anti-American hatred.
The American people - both black and white - are tired of paying over $5 dollars a gallon for gas. They are tired of being lied to by the media, the FBI, and the government they thought was representing their interests (read “They’re Lying” by Liz Collin and stand by.) And they are tired of being used as pawns in a proxy war against freedom.
Public sentiment is shifting back again to supporting the police. Businesses are not willing to get in line with hat in hand for payouts to buy their silence. And the Democratic party is experiencing a demographic shift where African Americans are now aligning with a Republican platform because, as Presidential-candidate Sen. Tim Scott said on his campaign announcement, "I will rebuild and restore every rung of the ladder that helped me climb, because I want my American story to pale in comparison to yours.”
Our story is just starting to be written and we will not accept the BLM footnotes of the past as our future legacy anymore. Grab your pen and join the tribe of courageous leaders laying out each chapter as we go!
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can listen to Jeff discuss this vital principle on a recent Courageous Leadership Podcast. He has over 20 years in law-enforcement working through patrol, investigations, and special operations both at the line level and as a supervisor.
Through the last 20 years, Jeff has embraced his passion instructing officers and civilians through the nobility of policing. He is a certified FranklinCovey Nobility of Policing instructor, as well as a certified instructor for the Blue Courage curriculum. Jeff holds a master’s degree in criminal justice with a focus on terrorism and homeland security and teaches in that discipline at the college level.
He is a graduate of the FBI-LEEDA Supervisor Leadership Institute program consistently implementing servant-leadership into training the next generation of law-enforcement professionals in both courageous leadership
and followership.
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