Last Updated Jun 25th, 2020 at 11:41 amA 2015 video clip has surfaced of an interview with Black Lives Matter founder Patrisse Cullors in which she assures her interviewer that the group has an underlying ideology, saying, “We’re trained Marxists.”

Responding to the interviewer’s concern that the BLM movement might not have enough of a “clear ideological structure,” Cullors responded by saying that she and another co-founder “in particular” are dedicated to the ideology of Communist leader Karl Marx:

“We actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia in particular, we’re trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. We are super versed on ideological theories.”

Alicia, whom Cullors mentioned, is Alicia Garza. Garza, Cullors, and a third woman, Opal Tometi, founded Black Lives Matter together.

🔦 Many opponents of BLM have been calling the group Marxist, or “neo-Marxist,” or “cultural Marxists,” since it came to prominence, due to its heavy focus on group identity and class conflict.

BLM’s website lists many far-left ideals in its list of core beliefs, including:

• We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence.
• We build a space that affirms Black women and is free from sexism, misogyny, and environments in which men are centered.
• We practice empathy. We engage comrades with the intent to learn about and connect with their contexts.
• We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work.
• We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
• We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).