We have entered the era of swift action taken towards those who do not comport in the approved fashion.
(This is the latest in a series of reports detailing the way activists are wielding punishments for improper protest support.)

As I have been noting in these pieces there is a flagrant demand going out from the Black Lives Matter protests that only one position, one opinion can be properly accepted. There is no room for nuance, for wider discourse on the matters, nor even the asking of questions about the demands set forward. There is a mounting set of evidence that only one narrative is permitted and to stray from that with the barest of critiques is all the grounds needed to remove someone permanently from the culture.

In my previous piece in this series, I showed how the mere act of distributing data from a university study is enough to have a sympathetic Democrat voice silenced and fired. The activists calling for a serious conversation on racial matters are not in fact interested in such.  They say they want to have a conversation but demand instead compliance.

SEE ALSO – Previous entries in this series are found here.

All the proof needed is seen in how certain prominent black figures have come under fire for either having a differing opinion or even simply questioning aspects of the current movement. Actor Terry Crews has been targeted because he dared to suggest some viewpoints could be interpreted differently.

Defeating White supremacy without White people creates Black supremacy. Equality is the truth.

Like it or not, we are all in this together.

— terry crews (@terrycrews) June 7, 2020

Overall, a rather innocuous tweet. Well, those who did not ”like it” have sought out ways to have Crews silenced, and his career truncated. He has been demanded to apologize, but he has taken a refreshing stance of refusing to do so. So many times we have seen those who have been cowed to apologize over comments that were inoffensive, and often those people STILL endure harsh reprisals. But Crews is hardly an outlier when it comes to landing in the BLM crosshairs.

At the Huffington Post writer Taryn Finley has delivered a screed that lists and calls out for punishments to be leveled towards those prominent black individuals whom she decrees have wandered off of the approved platform. Her headline alone is all the disqualifier needed to see the vacancy of thought behind these outbursts and calls for punishments: Yes, Silence Can Be Violence — But These Celebs Should Shut Up. 

Black Lives Matter, but certain Black Voices are Inconsequential, is the message here. Take a look at a partial list of those Finley displayed as needing to incur the wrath of activists, based on what a pragmatic thinker would describe as rather reasoned comments.

Trina called Black Lives Matter protesters in Miami “animals” and called on the city to keep them off the streets. She also said that protesters need to be worried about Black-on-Black crime. Desi Banks posted a meme calling protesters engaging in civil unrest criminals. Virgil Abloh slammed the “kids that ransacked” his store in the protests and then donated a measly $50 toward a bail fund.

Yes, how dare we call someone engaging in obvious criminal behavior a ”criminal”. Finley also gives voice to the argument that anyone decrying the looting or burning are showing more concern for buildings than the movement. That those buildings were used to provide a livelihood for POC shopkeepers is never acknowledged, and the impact these losses have on the POC community, that is supposedly the focus of concern, is completely ignored.

What is most stark about this rant is that it is a bold statement towards the admission that there is zero interest in a discussion. A complex issue is not regarded as having numerous facets which need to be analyzed. The various ways a decision made in the heat of emotional outrage can impact issues and people down the road is never a consideration. Everything is of a solitary goal, and it leads to the strictest of binary thought; if you say anything that deviates from the message you are cut off and left out.

Taryn Finley closes out her piece in a strict pronouncement. ”I do hope that folks are paying attention to who’s supporting and amplifying the movement for Black lives. ’Cause some of our faves may need to be left behind.” Here is another question that I am sure that Finley has not considered with a long-reaching lens —

If one of these names, whom she has declared to become social pariahs, later experiences some form of racial strife in their lives are they voided from any claim to persecution?

Or, as would most likely to happen, will they be taken back in and then held up as another example of the perceived oppression? This is the type of thorny reality the activists are making for themselves. If you have effectively kicked out an individual are they not considered no longer protected by the movement? Of course not, because their skin color would dictate the effects.

But the people who are voicing the support of ALL blacks are the ones also now saying certain blacks need to be ostracized…which I thought was the very thing that the Black Lives Matter claims to be battling against. Do not act prejudiced against blacks as that is intolerance — but we can decide that certain blacks can be discriminated against. The difference is they are not judged by the color of their skin, they are judged by the shade of their opinion.