By John Daniel Davidson:
The Black Lives Matter movement is not a majority. Its radical agenda can be resisted and defeated. But not if ordinary Americans stay silent.
The daily spectacle of angry mobs pulling down statues, taunting police, attacking passersby, and taking over entire city blocks makes it seem like Black Lives Matter is a mass movement, that pretty much everyone except knuckle-dragging Trump supporters is on board with its radical agenda, and that the new national consensus is that you’re either anti-racist or racist.
Under these conditions, many ordinary Americans feel disoriented and discouraged. Confusion abounds. When did it become racist to like the national anthem and Mount Rushmore? At what point did we decide George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were moral monsters, or that all police are racist thugs? Why are rioters and looters allowed to terrorize people and destroy property with impunity? Why aren’t local elected leaders enforcing the law?
If you think what’s happening in America right now is crazy, you’re not alone. It’s true that something’s changed, that we’re in the middle of a crisis, that a cultural civil war is underway and escalating.
But it’s not true that this is a majoritarian movement. It’s not true that America fundamentally changed overnight. The hordes of protesters, impressive as them seem, don’t represent the country at large. According to Pew, only about 6 percent of U.S. adults have participated in a rally or protest in the past month, and they skew young, urban, and Democratic. That’s less than 20 million people—a lot, to be sure, but nothing close to a majority.
In some sense this is entirely psychological. A relatively small group of radical left-wing activists is using classic cult psychology to wage psychological war against the rest of us. They are the vanguard of what can only be described as a religious movement in America.
Read more: The Federalist
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