Glenn Beck — yes, that Glenn Beck — explained why you shouldn’t say “All Lives Matter”
Glenn Beck is not in any way the ideal representative for the Black Lives Matter movement. He once led an “All Lives Matter” march in Birmingham, Alabama. His website, the Blaze, regularly criticizes the movement.
So it may come as a surprise that Beck is now pleading with conservatives to come to grips with the Black Lives Matter movement. What’s more, he actually criticized the “All Lives Matter” chant. Dave Weigel reported for the Washington Post:
“All of us are sitting around a table, and we're all friends,” he said. “It's time for dessert, and everybody gets pie except for me and you. And you say, ‘I didn’t get any pie.’ Everybody at the table looks at you and says ‘I know. All pie matters.’ You say, ‘But I don't have any pie! What about my pie?’”
Beck's point was that white Americans simply did not understand what black people had been saying about police in America.
The “leaders” of the movement, he said, were “communists and anti-capitalists” whom he could never agree with. “But they're not the people walking behind them in the street,” he said. “We're all speaking different languages and we need to talk to each other.”
Beck’s statement is not a full embrace — he calls the leaders of Black Lives Matter “communists and anti-capitalists.” And his pleas to conservatives at the annual RedState Gathering led to this amazing Vine, which is very Glenn Beck:
But Beck precisely conveys what’s wrong with the phrase “All Lives Matter”: Black people are complaining that they’re being left behind, not calling to get ahead of their white peers. It’s a remarkable transition for someone who was just recently leading an All Lives Matter march.