From all appearances, Coca-Cola Company may have finally realized Black Lives Matter isnāt just a tautological slogan of uplift, but instead a real group with real aims that donāt necessarily align with Cokeās brand.
And all it took was for BLM to openly support a terrorist organization.
What, they didnāt realize that a revolutionary outfit co-founded by self-described Marxists and with a history of grift and funding social unrest couldnāt be trusted? This was the breaking point?
Evidently so ā because, in the wake of some BLM chapters openly endorsing attacks by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas attacks on innocent Israelis, Coca-Cola has conveniently scrubbed a mention of money donated to BLM off of its webpage without explanation.
The donation, under the aegis of its Sprite brand, was made in June of 2020. According to the Internet Archiveās Wayback Machine, it was mentioned on the companyās website as recently as July of this year.
The donation was part of a campaign for Sprite dubbed āThe Give Backā aimed at helping āto serve and support creators and communities disproportionately affected by COVID-19 and racial inequality.ā
Quoth the original media release: āSprite hopes the Atlanta launch will help springboard āThe Give Backā model to other major U.S. cities. āWe decided to kick things off in our own backyard, which is a beacon of hope that represents a lot of great things for Black people ā creative excellence, entrepreneurship, optimism, resilience, opportunity and more,ā said Brian Rogers, brand manager, Sprite. āAmerica has loved Black culture but has not always loved Black people. Itās time to turn that story around, starting here in our hometown of Atlanta.ā
āEarlier this month, Sprite announced a $500,000 contribution to the Black Lives Matter Global Network in a social post committing action in the fight for racial justice,ā it continued.
āOn June 28, the brand debuted a new TV commercial during the 2020 BET Awards telecast showcasing Black Americaās resilience, excellence and optimism. The 60-second spot titled āDreams Realizedā emphasizes Spriteās commitment to making young Black creatorsā dreams a reality and to inspire the next generation to do more and dream bigger.ā
Well, guess whatās missing now? Sen. Ted Cruz noted that the brand made a quiet edit of its webpage sometime in the interim:
Yes, that half-million to BLM from Sprite for the āfight for racial justiceā has been scrubbed; while Cruz seems to have accessed a different version of the media release, the language was materially similar.
No reason was given for the ghost edit, but I have a rough idea of why it might have come about:
Thatās the image of a paraglider ā symbolizing the Hamas paragliders who were able to fly over an Israeli security fence and murder innocent civilians. Thatās who the official Black Lives Matter Chicago social media account was expressing support for right after the attacks.
And not just that: āIn addition to the paragliders image, BLM Chicago posted a number of cartoons depicting somebody expressing outrage over the attacks on Israel, while another calmly lists off talking points blaming Israel for the situation,ā the New York Post reported.
BLM Chicago semi-apologized for the post after it was deleted: āYesterday we sent out mss that we arenāt proud of. We stand with Palestine & the people who will do what they must to live free. Our hearts are with, the grieving mothers, those rescuing babies from rubble, who are in danger of being wiped out completely.ā
However, it wasnāt just them: As Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow with conservative think-tank the Heritage Foundation, pointed out in an Oct. 20 piece, two major Black Lives Matter organizations ā BLM Grassroots and BLM Los Angeles ā expressed solidarity with Hamas after the attacks.
As for the national group, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Gonzalez noted it āhas in fact gone semi-dormant, so its silence on the slaughter in Israel should not be interpreted as distancing itself from it; BLMGNF hasnāt posted any news on its website since July.ā
In May, a leak of the organizationās federal tax return revealed it had lost $8,559,748 in the 2021-22 reporting year after a series of scandals regarding how the money was being spent. (Namely, on spending that looked conspicuously like siphoning off money to those in control of the group or people close to them.)
The returns revealed that over 60 percent of the groupās revenue was spent on management, compared with less than 5 percent during the prior reporting year. It also had lost $11.7 million in assets, leaving it with about $30 million in assets remaining. (Or, another 60 donations from Coca-Cola to boost Spriteās image ā whichever way you want to count it.)
And then thereās the fact that this was an organization that said on its website, until September of 2020, that it wished to ādisrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement,ā according to the Washington Examiner.
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But, with all of that publicly known, Coca-Cola was still touting its connections with that group ā at least through July.
What changed between July and now, one wonders? Was the image of the paragliders too much? Were Coke execs kept up all night in the fear that a conservative meme-ster who came across the media release might Photoshop the Sprite logo onto the parachute because of Cokeās support for a Hamas-backing organization?
If so, there are doubtless quite a few executives out there whoāll need an extra Unisom or three to get to bed for the next few weeks: āFortune 500 companies like Amazon, Coca-Cola, Sprite, DoorDash, DropBox, Warner Brothers and Microsoft have donated to BLM in the wake of the May 2020 police-involved killing of George Floyd,ā the Post reported.
Grift, Marxism, smashing āthe Western-prescribed nuclear family requirement,ā āfiery but mostly peacefulā demonstrations ā all of that was fine with corporate America.
How could they not have expected the group to support terrorist savagery when everything about BLMās extremism pointed to it?
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.