BLM's Marxist Leader Is a Millionaire

Being a victim does not necessarily mean being moral

Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Black Lives Matter Global Network. PhotoCredit: Black Enterprise Magazine

Behind the Black Lives Matter movement is an organization called the Black Lives Matter Global Network, which represents the movement behind the scenes. The network’s cofounder and executive director, 37-year old Patrisse Khan-Cullors, has made millions, with which she has bought a few mansions worth at least $3.2 million.

America’s Right wing media — mainly The New York Post and Fox Business — jumped on the data mined by a Right wing organization. Meanwhile, Khan-Cullors dismissed the attack as a Right wing hit job.

But Black Enterprise Magazine, hardly a Right win media outlet, published a story in which both BLM and Khan-Cullors tried to establish this fact: That BLM money was not handled inappropriately, and that Khan-Cullors is more of a volunteer. What Black Enterprise did not do was that it did not deny that Khan-Cullors is a millionaire. The magazine explains that Khan-Cullors millions came from consulting work and speaking engagements. 

While there might be no violation of any laws, there seems to be improper exploitation of the BLM brand in Khan-Cullors’s private consultancy business. It is near certain that whoever hired Khan-Cullors to give talks or hold training workshops was seeking BLM’s brand name. The problem of Khan-Cullors is not necessarily one of laws, but certainly one of ethics and morals.

Khan-Cullors’s morality is especially at stake when her millions do not square with her self-proclaimed Marxism. In an interview, Khan-Cullors has described herself herself as such: “We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories. And I think that what we really tried to do is build a movement that could be utilized by many, many black folk.”

Another immoral position is that of big media outlets, The New York Times and The Washington Post, which have remained silent on the issue. Fact checkers, virtue defenders and the phalanx of journalists — who (correctly) attacked Trump for using his presidential fame to further his business interests — all have yet to speak up.

Even worse, Facebook has censored the New York Post’s link to the story, citing the usual “this link goes against our Community Standards.” Notice how Facebook’s Community Standards are not necessarily US laws and regulations. What is legal can still be censored. Facebook is a private business after all.

Media and social media can do this country a solid if they put partisanship aside, and try to dig deeper into stories of possible ethical and moral failure in public life, instead of sensationalizing such stories (like the Right), ignoring them (like the Left) or censoring them (like Facebook). Khan-Cullors made millions off a brandname in a behavior that was not illegal, but immoral. How hard is it to write up such a story? How hard can telling the truth be? 

Finally, from my years growing up in the failing states of Iraq and Lebanon, I vividly remember the connection between revolutionaries and luxury: The more firebrand and radical any leader was, whether Marxist or Islamist, the more corrupt. Arab Communist chiefs seemed to have the biggest fortunes, while of course the world’s famous Islamist terrorist Osama Bin Laden had stored two gigabytes of porn on his computer which the Special Forces collected after killing him.

People can be victims, but victims are not always moral. When given a chance, many victims turn out to be much worse than their oppressors, hence why, the only way to fight excesses of individuals who assume any kind of public power is through election. When behaving as a collective, humans tend to have (often but not always) a better moral compass than when organizations lurk in the dark and traffic in speaking fees and training workshop scams.