I blocked out the name of the nut job who posted this tweet, lest he get traffic.
It couldn’t have been closer to “Pò sì jiù!… Down With The Four Olds!”
The tweet is the less eloquent contemporary version of a “big character poster”.
The twit who tweeted this has a page which says that his political party is Black Lives Matter. I didn’t know they were a political party now.
This is from the About page of the official site of Black Lives Matter:
Black Lives Matter Foundation, Inc is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centering Black joy, we are winning immediate improvements in our lives.
I am not entirely sure how destroying religious art (which the property of others) “centers Black joy”. How does that create an “immediate improvement”?
Any person, anywhere, and really for any reason, sincere or not, could claim that is why he did X.
Also from that page:
We are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise.
Big-business abortion, Planned Parenthood was created for the elimination of black lives. They exploite black lives in the worst ways possible.
Has Black Lives Matters denounced and attacked big-business abortion? I really don’t know.
From the Black Lives Matter “What We Believe” page:
We acknowledge, respect, and celebrate differences and commonalities.
We work vigorously for freedom and justice for Black people and, by extension, all people.
We intentionally build and nurture a beloved community that is bonded together through a beautiful struggle that is restorative, not depleting.
We are unapologetically Black in our positioning. In affirming that Black Lives Matter, we need not qualify our position. To love and desire freedom and justice for ourselves is a prerequisite for wanting the same for others.
Is that what we are seeing across the country? Are differences being celebrated? Are commonalities being celebrated? Is freedom and justice for all people being promoted? How beautiful has Black Lives Matters been for the 1500 buildings destroyed or damaged in Minneapolis, including low-income housing? How restorative has it been for the people who owned those buildings? How are the immediate improvements for those who lost their livelihood over night?
How about this?
We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work.
We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
We foster a queer?affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).
I don’t have a clue about who wrote this, but I can’t grasp how “patriarchal” things can be when a huge percentage of families in this communities don’t have full-time, life committed fathers in their homes. I don’t know how much more disrupted the nuclear family structure could be. And … “comfortable”… what does that mean? Not having to overcome any obstacles?
“Queer-affirming”? “Homonormative thinking”?
This stuff is way out there.
Take a look at their “Co-Founders” page. HERE
My great fear is that this movement, as it becomes radicalized among those who are enthusiastic but maybe not very bright, will cause terrible backlashes.
Yesterday I was cursed at and given the finger by a young white woman driving a car with sheets of paper taped to her windows scrawled in black marker with “Black Lives Matter”. Her penpersonship was as finely crafted as the rest of her skills in communication.
I suspect that this poor young thing is so doped up on left-wing talking points, so irrational because of years of lousy public education, that she has not a clue about the meaning of or consequences of her actions. Vast swathes of our young people live consequence free lives.
A small slice of the leadership of this and of other groups want purposely to drive people to recklessness and anarchic violence because they want to spur a harsh counter-reaction from the Right.
They want counter-groups to form with which they can have open war in the streets, all as a prelude to tearing down society.
They destroy public memory through, for example, destruction of statues.
They want a Year Zero.
Everything promoted by the Father of Lies … is that too patriarchal?…, the Serpent… is that too speciesist? …, the Enemy of the Soul has grains of truth which make the susceptible person liable to latch on and to swallow the hook with the lie.
And there is always the technique of telling the lie so often that it punches through incredulity.
A tree is known from its fruits.
As I write this, I am in S. Minneapolis where I grew up, near to where there are blocks of wrecked buildings and damaged lives.
How indifferent to the sufferings of those who will be trampled under the feet of the looter, arsonist, and anarchist are those greater powers with the deep money and the long-term goals?
There is a proverb in French and English, the chilling, “On ne fait pas d’omelette sans casser des oeufs… You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.” This is famously attributed to both Lenin and Robespierre. “So, lots of people die and suffer. If you want to make an omelette, you’ve gotta break some eggs.”
I don’t expect many people younger than I am to know who those two people are, Robespierre and Lenin, given the state of education for the last decades. That’s scary. George Santayana said:
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Meanwhile, we had better think through the implications of a growing movement of mindless destruction. That’s what the loon at the top of this post really wants: destroy everything.
Do you suppose it is a coincidence that neighborhoods and communities purposely targeted by the Planned Parenthood death-for-profit machine for de facto genocide are where the howls of rage and violence now rise?
Is it a surprise that young people whose minds have been turned to slime by the acid flowing from their little screens should buy into the hollow rhetoric of revolution?
Are any of you really puzzled that the confluence of COVID-1984 and the well-orchestrated eruption of anarchy has overlapped this summer, before a Presidential election and an important cycle for the Senate?
The implications to me suggest we priests had better get really serious and stop fiddling around with the half measures of complacency and the easy path of minimal challenges.
If we stick to the squishy path rather than the rocky upward climb of our Tradition, we will sink out of sight in the slow-drowning quicksand of the world.
“But… but… the traditional ways are… are… toooo haaaard!”
I keep talking about our Catholic identity.
If we don’t know who we are, as Catholics, and if we cannot articulate who we are and what we believe, then why should anyone listen to us?
In the public square, powerful catholic politicians make a mockery of the Church in the eyes of the world by their support for things precisely contrary to the precepts of nature and teachings of the Church.
Why should the Church have any influence in the public square?
A lot of people and groups of people have lost their compasses.
Meanwhile, crux stat dum volivitur orbis.
This is where we have to re-orient ourselves, at least we Catholics.
If we want to have any influence in the present state of affairs, we have to reclaim our identity.
If we want to save souls, we have to reclaim our identity.
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Father, your readers may find this post interesting as it examines in depth that person’s history as a con artist and a liar.
BLM is indeed a political organization. It’s co-founder Patrisse Cullors states in this You Tube clip:
“We are Marxists, We are Ideological”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyhy4IvkENg
Father
The race hustling grifter’s attitude reminds of an in passion paragraph of the El silenci dels campaners about the anarchists during the Spanish civil war
The Spanish anarchists centro Médico during tje Mexican Revolution and plate a significant role there implicitly during the Christeros war. The anarchists then returned and put their experience during the civil war.
Some of the antifa fought with the PKK or the YPG I eonder just wonder if the pandas didn’t also burn down churches, looted them and shot at Christians
In any case events have reminded me of Spain under the 2and republic. I think we’re in the Austrian revolt of 1934. And Bela Kun’s Hungarian communist enclave of 1919
xavier
Father: when I read the BLM “about us” page I also wondered at the whole “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family” line since 87% of Black kids don’t have dads in the household anyway.
Then I realized what these radical racists mean is that they want to disrupt/destroy all the non-Black nuclear families.
White paper on blm
https://www.newamericanfrontier.org/report-black-lives-matter
The person who wrote that tweet has an hilarious list of nick names which I won’t post since I don’t want to give him any publicity. He was a minister for a while, but has since done nothing but rabble rousing.
Father George Rutler has a wonderful piece in Crisis today (June 23rd) titled “The Bondage of Cultural Illiteracy” which should be read by everyone in the United States.
I think a meme that says, “Remember Robespierre”, perhaps with a picture of him on the chopping block, would be that “meme worth a thousand words” right now. Oh, I forgot. No one knows who Robespierre is.
I have read that the organization BLM has raised $100 million dollars during this latest campaign of protests. I think it odd that mayors would paint their trademark phrase in their trademark yellow and black colors on public streets using taxpayer dollars. I think both the mayor of Washington DC and NYC have done this.
I’ve seen this person’s original tweet. Perhaps it would be better for him to see Jesus after his scourging because I doubt the main focal point would be Jesus’ ethnicity.
“…his European mother, and their white friends should also come down.”
Not only does he want to destroy art he also wants to insult Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of Kibeho and Our Lady of Akita because clearly they’re all white European images. He also doesn’t seem to know about St. Josephine Bakhita and St. Charles Lwanga or the Korean martyrs, who I assume are the friends of Jesus.
The eugenics connections are frightening – and well documented.
Consider this passage from H.G. Wells:
“It has become apparent that whole masses of the human population are as a whole inferior in their claim upon the future to other masses, that they cannot be given opportunities or trusted with power as the superior peoples are trusted, that their characteristic weaknesses are contagious and detrimental in the civilizing fabric, and their range of incapacity tempts and demoralises the strong. To give them equality is to sink to their level, to protect and cherish them is to be swamped in their fecundity. … There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to smallpox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.”
At LifeSite today, I take a close look at eugenic thinking, which is very much in the backdrop of Planned Parenthood, and a major source of racism.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/h.g-wells-thoughts-on-ridding-the-world-of-contemptible-and-silly-creatures-through-eugenics
Prof K,
This from Havelock Ellis:
The superficially sympathetic man flings a coin to the beggar; the more deeply sympathetic man builds an almshouse for him so he need no longer beg; but perhaps the most radically sympathetic of all is the man who arranges that the beggar shall not be born.
He was an advocate of racial hierarchies, a notion that Cardinal Kasper a few years ago unwittingly endorsed.
There is a kind of parallel to this type of thinking, that took place in the 19th century, the Know Nothing Party. They were primarily against German and Irish Catholics immigrants, but as their name attests they would fit in well with todays rioters.
It is disappointing to see the defacing and destruction of statues. People forget about history, and in school many students don’t remember much the week after cramming for the examination.
It’s sad to see statues of St. Junipero Serra being defaced, vandalized, and having protests. Serra was very helpful in bringing Catholicism to the United States and there are many missions in California.
What’s the difference between a rampant campaign on statue smashing and the historic campaigns on book burning ? It looks like history is repeating itself.
They will come for the churches. They will come to deface them, to burn them, to desecrate them. What is the correct response? The police will not protect them. The mayors and the governors will not protect them. They do not WANT to protect them. Do the laity make a stand at their church? Risk getting attacked, hurt, even killed? Risk creating a “war in the streets?” Do the laity stand peacefully and get abused? Do they stand stoically with weapons exposed? Do they risk getting arrested by the same police who won’t arrest the rioters? Sent to jail by the same District Attorneys who won’t prosecute the rioters? Do we all just sit by and let them burn our churches?
WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO? Some leadership from somewhere, anywhere, would be quite helpful right now. Without leadership, this WILL get very, very ugly very, very soon.
1. In response to the chaos, maybe some bishop, priest, minister or pundit has been urging Catholics and Christians to run for public office, especially the school board, but if so I’ve missed it.
2. How come no one is responding to ” Defund the Police” with “Defund Public Schools”? Where do we think these nihilistic, ignorant mobs are coming from?
3. The public schools are atheistic and hostile to Western civilization. Instead of passing on the culture, as they are supposed to, they are savaging it. The youngsters tearing down our monuments are merely demonstrating that they have learned their lessons well. Surely their teachers are proud of them.
4. How come no one is suggesting that solid citizens go out of their way to thank the police, that they campaign for a ten per cent raise and an extra week’s vacation for all police officers? No, really, why not?
We ought to do what we can to boost their morale, but besides the above, what would that be?
[Good point. What offices have you run for or served in?]
@LeeGilbert: Actually, my husband and son just delivered $100 of Black Rifle Coffee’s “Thin Blue Line” blend to our local Corpus Christi PD with a big “Thank You” as a way of showing support. It’s what we could do.
Excellent piece, Father Z.
Why, I am already fully committed to making good points, here a little, there a little, and, besides, as a driver of school children from their new foster home to their old school district for the past twelve years I have absorbed so much wisdom from them that I am overqualified for practically anything else.
Nevertheless, as you intimate, I should probably at least try for the library board or the mosquito abatement district before wishing my thoughts on the world at large. Until I at least do that please disregard anything I may have said, good point or no..
Aw, LeeGilbert, we all do exactly what you just did, offer a thought, and here I am about to do it as well. We’re watching a revolution in real time. There were two experts in their field on the Mark Levin show the other night, who said roughly 95% of media and academia were liberals, and both support the revolution. The Democrat party has been taken over by Marxists, but maybe we should have known this, seeing AOC and how powerful she has become in record time. Only Barack Obama rose faster, running for president after being a senator for 3 months, and making it.
I can’t stand the thought people think this is about police except to take them out of society so there is chaos and license to do what they will. Black people are handy excuses, this has nothing to do with them, but some of them probably don’t realize that. They could care less about the lives of black people. President Trump has done so much more for the lives of black people than Barack Obama did in 8 years and all the Democrats did before him. White people are just dumb. These anyway. Young and stupid is no way to go through life, but they will. Public education, where again, it’s probably 95% Democrat (Marxist). They definitely hate America. Here come those chickens home to roost!
There is no leadership. I think President Trump is considering executive orders for defending monuments but even he can’t run a nation by himself. Our GOP leadership is failing us and him, they are USELESS. Congressman Kevin McCarthy is the House Minority Leader. What is he tweeting these days? About Syria! He apparently hasn’t noticed the coup going on in his own homeland, and a successful one!
We’re up against it. If you have a revolution and the opposition gives in, as America apparently has, rewarding the people who bring it and punishing the people who defend against it, the outcome is obvious. Have they already won? Maybe. The mission is accomplished, Americans are totally demoralized, and I can only imagine once they start firebombing churches and pulling down statues of Christ. God help us. There will be a resistance, but will it be enough when everything but God is against you. We’ll see.
Facts, science, math, statistics and belief that all lives matter is racist. Now God is racist, who knew? Well, have someone else to add to my prayer list for conversion.
The Church (and that is all of us) must discern the glimmer of truth that is driving this protest. The left was upset with Trump’s victory and failed to understand the alienation of white workers in the Midwest who turned to Trump as he railed against free trade, promised to increase wastes, and return manufacturing to the Midwest. While many colleagues saw him as a demagogue, I nonetheless urged them to discern the truth that gave rise to “Trumpism” aka nationalism. Similarly here, there are wide swathes if disaffected minorities. Racism, classism, discrimination exist and they exist systematically.
At the turn of the century, Leo XIII faced Communism and he did not respond to the the movement by rushing to defend instead liberal capitalism, he found balance in Rerum Novarum.
Don’t get sucked in by the corporate MSM – there is something rotten in the state of the USA and it involves the economic and political system, Trump touched a nerve – deep state, etc is no longer language of the fringe. There is an administrative state that is frustrating the advancement of many poor folks – many but not all of whom are radicalized minorities.
Be as wise as serpents ! We must carve a Catholic response and that Catholic response cannot be advancing the interests of our neo-liberal, corporatist leaders (and that includes both R and D
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The time for action is now – to open our churches. We need the Sacraments.
I’m sure the libs have noticed that many US city names, especially in California, are religious in origin. Soon there will be a move to re-name them – San Francisco, San Bernadino, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Santa Barbara, and many more. I suppose they can rename them after movie stars, or liberal politicans, or gay and transgender heroes. San Francisco can become Harvey Milktown, Sacramento can become Nancyville, and Los Angeles can fight about the problem forever. Eventually the new icons will be trashed and the thriving Marxist government will give each city a computer generated code, like a password, and that will be that. “Where are you from?” “wizzywits2079, in the foothills of the 7-90416 mountains. I loved it there!” “Oh, I went there on vacation, once. Great skiing!”
Father, Kathleen writes, ” The mission is accomplished, Americans are totally demoralized, and I can only imagine once they start firebombing churches and pulling down statues of Christ. God help us” . . .which is what the twit on twitter wants.
I was thinking of dropping a note to our apartment complex manager suggesting that say, on Wednesdays, they have a buffet in the community center here for any police office that wanted to drop by and grab some free grub and coffee. It wouldn’t have to be much, nowhere near as much as they have for a retiring employee. To this I’d be happy to contribute, say, $50 per month (which, of course, will have to come out of my campaign budget).
But in terms of protecting churches, could not pastors do something similar? It would be a three-fer, both showing appreciation for the police, creating deeper good-will with them, as well as making sure that police are frequently seen coming and going.
It could take a lot of different forms, of course, from coffee and donuts after the daily Mass . . . to Subway sandwiches at 10Pm on Saturday nights.
Xavier: “Some of the antifa fought with the PKK or the YPG…” Good point.
Take it with a grain of salt, from Rolling Stone several years ago:
“But the YPG is not your typical ethnic or sectarian faction. Its fighters are loyal to an imprisoned guerrilla leader who was once a communist but now espouses the same kind of secular, feminist, anarcho-libertarianism as Noam Chomsky or the activists of Occupy Wall Street. The Kurds are implementing these ideals in Rojava, and that has attracted a ragtag legion of leftist internationals…who have come from nearly every continent to help the YPG beat ISIS and establish an anarchist collective amid the rubble of the war – a “stateless democracy”…”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/the-anarchists-vs-the-islamic-state-109047/
The “Antifa Platoon”:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/untold-story-syria-antifa-platoon-666159/
BLM co-founders have been publicly photographed with Venezuelan dictator Maduro.
“…1500 buildings destroyed or damaged in Minneapolis, including low-income housing.”
A June 19 article after about three weeks of riots:
“More than 1,500 buildings across the Twin Cities have been vandalized, looted or had doors and windows smashed. Some have been reduced to rubble, and dozens have been destroyed completely by fire. Others have reported extensive water damage or severe fire damage.”
https://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-st-paul-buildings-are-damaged-looted-after-george-floyd-protests-riots/569930671/
Twin Cities population estimated at 3.6 million.
Reuters article from Feb. 2016:
“Around 5,700 structures in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi and its outskirts have incurred some level of damage since mid-2014, and almost 2,000 buildings have been destroyed, the United Nations said on Monday, citing satellite images.”
AP article from May 2016:
“Photographs provided to The Associated Press by satellite imagery and analytics company DigitalGlobe show more than 3,000 buildings and nearly 400 roads and bridges were damaged or destroyed between May 2015, when Ramadi fell to ISIS, and Jan. 22, after most of the fighting had ended.”
The estimated population of Ramadi is 0.3-0.4 million.
That iconoclast wrote: “In the Bible, when the family of Jesus wanted to hide, and blend in, guess where they went? EGYPT!”
Speaking of North Africa, when the Vandals sacked Hippo in the 5th century they spared St. Augustine’s cathedral and library.
Interesting that you mention that on the Feast of Prosper of Aquitaine.
Live Long and Prosper.
Fr. Z: Please excuse the multiple links.
LeeGilbert makes a good point, that clown on Twitter wants the Faithful to be demoralized.
Non possumus.
A priest defending a statue of St. Louis:
https://mobile.twitter.com/breeadail/status/1276980274883149824
A woman prays the Rosary in Madison…
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2020/06/25/woman-harassed-by-blm-activist-in-madison-returns-to-pray-the-rosary/
Eye to eye…
https://mobile.twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1276712782231228416/photo/1
In the hour of need…
https://mobile.twitter.com/ForAmerica/status/1266798460692582400?p=v
The Archbishop rebuking Satan, all his pomps, all his works:
https://mobile.twitter.com/TaylorRMarshall/status/1276993605832519681/photo/1
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.