Actor-director George Clooney claimed that the far-left organization Black Lives Matter supports racial equality and appeared to downplay the group’s numerous instances of racism and violent anti-police rhetoric in an interview published Wednesday.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the two-time Oscar-winner said Republican lawmakers failed to stand up to President Trump after he condemned the neo-Nazis and violent Antifa activists who clashed during deadly protests in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“It would be best for the country if some of these Republicans — and some of them I’m very good friends with, actually — stood up [to him],” Clooney said before drawing a moral difference between the Ku Klux Klan and Black Lives Matter.
“There’s an important distinction that doesn’t get said enough — the difference between Black Lives Matter and the KKK and the skinheads and the alt-right is this: Black Lives Matter was protesting in support of racial equality. Period,” Clooney said.
“Sometimes it got out of hand, absolutely,” he added. “But that’s what they were doing. You can never say, ‘Well, those guys were bad and these guys were bad.’ And to hear those words come out of the president of the United States, that is a great crime.”
Black Lives Matter chapters or the group’s supporters have come under fire for what critics have called the organization’s engagement in racism against white people and outright anti-police acts.
Black Lives Matter activists marched down the street during the Minnesota State Fair in August 2015, shouting a phrase that called for the deaths of police officers: “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon!”
Some delegates attending the 2016 Democratic National Convention shouted “black lives matter,” during a moment of silence meant to honor fallen police officers.
Black Lives Matter’s violence against police went international in June when four officers were hospitalized after being beaten during a Black Lives Matter rally in east London.
Mimicking their American counterparts, a large crowd of Black Lives Matter activists were recorded shouting: “No justice, peace! F*ck the police!”
Black Lives Matter’s official policy platform — which was crafted by more than 50 organizations, known as the Movement for Black Lives — calls Israel “an apartheid state” responsible for “genocide.”
Last December, Black Lives Matter launched a “buy black” campaign, intended to encourage its supporters to purchase goods and services from black-owned businesses.
The Philadelphia chapter of Black Lives Matter came under fire in April for banning white people from a planned meeting. Organizers said they wanted the gathering to be a “black only space.”
A new Harvard-Harris Poll, conducted by researchers from Harvard University, found that a majority of American voters have an unfavorable opinion of Black Lives Matter protests and protesters.
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