This is quite a look for the 'official' national Black Lives Matter organization, whose radicalism is consistently and aggressively off-putting even to many who support the meaning behind the three word mantra they purport to represent. There's a major distinction between black lives matter and Black Lives Matter, as the latter entity seems hellbent on alienating large swaths of Americans -- hence a clear decline in public support for the movement. And now, as the public awaits a verdict in the Jussie Smollett trial, BLM's brain trust has decided to let the world know that they're backing the shameless hate crime hoaxer. Not doing so, as abjectly embarrassingly as it is, would be tantamount to believing the evidence. Which was gathered in part by the police. Which must be abolished. And thus, a self-inflicted humiliation is defiantly announced:
National BLM organization statement on Smollett: “In our commitment to [police] abolition, we can never believe police…over Jussie Smollett, a Black man who has been courageously present, visible, and vocal in the struggle for Black freedom.” https://t.co/mSXpu9EyN3
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) December 8, 2021
As abolitionists, we approach situations of injustice with love and align ourselves with our community. Because we got us. So let’s be clear: we love everybody in our community. It’s not about a trial or a verdict decided in a white supremacist charade, it’s about how we treat our community when corrupt systems are working to devalue their lives. In an abolitionist society, this trial would not be taking place, and our communities would not have to fight and suffer to prove our worth. Instead, we find ourselves, once again, being forced to put our lives and our value in the hands of judges and juries operating in a system that is designed to oppress us, while continuing to face a corrupt and violent police department, which has proven time and again to have no respect for our lives. In our commitment to abolition, we can never believe police, especially the Chicago Police Department (CPD) over Jussie Smollett, a Black man who has been courageously present, visible, and vocal in the struggle for Black freedom...Policing at-large is an irredeemable institution...
This incoherent word salad amounts to an explicit rejection of factual information, and law enforcement broadly. Because some people evidently need to hear this: It is not remotely "courageous" or helpful to "freedom" of any kind to pay co-conspirators to commit a bogus 'hate crime' against you, in order to gain notoriety, claim false victimhood, increase the size of your paycheck, and smear political opponents. Also, as several people have asked, why is it that Black Lives Matter has chosen to reject the word of two other black men who've testified to Smollett's guilt? Do they not matter as much, for some unexplained reason? Do they not count as the community with which BLM aligns itself? People are welcome to continue supporting this organization because people are free to make self-discrediting decisions. After all, it's a free country, not a white supremacist one. Meanwhile, the Smollett trial -- the outcome of which is now in the hands of the jury -- has been downright hilarious in some respects, writes National Review's Kyle Smith:
[The so-called attackers'] field commander is an insistently moronic fraud. The Iwo Jima flag they struggle to raise is the reputation of a dim actor who thought he would raise his profile by telling the world that he was attacked by the world’s least likely lynch mob — a duo of black MAGA-heads who just happened to have bleach and a noose on them in case Jussie Smollett should walk by. At two o’clock in the morning. On an exceptionally cold Chicago night. Then walked away after 30 seconds without robbing their victim or doing him more than superficial harm...As for the Smollett pals testifying against him, they produced a $3,500 check Jussie had written them as advance payment, because the ringmaster of this flea circus was too dumb to understand that cash is the preferred payment method when doing stuff you don’t want others to find out about. Smollett’s lawyers’ explanation? That was merely for nutritional tips. The supposed nutritional-advisory siblings said no one had ever paid them more than $100 for such advice before...
...Another thing you really ought not to do with co-conspirators who are going to be posing as your attackers is exchange conspiratorial-sounding texts with them, such as the one Smollett sent to Abimbola Osundairo a few days before the attack: “Might need your help on the low?” Prosecutors showed that the Osundairos took a ride-share service and a taxi to the location of the scene of the fake attack but got there early. A surveillance video shows them waiting patiently on a bench for their fellow play-actor to appear. Using Instagram, Smollett advised the brothers that the attack, originally planned for 10 p.m., would have to be put off for a few hours because his flight out of LaGuardia would be delayed...Framing the attack as an episode of homophobia opens up more questions that Smollett can’t answer: If the brothers were looking to attack a random gay person and had an irrepressible 2 a.m. urge to do so, why didn’t they just go to the gay neighborhood where one of them had worked? And why stay up till 2 a.m. on a bitterly cold night hoping a gay black fellow might come strolling along? If they specifically and only hated Smollett, how could they have been so confident that Smollett was going to come walking into their path that they prepared in advance by carrying a noose and filling a hot-sauce bottle with bleach?
And then, of course, there was the dry run the day before the "attack" -- and the hilarious claim that Smollett ventured out in the dead of night, in the frigid cold, to fetch some eggs at a drug store because the brothers had instructed him to do so for his health regimen. In advance of a 9:30 am training session that mysteriously never occurred. But was also never canceled. It's okay to laugh at the idiocy of this moronic plot, as disgusting as it was at its core. And I hate to break it to this defense lawyer, but yes, his client very clearly is this dumb:
"He’s dumb enough to go into Obama’s city and pretend there’s Trump supporters running around with Maga hats? Give me a break." -- Smollett defense attorney tells jury in closing arguments
— Matt Finn (@MattFinnFNC) December 8, 2021
As we await the verdict (remember, all Smollett's team needs to do is convince one gullible or woke juror to possibly earn a mistrial), I'll leave you with this flashback, which truly is mind-blowing in retrospect. Imagine ever believing this garbage, or at least pretending to:
This interview wasn't believable at the time, but it is really a work of art knowing everything we know now. https://t.co/aX4RsiXKIy
— AG (@AGHamilton29) December 8, 2021
UPDATE - I discussed all of this on the radio:
