Posted on 09/01/2020 6:26:07 AM PDT by Kaslin
During the 1968 Olympics, most Americans were shocked to see two of the United States’ finest athletes raise their fists in loyalty to the Black Panthers, a radical group advocating violence as a means to change society. The controversy engendered by Smith-Carlos still has not died out.
Fast forward from the 1968 Olympics to a contemporary scene in the nation’s capital of Washington, DC. There, diners were harassed by Black Lives Matter protestors, who demanded each person give a clenched fist salute indicating solidarity with BLM.
What happened between 1968 to 2020? How did the United States get from the scene at the Olympics, which was largely repudiated as unpatriotic and excessive, to the scene at the DC restaurant? How did Americans get to the point the equivalent of a Nazi salute is demanded of them by roving gangs?
The nation got here from there because a radical segment of the civil rights movement moved away from the nonviolent protests of Martin Luther King to embrace the violence advocated by organizations such as the Black Panthers. We also got from there to here because of a class of elites that have supported and assisted the ideology embraced by radical groups like the Black Panthers and Black Lives Matter, who share almost identical goals.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
These look to be college age kids harassing the diners. A bunch of clueless losers no doubt. I’d bet my last dollar I could reduce 9 out of 10 of them to drooling and stammering in a calm, rational discussion of their ‘grievance’
Radical Chic and Mau Mauing the flak catchers were two very good Wolf predictive essays. The “flak catchers” were the pocket protector bureaucrats administering the great society gimmes. The street hustlers like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and eventually Obama rode the process to national prominence.
The BLM activists also listen to BLA figures like Joanne Chesimard now called Assata Shakur. BLM T shirts pay her homage. They spring from the same sources and have the same targets.
As for street violence and looting, the first modern day event was the 1967 riot in Detroit. That had nothing to do with systemaic racism claims. Police tried to close down an after hours night club and the violence spread from there. It was rioters with looting and destruction in a black city with blacks at all levels. Iy was a model for all that came after.
Tom Wolfe was a genius of ‘predictive essays’!
His “Bonfire of the Va nites” was excellent too in this way.
It is unfortunate that the journalists of the day didn’t emulate his style. Barbara Walters and others knew what was coming but didn’t have the courage to describe it to their far larger audiences..
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