Almost three years after his most notorious acting role, Jussie Smollett was convicted for it.
On Thursday, a jury returned a guilty verdict in five of the six counts the former âEmpireâ actor faced for orchestrating a fake hate crime against himself in January of 2019. According to CNN, Smollettâs attorney said he ârespectfully disagreesâ with the verdict and that his client is âconfident that this will be reversed on appeal.â He was also confident he could pull this ridiculous stunt off, so I wouldnât put too much credence in that theory.
Weâve been covering Smollettâs case since the beginning here at The Western Journal, noting that the details didnât add up while the mainstream media was credulously buying his story. We aim to keep establishment outlets honest â and you can help us by subscribing.
Speaking of credulous, enter Black Lives Matter. The national organization is either quite gullible or believes that its guilt-ridden, liberal audience is. Either way, theyâve made it clear, Jussie Smollett must be believed for no special reason except that a) heâs black and b) the Chicago Police Department played a role in his case. Thatâs it.
In a statement issued Tuesday via Black Lives Matterâs website, Melina Abdullah â co-founder of BLM Los Angeles and director of BLM Grassroots â said that since the organization is a group of âabolitionists,â they âapproach situations of injustice with love and align ourselves with our community. Because we got us.â
âSo letâs be clear: we love everybody in our community. Itâs not about a trial or a verdict decided in a white supremacist charade, itâs about how we treat our community when corrupt systems are working to devalue their lives,â Abdullah wrote.
âIn an abolitionist society, this trial would not be taking place, and our communities would not have to fight and suffer to prove our worth. Instead, we find ourselves, once again, being forced to put our lives and our value in the hands of judges and juries operating in a system that is designed to oppress us, while continuing to face a corrupt and violent police department, which has proven time and again to have no respect for our lives.â
Well, this is a unique take: The evidence against Jussie Smollett doesnât matter because heâs black. To Abdullah, this should be as rigged as a lynching trial against white defendants in the Old South because âwe got us.â
Itâs not that Smollett didnât do anything or that he was picked up on a minor charge by meddling police. He actively courted national attention with a hate-crime hoax designed to increase his pay â and at no time in her letter, published as an official statement by the Black Lives Matter organization, does Abdullah attempt to refute this. Instead, the statement claims Smollett is deserving of defense solely on the basis of his color.
Furthermore, the mere involvement of police is put forth as evidence Smollett must be believed.
âIn our commitment to abolition, we can never believe police, especially the Chicago Police Department (CPD) over Jussie Smollett, a Black man who has been courageously present, visible, and vocal in the struggle for Black freedom,â the statement reads.
âWhile policing at-large is an irredeemable institution, CPD is notorious for its long and deep history of corruption, racism, and brutality. From the murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, to the Burge tortures, to the murder of Laquan McDonald and subsequent cover-up, to the hundreds of others killed by Chicago police over the years and the thousands who survived abuse, Chicago police consistently demonstrate that they are among the worst of the worst. Police lie and Chicago police lie especially.â
Itâs worth noting here, Chicago police expended significant resources trying to find chimerical hate-criminals who Smollett posited attacked him, declaring the Windy City was âMAGA country.â Moreover, they were being used as an organ to launder the actorâs publicity stunt through. But they canât be believed. Neither can the prosecution.
So what about the black men Smollett hired to beat him up and almost hung out to dry. Do their lives matter? As the Associated Press noted, a Chicago police officer testified Smollett was willing to sign a complaint against the Osundairo brothers in February of 2019 but was talked out of it by his lawyer.
Presumably, though, that wouldnât matter in Black Lives Matterâs ideal world because the statement notes they believe in âthe abolition of police and every unjust systemâ â which presumably includes any kind of punishment for the Osundairo brothers, as well.
âWe will continue to love and protect one another, and wrap our arms around those who do the work to usher in Black freedom and, by extension, freedom for everyone else,â the statement concluded.
Itâs hard to tell what this âfreedomâ and âabolitionâ would even look like, apart from self-interest defined along racial terms. This wonât happen just because itâs supremely unworkable, and itâs indicative of how divorced from reality the national Black Lives Matter organization has become.
At least, however, Smollettâs finally found someone whoâs willing to stand in his corner as he ârespectfully disagreesâ with the juryâs verdict. Itâs telling, however, that they only believe him because of his race.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
