If the killings of 5 police officers in Dallas, Texas have shown us anything, it’s that violence breeds more violence, and extremism is a recipe to tear a national conscious apart.

Black Lives Matter is seen by some as a modern Civil Rights movement where activists seek justice and reform by protest and activism. Issues such as police brutality, inconsistencies in the justice system, and broader inequality within the nation, are topics  BLM has painted as crises for the country.

The Black Lives Matter organization undermines any opportunity to seek meaningful reform on the issue of police use-of-force by instead pursuing an agenda of violence, resistance and chaos.

However, to understand the true aims of many affiliated with this movement, one must delve into the past, including the echoes of the black power movement.

The 1960’s were a volatile time for the nation. Truly peaceful civil rights protests, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, and were broadly successful in ending Jim Crow segregation in the south and inspired the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But there was also a different kind of movement at the time, one more focused on separation and violence than the ideals of Dr. King.

This was the black power movement.

This movement sought to achieve its goals through violence rather than by peaceful protest. Such groups included the Black Panthers, the Black Guerrilla Family, and the Black Liberation Army.

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The tactics and rhetoric of these movements varied, the Panthers at the beginning of their inception in 1966, claimed self defense from police brutality. But they actually targeted police in an eerily similar fashion to the events in Dallas Thursday and copy cat attacks in Valdosta, Georgia and Tennessee Friday.

The Black Liberation Army was even more notorious. They deliberately targeted police officers on a widespread basis, bombed funerals, and even hijacked a Delta flight in 1972.

Though these groups later fizzled out or lost influence (although there is still a New Black Panther Party, which is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center), their legacy is seeing something of a revival within certain circles and leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement.

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One need only to look at Alicia Garza, co-founder of BLM, to see that the current wave of civil protests are inspired more by the militant leaders of the 70s rather than non-violence of Dr. King. She states specifically on The Feminist Wire that Assata Shakur, a former member of the BLA, convicted murderer and on FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list, is a direct inspiration to her work and efforts.

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Black Lives Matter protestors, inspired by this sort of more violently charged rhetoric, have repeatedly yelled chants calling for the death of police officers. In November 2015, Black Lives Matter protesters in Chicago chanted: “When I say ‘oink, oink,’ you say ‘bang, bang.'” In August, 2015, Black Lives Matter protesters at the Minnesota State Fair chanted “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon.”

Micah X. Johnson, the Dallas shooter who murdered five police officers Thursday and wounded seven more, posted the clenched fist, the symbol of the ’60s black power movement on his Facebook account before the attack.

The Black Lives Matter organization undermines any opportunity to seek meaningful reform on the issue of police use-of-force by instead pursuing an agenda of violence, resistance and chaos. Surely there are many who join in these protests who aren’t inspired by radical voices of the past, who innocently believe they are working to right some wrong. But those people, along with the media and liberal politicians continuing to pander to BLM and fuel its platform, need to understand the violent, dark history many of it’s leading activists are looking to reignite.