David Horowitz is no stranger to leftist radicalism — he was one of them once upon a time. His conversion many years ago gave him invaluable insights. In his latest book, I Can’t Breathe: How a Racial Hoax is Killing America, he digs into the myth and truth of Black Lives Matter and “systemic racism.” Here are some excerpts:

For the Black Lives Matter campaign to be able to launch its destructive attacks on American cities, raise hundreds of millions of dollars in the process, and gain the support of a major political party for its actions, is a remarkable — even unthinkable — achievement. It was possible only because the campaign was driven by a moral argument so powerful that it touched the hearts of all Americans and intimidated critics from stepping forward to challenge it. That moral argument was framed by a series of capital crimes allegedly committed by a justice system that was “systemically racist,” regularly targeting black Americans because of their skin color. The litany of victims from minority communities outraged a majority of Americans who had believed — or wanted to believe — that America had overcome its racial past and had put such legal lynchings behind it.

The overwhelmingly sympathetic response to the slogan “Black Lives Matter” contained an irony, however, that was widely ignored: if Americans of all hues, including white, responded so eagerly and so generously to this cry for social justice, how could the indictment be anywhere close to true?

Many of the martyrs of the BLM movement are unworthy, and their stories have been twisted so badly as to be untrue, as Horowitz recounts briefly. But there’s a bigger point:

Coming nearly sixty years after the passage of the Civil Rights Acts, and shortly after eight years of rule by a black president whose electoral victories were secured by white majorities among his supporters, the sweeping indictments of America’s attitudes toward its black citizens are hard to square with the reality of twenty-first-century America.

In fact:

The Black Lives Matter indictment also flies in the face of all the statistics that show that America is a more inclusive, tolerant, and egalitarian society than ever—or than any other society with large ethnic minorities. Never in the history of nations has a previously oppressed minority like black Americans been so integrated into the dominant culture of a nation.

Horowitz says one point of his book is to set the record straight on the aforementioned BLM martyrs, and that “the Black Lives Matter charges are reckless inventions unsupported by the facts.” He concludes:

Obviously, the ramifications of such a conclusion are grave: The worst civil insurrections in American history leading to billions of dollars in damages and scores of lost lives — both innocent and guilty — have been justified by a racial hoax. This hoax, as will become evident, has been perpetrated by anti-American radicals whose motives and goals have nothing to do with black lives’ mattering, or with racial equity or social justice.

With a subscription, you can read the rest here.