Black Lives Matter Is a Marxist Movement | Interviews

I believe that the organization itself is using black people to advance a Marxist agenda and the corporations, the schools, the churches, the people that have gotten behind Black Lives Matter, the organization, they think they're helping black people. They think they're showing support for black people, but actually it's the opposite. Hi, I'm Carol Swain, former professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University. Before that, I was a tenured professor at Princeton University. I am a conservative. I have a podcast. I write articles and books. I am educating the world. The world is my classroom. Welcome to my classroom. I want to thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. And in your intro, you talked about how you are a conservative and people will look at you and say, a black conservative? I didn't know those people existed. How did you get to the point of where you're at now? Well, I was born and raised in the country, a rural Virginia, a southerner. And so with that comes common sense. Now, common sense is in short supply these days. So I had common sense. And so even when I was a Democrat and I was not a conservative, I was not necessarily seeing the world as everyone else did. And so I can always say that my perspective on the world was different. I think that helped explain that I did have success in academia during the years that I was a Democrat. But after I had a Christian conversion experience and I became more conservative, then the world changed for me. It's kind of the common sense values. I totally agree with that because I went through college and I thought I was a liberal or more a leftist type of person. But then I realized that the common sense values that I had actually wind up with conservatism. And I found that a lot of people actually have those same kind of values. Right now in America, especially at the universities and with all these young people rioting and marching in the streets, we're seeing really, like you said, a huge lack of common sense. What do you think is the biggest problem facing these communities right now? One of the biggest problems is that young people who have been educated at our colleges, universities, middle schools, that they're not being taught critical thinking skills and that it's so much indoctrination. And so they are out there, bless their hearts, they're trying to change the world. They don't even understand the world. And so they are out there trying to fix things, but they are clueless in a lot of ways. One of the things that we're seeing right now is the amount of protesting going on for its death and Black Lives Matter really bolstering itself up. Do you think that Black Lives Matter is doing a lot of good for young African Americans in America? Okay, in 2016, I gave a CNN interview. I was debating an attorney in LA named Areva Martin. And at that time, the five police officers in Dallas had been slain. And I pointed out, because I'd gone to the Black Lives Matter website, that they were Marxists. It looked like, you know, that the planks came from the Communist Manifesto. They were talking about overthrowing the state. And at that time, I said that Black Lives Matter was a destructive force in our society. And it was a problem. And I caught a lot of grief for saying that. Now the founders of Black Lives Matter, they've come out, they've come out as Marxists. And what I see is people not being able to discern between the statement, Black Lives Matter, in the same way that all lives matter. They can't distinguish between the slogan, that's a truth statement, and the organization that's Marxist. And I believe that the organization itself is using black people to advance a Marxist agenda. And the corporations, the schools, the churches, the people that have gotten behind Black Lives Matter, the organization, they think they're helping black people. They think they're showing support for black people, but actually it's the opposite. And why do you think that so many people support an organization that's black? Very clearly, you can go to their website, you can see their views, their ideals, and they said they want to have literally no police anymore in America. I mean, why do you think there are so many people so attracted to those kind of values? They're not attracted to it necessarily. Now, some of the people that support Black Lives Matter, they're supporting it because they think if they put a poster in their window, their windows will not be broken out. So they're sort of paying what they think is protection money. That never works. I think anyone who really understands the organization, how could they support it? I believe that white people are cowardly, especially at this moment in history, and they feel like they want to show that they support black people. We don't hate anybody, I'm not racist, I can prove it. I give money to Black Lives Matter. We were doing a video today in Venice Beach about this police brutality and defunding the police, and we talked to a couple of black students, and we were trying to work together with them, and they're like, oh, I don't think you're racist, I don't think they're racist. Then we went and talked to this white woman, and she comes up and starts talking to us, and then she says that as white people, we are racist. And I said, well, we just talked to some black kids, and they didn't think I was racist, but you as a white person are coming and telling me I'm racist. Do you see a big disconnect with what white people are doing in this country versus what black people are actually getting offended by? It would be comical if it wasn't sad. And what I see is that the critical race theories, and you know, critical theory is a part of Marxism, and critical race theory argues that racism is permanent. You never get rid of it. That whiteness is property. So every white person, the poorest person in Appalachia, they had this valuable property. You know, you tell that to J.D. Wallace's relatives. You tell that to people that grew up in Appalachia, that they had this valuable property. And I think that the white arguments about white privilege and white people, they have to divest themselves of that whiteness. And so the lady that you encountered was some, quote, white person trying to be woke. She thinks that by saying that to you, that she has divested herself of her whiteness, which she doesn't realize that the way things are going with race and the way the attacks are taking place, you know, a lot of black on white attacks. It seems to me that there are fewer white on black attacks, but that may change. You know, she thinks that will buy her protection. It will not buy her protection, but they're trying to get protection and they're trying to feel good about themselves. And some of them, you know, are affluent. And, you know, that's not necessarily privilege. That means that you had parents sometimes that made good decisions. There are people that had black privilege. I know plenty of blacks that grew up in affluent homes. They've never, you know, lived in ghettos. They've always been surrounded by middle class relatives. That's black privilege. I know some whites that have never had anything. Their mothers or fathers worked at Waffle House. And so it's a lot of nonsense. But I think one thing that white people have learned is to be silent. Well, back in 2002, I published a book called The New White Nationalism in America, It's Challenged Integration. And at the time I was a Democrat, but I was concerned about hate crimes that were taking place at that point in history. I commissioned interviews of leaders of white rights, white nationalist organizations, going from, you know, least extreme to most extreme. And what I saw were that there were certain conditions and issues that I felt were creating a devil's groove for racial unrest. I believe that some of what's taking place today, it's the fruits of identity politics and multiculturalism. Because multiculturalism, as you know, argues that every group needs to identify and celebrate their unique history. What was pointed out by some of the white nationalists is that every group except whites, they felt that the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, that the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, that white people were not being protected. And I felt like the way out for America was we needed to move away from identity politics towards the American national identity. And we're in this together, we're staying involved together. And right now, there are some legitimate issues that need to be addressed. And even within the black community, black crime, the abortion rate, the racial preferences that have, in some cases, placed people where they shouldn't be. And so you have a lot of college students not going to class, they're easily offended, they want to resegregate. Some of those students are in colleges and universities where they do feel marginalized. They are frustrated, they can't do the work. And I think it's easier to protest. And to them, it's systemic racism. And I would say the systemic racism, I was born in 1954. That was the year of the Brown versus Board of Education case. There were segregated schools then. That was systemic racism. In 1964, we passed the Civil Rights Act that opened up accommodations, ended all kinds of discrimination in employment, accommodations. It opened up all, it opened up many opportunities for blacks. 1965, the Voting Rights Act was passed. 1968, the Fair Housing Act passed. We had moved towards a colorblind society. But immediately, and this came from white elites, we got race-based affirmative action. And at that same time, women were added too. So we got affirmative action. It included women from the very beginning. By 1971, there were five groups that were added to affirmative action. And so it was never really exclusively about blacks, but there were people that clearly benefited. And the more middle-class you were, the more you benefited as a minority. And when I look at America, I see for more than 60 years, people have been aggressively trying to erase the past and present effects of discrimination. Slavery, Jim Crow racism, acts of the federal government that were discriminatory. People have worked, trillions of dollars have been spent, and yet we hear that racism is worse than it's ever been. I think that the system works towards racial and ethnic minorities. And the things that we are focused on now that has to do with police brutality, that blacks and people of color do have a lot of interactions with police, millions of interactions. We hear about these cases where things go wrong, but the black crime rate is problematic. Blacks, 13% of the population committing over 51% of the violent crimes, a lot of it is black-on-black crime. It's problematic that black lives matter. They focus on whenever a white police officer kills a black person, but not on the black-on-black crime or the fact that black women, 13% of the population, are getting 37% of the abortions, and that's being pushed by the Democratic Party. So there's something very, very broken. There's something wrong. There's plenty to be addressed. Yeah, those same black kids I was talking to at the beach and asked them these questions. I asked them, I said, how many unarmed black men did you think by police last year? And one of the kids said 1,500. Gracious. And I said, you know, police brutality, the biggest issue facing the black community. He said, oh, of course. You know, and I said, well, what if I told you that only nine unarmed black men that are killed by police? And he's like, why? No way. That can't be true. You know, it's just, they're so misinformed. And far many whites were killed, and a black person, I believe I saw data, they're more likely to be killed by a black police officer, that the white police officers are less likely to fire. And I've had a concern about people resisting arrest, because in a lot of the cases that I'm familiar with, not all, but in many of those cases, it involves someone resisting arrest. That will never end out well for anyone that's resisting arrest. And I think that we are reaching a point, like with this movement, they want it so that unless a person voluntarily says, yes, Mr. Policeman, I get in the back of your car and I'll ride downtown, the police officer will not be able to use any kind of force to get anyone into the car. Policing collapses at that point. It is racism is a public health issue, but it doesn't run in the way they think it is. It's the white liberal racism that's killing black people. They're killing black people. They're killing black youth. When they tell black youth that police officers are going to shoot them, and they can resist the authority, and they need to be suspicious of authority, they're ruining people's lives. And that disrespect of authority starts in the classroom. And so you have schools, public schools taken over. Nothing can be done because they're practicing restorative justice. And the restorative justice keeps criminals in the classroom, teachers leave, and kids that are afraid of the criminals, they drop out of school. It's the exact same thing with not even just the police, but the interaction between white people and black people. I went to a high school and middle school that was very diverse with lots of black kids, Mexican kids, white kids, and I never really had a problem or run in with racism. But now these people are coming in and saying, oh, America's so racist. What is that telling these young black students? You're telling them that white people have a problem with them, and that black people should be scared of the white people. You're putting racism there where it wasn't before. I know. And most people that I know, like blacks and whites, we work together. We go on vacations. We go to church together. There's no race problem. There's only a race problem when the media creates a race problem. And I think about myself. I grew up in poverty, high school dropout, married at 16, went to a community college, and then went on to get other college degrees. I did not have anyone telling me that I was a victim, that because I was black, poor, female, that I couldn't do the things that I was able to ultimately do. I believed in America. I believed if I worked hard that I could achieve the American dream, which I did. And when I got to graduate school, that's when I learned the theories of oppression. I learned that I was black, I was poor, I was a woman, I was a mother, that I couldn't do the things that I had already done. Had I heard that at a different stage in my life, I'm not even sure I would have tried. It seems to me that conservatism and those common sense values we talked about at the beginning, those are the things that you're innately born with. And then leftism has to be taught to you by someone, usually at a university. And it's so sad too, because the people that are teaching that, is it okay to say BS on this show? You can say whatever you want. The people that are teaching that BS are people that, they're clueless. They don't know what they're talking about. And a lot of times it is young white people with guilt because they had two parents. Oh, that's the most horrible thing to have two parents, right? And so they go and they feel, they look at people and they feel sorry for them, but they're really racist because they believe that because a person is black or they're living in the ghetto, that they are not able, that they're less able to do things. And to me, that's very crippling. And for people, what you believe, your attitude is far more important than your race, your gender, or anything like that, or your social status, your poverty, your attitude, what you believe about the world. And I would say that, you know, for anyone of any race or socioeconomic standing. And so you could be born and raised in the most affluent family, white, and still be disadvantaged because you're crippled by what you believe. And I keep going back to these interviews I did today, but again, with that same white woman who I talked to, and she said, you're racist, I'm racist, you know, there's all these systematic things against black people. And I said, how do you think that makes black people? How does she know? Yeah, how does she know? But how does it make them feel? They have all these hurdles, these things that they can never overcome. And that only white people can save them. Right. And you know something, I just was in DC and the Black Lives Matter, you know, they had their graffiti everywhere. There were signs everywhere. But there were a lot of white people. And if I were a Black Lives Matter activist, if you can imagine that, I would be upset. I would be seething at the fact that white folks, young white folks took over my movement. Yeah, I mean, the audacity of I don't know if you saw this one woman, she's a white woman talking about racism, and she's yelling at black police officers. Well, she identifies as black, I guess. Did you have her join the NAACP? Well, they will, they would take her money for sure. Yeah, I'm sure they would. Going back, we were talking more about, you know, your upbringing and things like that. You did a PragerU video all about, you know, the history of the Democratic Party. We get emails from PragerU and messages all the time that that's the video they saw that made them fall in love with PragerU or wake up to the truth. I just want to say thank you for that. And for the people who haven't seen that video, what is the main message of what really is the history of the Democratic Party? Well, the history of the Democratic Party is it was the party of slavery. It was the of the KKK, the Jim Crow racism. It was the party that maintained the lynching. And when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, more Republicans than Democrats voted for it. And so it has been the party of segregation. And it only made the apparent switch when blacks got the right to vote. And so they brought some into the system, but they have really maintained a system, you know, think about their embrace of Margaret Sanger and abortion, where you have 80% of the abortion clinics in black neighborhoods, and they don't have the interests of black people. And people always say the number one argument on that video is always that the party switch. They have to believe that. And I can tell you, I was born and raised in Virginia. And Virginia was the state that had massive resistance to integration. In fact, even though I was born in 1954 and started school in 1960, it was 1968 before we integrated in Virginia. Prince Edward County, Virginia closed down their school system rather than to integrate. And the Byrd machine, that was a political machine, they fought integration. And in 1969, the state elected its first Republican governor, Linwood Houlton. And the first thing that Linwood Houlton did after he was inaugurated, was take his small children by the hand, walked them to a public school in Richmond that was predominantly black, and enrolled his two children. And he was the one that started appointing blacks in Virginia. And so Virginia, they have a governor now, Northam. He's the guy that appeared in blackface, you know, the pictures of him appearing in blackface. But the Democratic Party has not changed a whole lot. And I'm a Virginian, I love my state. But at the same time, my state has not been very good when it comes to race. And for the most part, they've elected Democrats. stark contrast to that. But you talked about the Republican Party as well, being basically the anti slavery party. Yes. And but the video that I really want people to, to watch, and that does not have as many views as my Prager you videos on the Republican Party, the Democratic Party and the big switch is the one about the three fifths clause. And I don't know if you were taught this in school, but you hear well educated people saying that at the time the Constitution was ratified, blacks were considered three fifths a person, three fifths a man. That is not true. Have you heard that? You knew better, right? Well, I didn't. Well, I'm urging everyone to watch that video, because that's not what the debate was about. It was not about whether or not blacks were three fifths human, the South wanted to count all of their six 600,000 blacks, because they would get more seats in Congress. And so it was really the anti slavery don't know that wanted the three fifths clause, they wanted it because they did not want the South to get all those extra representatives in Congress. Had they gotten those representatives, slavery would have lasted longer. So it's the opposite of what people believe. And people are still pushing that and and the most dangerous thing out there now is the 1619 project with the Nicole Hannah Jones. He works for the New York Times, and she's really a big reparations advocate. And they keep you know, going back to reparations and saying that things are worse than ever for black people. Nothing's changed and all this systemic racism. And again, I was born into systemic racism. I knew systemic racism. What we have now is not systemic racism against people of color. I think there's more racism against white people at this moment, particularly white men and white boys. And I think there's a lot of a lot of shaming. And the woman that you in Canada, this is someone who is ashamed of her race. And I don't know how many times she might have been down on her knees begging for forgiveness. But to me, you know, that is a very disturbing sight to see black people, white people down on their knees, begging black people for forgiveness of something that ancestors may or may not have done depending on when they arrived in the US. You're like using them as a prop. Like if I were to sit here and apologize to you, I'm not doing it to apologize to you. I'm using you as like a prop for, you know, to make myself feel. It's that virtue signaling. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, going back to me reading the house and stuff, just and you as a professor at university for a long time, different universities. Do you think that young people right now are taught to hate America? They are. They are. And I mean, you cannot sustain a nation with people that are not proud of their country. And I can tell you, growing up in the 1960s, I loved America. I believed I lived in the greatest country in the world. I believed in the American dream. I love the fact that I was a Virginian. I came from the state that produced five presidents. All those things were important to me. And I got it through my civic education. And I believe I'm a better person because I believe those things. And what disappoints me today about America is that we have a constitution. We have the Declaration of Independence. We have so many resources and we have strayed away from the things that made us a great nation. And I believe that America is destined to fall unless we change course. When I think about nations that rise and fall, I think that we are pursuing a path that we are at risk of falling to Russia or China or, you know, North Korea or one of those nations. And it is because we are destroying ourselves from within. And it's, you know, like it's no foreign enemy that's out there with a gun. We are destroying ourselves using all the hype around the coronavirus and the hype around racism that we stir up through the media. We take everything, we racialize it. And the people that are doing this, a lot of them are Marxists. They want communism. They're working for China. And to me, it's very disturbing what's taking place right before our eyes. Not everyone can see it. And I'm glad that you're a young person. You can see it. The people that watch your show, they can see it. There are young people that are, quote, woke. We need everyone. All hands on deck. What would you say to close this off if you had to give a piece of advice to young black people? Don't trust what you've been told over the decades, what you're being told in school right now, in most cases. I think that they need to dig in deep and get their own information and not just parrot what other people say. Because I find this, this is for white people too, that a lot of young people will come to college. They've solved all the big issues of the day. They can spout off the politically correct answer to every issue and it's stuff that they've memorized, that they have been indoctrinated even in middle school. That's not true, that they're being manipulated. They should never want to be educated in an environment where they only get one side. They should want to allow other people to speak. They should not be shutting down free speech. And I say to conservative youth as well as liberal youth, get both sides. Sometimes there are three sides, there's more than two sides. But make sure you're not just listening to one set of voices. You're not being educated, you're not being challenged, you'll never find truth that way. Thank you so much for joining us. And everyone, if you haven't seen her videos, Carol Swain's videos with Prager U, she has a few of them, they're all fantastic and one of my favorites. Thank you guys so much for watching this. Be sure to share this with your friends, tell me your thoughts down below and I'll see you guys in the next one. Thank you. What's up guys, thank you so much for watching this video. Prager U is a 501c3 organization. Help us keep our videos free by making a tax-deductible donation today. I'd really appreciate your support.