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Grant Napear has landed a job with Fox Sports Radio in Sacramento, and there’s a reason it’s national news. For 26 years, Napear broadcast games of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings and in 2020 Kings player DeMarcus Cousins asked him what he thought of Black Lives Matter. “ALL LIVES MATTER,” Napear tweeted, “EVERY SINGLE ONE,” and that truthful response got him fired.
“Privately, people were outraged, they were blown away,” Napear told reporters, but publicly, “people were too afraid to speak out and come to my defense.” Such reluctance flowed from the George Floyd narrative – that the police do nothing but kill black people. Contributing to the fear was complete ignorance of what Black Lives Matter is, and where it came from.
BLM is the direct descendant of BLA, the Black Liberation Army, a gang of violent criminals masquerading as oppressed victims. Their icon is Assata Shakur also known as Joanne Chesimard, who in 1973 gunned down New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster. The convicted murderer escaped prison and fled to Cuba, an all-white Stalinist dictatorship leading the world in black political prisoners.
In 2013, on the 40th anniversary of Foerster’s murder, Joanne Chesimard became the first woman to make the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list. While living in Cuba, FBI agent Aaron Ford said, she “continues to promote her terrorist ideology. She provides anti-U.S.-government speeches, espousing the Black Liberation Army’s message of revolution and terrorism.”
Black Lives Matter, as David Horowitz explained, was “formed in 2013 by three self-styled ‘Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries,’ who selected as their movement icon convicted cop-killer and Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur.” In August 2015, “the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution endorsing the Black Lives Matter movement and its false narratives.” That year, composite character president Obama, formerly known as Barry Soetoro, invited BLM leaders to the White House and said “I am confident that they are going to take America to new heights.”
In 2020, after the criminal George Floyd died in police custody, BLM headed a nationwide spree of arson, looting and violence that claimed the lives of police officers, including African Americans such as David Dorn. Democrats called it “peaceful protest” and in a virtual town hall on the matter, former president Obama named none of the victims and failed to condemn any of the violence and destruction. On the other hand, the composite character invoked “institutionalized racism,” in his view America’s “original sin.”
As Roger Kimball notes, there were “no medical findings that showed any injury to the vital structures of Mr. Floyd’s neck” and “no medical indications of asphyxia or strangulation.” But as the case showed “we have been living in a country governed by the rule of narrative,” instead of the rule of law. The view that “all lives matter” violated the BLM narrative, so Grant Napear had to be fired. As he returns to Sacramento, the false narrative carries on.
“All lives matter,” contends Marcos Breton of the Sacramento Bee, “has been used by some who seek to discredit Black Lives Matter, a political and social movement pushing back against discrimination visited upon Black people.” Breton claims to disagree with the firing but still thinks Napear should have been suspended or forced into sensitivity training. The Bee columnist provided no information about the Floyd case and nothing on the history of Black Lives Matter. That comes as no surprise from a writer who trashed one of America’s greatest sports victories.
In the 1980 winter Olympics at Lake Placid, New York, the American hockey team, all collegians, defeated the mighty Soviet Union 4-3. The victory tops the Sports Illustrated list of the 100 greatest moments in sports history, but 40 years later the 1980 gold medalists showed up at a Trump rally wearing MAGA hats.
For Breton, those were props for a president “who is popular with white nationalists and who denigrates people of color constantly.” The Olympic gold was a “lucky win” and the American players were “old white men wearing red hats next to Trump.” And so on, the bigoted ignorance of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) on full display.
Grant Napear lost his lawsuit against the media company that fired him but an appeal could be in the works. So far the Sacramento Kings have not issued an official apology to Napear for stating the truth that all lives matter, every single one.
“Contrary to the Black Lives Matter narrative,” Heather MacDonald explains, “there is no government agency more dedicated to the proposition that black lives matter than the police.”
Gains against violent crime “are now at risk, thanks to the false narrative that police officers are infected with homicidal bias.” See MacDonald’s The War on Cops, praised by Thomas Sowell as “a book that can save lives.”
The Black Liberation Army arose in tandem with the Black Panther Party. For the back story on the Panthers, the New Left, and a whole lot more, see Radical Son by David Horowitz. His work lives on.