My BlackLivesMatter and AltRight Experiences

This is from my heart. I want to share a bit about my personal journey for those genuinely wanting to understand.

I didn’t join Black Lives Matter.

I saw video on July 17, 2014 of Eric Garner pleading for his life as NYPD officers strangled and restrained him. No one assisted him during the seven minutes it took for an ambulance to arrive.

Three weeks later, on August 9th, I saw pictures and video circulating on Twitter. This time, a black body shot by police laid in the hot sun four and a half hours, face down in a pool of his own blood. His uncovered body serving as a threat to the community gathered.

I learned his name was Mike Brown. I saw his mother prevented from going to her son. I heard her grief. I felt her grief.

Armed with nothing more than smart phones, people recorded a police state in action, militarized vehicles, officers telling people they would shoot them, curfews, media setups torn down, citizens shot with rubber bullets, tear gas in neighborhoods impacting people in their homes, deafening sirens.

From the safety of my rural Nebraska home, sitting comfortably in front of my 27-inch monitor, I sat in terror. I felt the only thing I could do was share what I was seeing via screen prints and Tweets.

During the following months, I learned the small town of Ferguson, Missouri with only 20,000 residents had issued around 35,000 arrest warrants that year, drawing in about $3M in revenue for court fines and fees.

Evidence surfaced of constant demands placed on the police department by the city council to increase revenue and that many white people were able to have tickets erased with an email to the right person in government.

More than half of the courts in the St Louis area use predatory practices of fining, arresting those who cannot pay and then charging them more. It hits those least able to pay the hardest. These tyrannical practices are spreading across this nation.

There was story after story after story of police wrongly shooting black people: John Crawford, Akai Gurley, Tamir Rice, Tony Robinson, Eric Harris, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray. Officer Holtzclaw abused his authority to sexual assault black women in Oklahoma City.

I didn’t join the Black Lives Matter movement. People gathered. We watched corruption in many parts of this country manipulate what was intended to be a system of justice.

There is no sense in arguing with me otherwise. I know what I saw.

I didn’t leave Black Lives Matter.

By the middle of 2015, I was heavily into shaming and then blocking white folks on Twitter for racism. I also followed a common pre-emptive strike practice of blocking any one with the word “patriot” in the profile, appeared to be a police officer or member of our military, or displayed an American flag as their background picture. I had grown to hate anyone who had a Confederate flag or defended the right to keep and bear arms. These were evil people in my thinking.

At some point, it started bothering me that my “job” as a white person was to confront other white people about racism and yet I was blocking them to avoid them.

It led me to realize I was living in an echo chamber. All of the media I consumed and the people with whom I interacted had the same thinking. Like a top 40 radio station with only a certain set of hits on continuous replay.

I started to open my world up by reading conservative media. I remember being shocked at just how wrong they were. I listened to video of GOP presidential candidates. I found their perspectives both confusing and terrifying. I was annoyed to hear so much focus on political correctness and scoffed at the thought it was “harming the country.”

Like a good Twitter missionary, I went out to where the sinners were and started adding flag waving gun lovers to my follow list. I began talking with them. My thinking started to change. I realized somewhere along the way, I lost my patriotism to a country I always loved. I realized my opposition to guns was nothing more than a pursuit to infringe liberty. I realized most of the deaths from guns came from suicide or urban settings where crime is high. I started to rediscover my life long dedication to civil liberties.

I also started to care about people who held different beliefs than I held. I wanted to get to know them better. I still felt that I could fix them.

It was about this time that the conflict with Black Lives Matter happened. It was such a sophomoric, childish event; I hate to even describe it. An individual in the movement attacked a new conservative friend who approached me earlier with an interesting discussion about a pink vacuum toy for girls. We talked. It was nice and I enjoyed her perspectives and was thinking about our conversation as I did laundry and had supper.

When I returned, I was horrified to find he had called her a bitch, a cunt, a white supremacist, and so on, and I called him out on his sexist language. Needless to say, he did not take my comments well and began to attack me and then delete his comments.

Next, he started looking at my follow list and saw I was following Ricky Vaughn. He gathered others to point out the “evil” I had committed and the drama took a life of its own. I had never one time had any conflict with anyone in the movement and now I was a racist, white supremacist, Nazi sympathizer and a traitor.

A week later, I was told to unfollow all racists. That’s when I knew my time with Black Lives Matter was over. I did not want to return to an echo chamber. I would not surrender my right to learn what I found necessary. I would not subject those I follow to the same attacks that Ricky Vaughn was under. I said no. Who I followed was not negotiable. Unfollowing me, blocking me, muting me were the only choices available.

The attacks from people within the Black Lives Matter movement continue to this day, months later.

I am not a member of AltRight.

But, I have learned a great deal from these people and I appreciate their support and insight.

There is no shame in being white. We cannot go back and undo slavery. I own my land and my country will protect my deed. I have no guilt for things I did not do. My white guilt is gone.

White culture is just as real as black culture. Appropriating from black culture is no better or worse than appropriating from white culture. If it’s acceptable to celebrate being black then it’s acceptable to celebrate being white. If black power is good, so is white power. Using the #WhiteGirlMagic hashtag is not evil. Nor is using the #BlackGirlMagic hashtag.

There are white people who hate black people. There are black people who hate white people. Anti-white racism is real. Anti-black racism is real.

Political correctness is harming this country. It is demeaning and it destroys our patriotism and identity.

For years, Cultural Marxism has been destroying our culture. We have shot way past good practices of accepting people for who they are to promoting lifestyles that create confusion.

White men who have contributed to the success of our country for years are primary targets feminists have been merciless in attacking.

White people are the majority race and are told we have privilege, no culture, that everything we have was either built by others or stolen. We are only allowed to destroy the evil of whiteness.

The debates are senseless. Examples from hundreds of years ago, sometimes as far back as Egyptian times, or early life in Africa, used to demean white people today.

What fails to be discussed is what really matters. What can be done about concentrated poverty in inner cities? How can we bring jobs back? Why is there such high rates of black crime? We do not acknowledge a large percentage of gun violence is done by black criminals. We don’t talk about the need to strengthen black families so that black children are raised with support they need to learn and thrive.

Even listing those topics gets you labeled a racist. Ask yourself why. Ask yourself how blaming and shaming white people helps address those problems. It doesn’t.

Degrading people over time weakens their will. It is harmful. Makes our nation easy prey to those who want to hurt us. We are not even willing to look at what is happening in Europe with war and economically displaced Muslim migrants and admit we don’t want those problems here. Why? We have problems of our own to solve. How is it xenophobic to focus on strengthening your own nation?

So much energy is spent calling people out on words they believe should or should not be said to the point that 40% of those under 30 now believe we should add restrictions to liberty for “hate speech.”

Calling a woman a female will land you in a world of hurt. Speaking in a positive way about gender norms is considered hateful. Not to mention what happens if you use what are considered to be racial or sexist or ableist slurs. Though, when SJWs do so while calling out stubborn offenders, this language is somehow appropriate. The hypocrisy is disturbing.

We are a divided people.

And the divide is getting worse. We face a very important election, perhaps the most important presidential election this country has faced in a very long time. There is one very important issue that will set this nation in a certain direction: will we choose Nationalism or Globalism?

This decision is far more important than most liberals or conservatives understand and yet, the fear of being labeled xenophobic prevents people from even considering the implications. One path leads closer to a world government and more heavy-handed oppression, less liberty. The other path leads to our ability to root out government corruption, to take care of our own people, to retain our culture and values, and to have no shame proclaiming we are proud to be Americans.

I am worried what direction we will take.

Social Media

Social media has done a great job of connecting us. But we have done a terrible job listening to one another. Instead, we’ve turned this tool into a club and we have used it to attack one another.

It’s apparent Facebook, Twitter, and Google have bought into Cultural Marxism and Globalist politics. They are using their private companies to enforce political correctness, which will accelerate the destruction of liberty and free speech. These are scary times we live in.

I feel powerless to help anyone. The attacks I have faced are wearing me out. Increasingly, I am drinking as a form of dealing with stress and that is not good. Watching people on both sides battle one another is impacting me negatively. I find the current state of social media to be personally harmful and degrading and I need to distance myself as it is harming the relationships I have with those around me.

There is no trust. If we cannot trust one another, we cannot bring this country back together. I don’t care who you vote for, a divided nation will not stand.