I suppose I don't understand what you're saying about the situation you saw in Bangladesh. Were the fundamentalist Islamists you described having taken over the country, via the educational system, also ideological Marxists? Is there a history of some sort that I can read, to understand better what you're describing? Just based on what you've said today, it sounds like you're adjusting the goalposts to suit the argument of the moment, but I'm sure that can't be the case. So I'd definitely appreciate the ability to develop a better understanding of the events that seem to form the basis of your argument.

With regard to the whole Marxism-and-BLM thing - I have to say, at this point, I honestly don't know. On reflection, I decided it might be better, instead of just taking your word (and Newsmax's, and it turned out also Breitbart's!) for what's in that video, if I saw and heard for myself what it contained. So I did that [1], and found that your representation of what it contains (and Newsmax's, and Breitbart's) is, and I say this with all possible charity, extremely tendentious in a way that leads me to suspect it's been deliberately stripped of context in order to sound maximally frightening to people already predisposed to be suspicious of BLM activists' motives.

In particular, when I investigated the quote of which you (and Newsmax, and Breitbart) make so much, I found that it was said in the context of answering a question raised by among others Jalil Muntaqim (born Anthony Bottom) [2], a former Black Panther imprisoned since 1974 for the murder of two police officers, over whether the Black Lives Matter movement has a coherent enough ideological direction to avoid simply "fizzling out" as Occupy Wall Street did.

Cullors' answer is, as you (and Newsmax, and Breitbart) imagine, a political one. But it's not political in the way that you think it is. Here's a transcription I made just now from the video, covering the entirety of Patrisse Cullors' answer, rather than just the part that has been so frequently taken out of context with what appears to me very strongly to be deliberately deceptive intent.

"I think that the criticism is helpful; I think a lot of things. The first thing I think is that we actually do have an ideological frame; myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers, we are trained Marxists, we are super versed on sort of ideological theories, and I think that what we really try to do is build a movement that could be utilized by many, many Black folk. We don't necessarily want to be the vanguard of this movement; I think we've tried to put out a political frame that's about centering who we think are the most vulnerable amongst the Black community, to really fight for all of our lives, and I do think that we have some clear direction around where we want to take this movement. I don't believe it's going to fizzle out; it just gets stronger, and we see it, right? We've seen that after Sandra Bland, we're seeing it now with the interruption of the Netroots Nation Presidential Forum. What I do think, though, is [that] folks, especially folks who've been trained in a particular way, want to hear certain things from us, [and] we're not framing it in the ways that maybe another generation has. But I think it's important that people know the Black Lives Matter movement doesn't just live online, although there's many people who utilize it online. We're in a different set of circumstances, a different generation, [and while] social media may feel like it's diluting the larger ideological frame, I argue that it's not."

The reason I say that that's a political answer is, again, in the context of it being a response to critique by someone who is widely regarded as a political prisoner and, as the show host notes, an "elder of the struggle". It really comes across as kind of a "gotcha" question, and Cullors' answer is consequently phrased with care. She opens by declaring credentials of a sort that should resonate with "elders of the struggle", as it's put, and afterward quickly redirects into what she wants to talk about, which essentially is to say that, yes, Black Lives Matter is a coherent movement with a specific purpose, and as such is not liable to the same problems that hampered and eventually undermined the Occupy movement.

It's an answer in which Cullors has to triangulate between the outdated perspective of a past generation who, while still meriting respect for their own efforts toward a more equitable US society for black people, no longer have a firm grasp on the issues of the present moment, and the need to demonstrate that her own work very much is rooted in the issues of the present moment. It's political, yes, but in the office-politics sense rather than that of some sort of conspiratorial Marxism that you (and Newsmax, and Breitbart) apparently choose to see here.

And it's an answer I can respect, both because I agree that black people in the United States have literally never had a fair shot and they deserve better, and because I'm not too proud to admit that she's a hell of a lot better at that kind of interpersonal and intergenerational politics than I've ever managed to be, a lack I've often regarded with a measure of regret. I mean, I usually just say "ok, boomer". Cullors is positively gentle about it, and maybe I should learn something from that.

I have to say, I really appreciate you taking the time to engage on this subject today. Absent that, I don't know that I'd ever have had the motivation to go and find original statements of this sort from BLM organizers. I have to say, my respect for that movement, and the work that's gone and continues to go into making it a force for good in American politics, has really increased as a result of this conversation.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCghDx5qN4s

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Bottom