@tony5732,
Quote:A hate group is a hate group. They serve the same exact purpose
And this is where we differ. You make binary distinctions - I don't.
By your logic everyone who supports a cause and does something assholish makes the entire cause and all it's supporters assholish. As I've said before, that sort of thinking makes every cause or organisation I can think of a hate group.
A better judge is the intent of the cause, and its history.
BLM tries to change the entrenched racism that means if you are black you are more likely to be treated harshly, harrassed or killed by the police, out of all proportion to the general community.
They are not trying to get rid of the police; they are trying to stop a behaviour that shows a clear statistical bias against black civilians within the police.
Anyone can be a member (as far as I can tell) - although 'membership' is a pretty loose concept. Supporter might be a better word.
The KKK on the other hand does have formalised membership and excludes people based on a bunch of criteria that fall under a broad heading of 'racist'.
And it has a long history of being intentionally racist and performing acts that would undoubtedly be labelled terrorist if a muslim organisation did them.
wikipedia wrote:Klan groups spread throughout the South as an insurgent movement during the Reconstruction era in the United States. As a secret vigilante group, the Klan targeted freedmen and their allies; it sought to restore white supremacy by threats and violence, including murder, against black and white Republicans. In 1870 and 1871, the federal government passed the Enforcement Acts, which were successfully enforced in prosecuting and suppressing Klan crimes.[21]
The first Klan had mixed results in terms of achieving its objectives. It seriously weakened the black political establishment through its use of assassinations and threats of violence; it drove some people out of politics. On the other hand, it caused a sharp backlash, with passage of federal laws that historian Eric Foner says were a success in terms of "restoring order, reinvigorating the morale of Southern Republicans, and enabling blacks to exercise their rights as citizens.
wikipedia wrote:The second KKK preached "One Hundred Percent Americanism" and demanded the purification of politics, calling for strict morality and better enforcement of prohibition. Its official rhetoric focused on the threat of the Catholic Church, using anti-Catholicism and nativism.[3] Its appeal was directed exclusively at white Protestants; it opposed Jews, blacks, Catholics, and newly arriving Southern European groups such as Italians.[24] Some local groups threatened violence against rum runners and notorious sinners; the violent episodes generally took place in the South.[25]
wikipedia wrote:Several members of KKK groups were convicted of murder in the deaths of civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964 and children in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. Today, researchers estimate that there may be 150 Klan chapters with upwards of 5,000 members nationwide.
"Today, many sources classify the Klan as a "subversive or terrorist organization".[31][32][33][34] In April 1997, FBI agents arrested four members of the True Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Dallas for conspiracy to commit robbery and conspiring to blow up a natural gas processing plant.[35] In 1999, the city council of Charleston, South Carolina passed a resolution declaring the Klan to be a terrorist organization.[36] In 2004, a professor at the University of Louisville began a campaign to have the Klan declared a terrorist organization in order to ban it from campus."
You are entitled to your opinion - my argument is with your assertion that BLM = KKK. On purely objective measures. It doesn't stack up at any level except the most absurd.
