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When Silicon Valley Bank collapsed last month, right-wingers predictably placed the blame on wokenesstheir thinly veiled rhetorical stand-in for Black people. But it didnt take long before white conservatives, apparently unable to help themselves, openly admitted what they truly meant.

Wall Street Journal opinion columnist Andy Kesslereven after noting SVBs singular focus on venture capitalists and startups, overabundance of uninsured deposits, depreciated securities portfolio due to rising federal interest rates, and the tech sectors downturnstill somehow dumbly arrived at the conclusion that having 1 Black and 1 LGBTQ+ members on its board may have indicated SVBs fatal preoccupation with diversity.

Silicon Valley Bank donated more than $73 million to groups tied to Black Lives Matter, Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo pronounced. Silicon Valley Bank, Tucker Carlson dramatically stated during his nightly Fox white-power hour, spent more than $73 million on donations to BLM and related organizations. Former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who now runs a white supremacist legal operation, groused about the bailout of a bank that has given millions of dollars in BLM initiatives.

Right-wingers being incensed about a single Black member of a 12-person boardwhich still makes SVB one of the countrys whitest major banksis totally in keeping with who they are. Nothing performative about the racism on display there; anti-Blackness is their brand. Its their contention of SVBs death-by-diversitymanifest in some multimillion-dollar cash giveaway to BLMwhere the faux outrage can be found.

Because not only did SVB fall short of giving $73 million to BLM, in reality, the bank never gave a single dollar to the organization.

The most telling evidence of the lie driving this racist hysteria is its origin point. The Claremont Institute may have once been the sort of conservative institution that dressed up its racism and bigotry in intellectual finery, but starting in the Trump era, it opted to change into something a bit less stuffy and more transparent for the white supremacist party.

Days after SVBs failure, Newsweek published an opinion piece from the organizations Center for the American Way of Life that was filled with half-truths, lies, and right-wing racist refrains.

Leaning into the conservative mantra that 2020s racial justice protests were overwhelmingly violent, the article labeled BLMs demands for anti-racism in workplaces a shakedown of corporate Americastopping just short of calling it an armed hold up. According to Claremont, American corporations, cowed and afraid, had pledged or contributed an astonishing $82.9 billion over the last three years. (They noted the figure is more than the GDP of 46 African countries, because why not drag a whole other continent of Black folks into this while youre at it, I guess.)

The authors linked to CAWs new BLM Funding Database, which purports to reveal how much individual companies across corporate America have given to the Black Lives Matter movement and related causes.

This is where the fine print becomes fraudulent. A general search of the database for SVBs donations to BLM Movement & Related Causes produces a figure of $70,650,000which would certainly be a staggering number, if only it were true. But getting slightly more specific in the search reveals the big lie at its core.

Claremont itself admits the the BLM Movement consists of a limited number of official organizations, including the BLM PAC, BLM Grassroots, BLM At School, and any official BLM chapters, among a few other entities. Search the database for SVB donations to any of those listed groups, and it shows that not a dime has been given.

The discrepancy, it seems, can be found under the link Explanatory Notes, where Claremont explains that it defines a BLM Related Cause as all organizations and initiatives that advance one or more aspects of BLMs agenda. That means any organization Claremont believes helps BLMs missionwhich, for the record, Claremont explicitly claims is to undermine capitalism, the nation state, and Western civilizationis tagged as a related cause. To call Claremonts related cause category a stretch is to redefine the word understatement.

For Claremont, providing mental wellness services to Black kids is a BLM related cause, which on its own shows how unscrupulous and dishonest the mission behind its database is.

As Popular Information notes, an example of what Claremont tries to pass off as a related cause is Access to Innovation, a fellowship program launched by SVB itself to aid Black, Latinx and women professionals looking to launch their careers in venture capital. SVB pledged to infuse the program with $50 million over the next five years back in 2021, but with the banks failure just two years later, theres no telling how much money was actually invested in the program.

Even so, if every pledged cent made its way into the fellowship, the program would still fail to meet Claremonts own definition of a BLM-aligned cause. To quote Popular Information, integrating marginalized groups into the venture capitalist community seems like an odd way to undermine capitalism, the purpose of BLM, according to the Claremont Institute.

The database also points to another $20 million SVB supposedly gave to a BLM-related causes, but then indicates those dollars supported COVID-19 relief, a needs-based University Scholarship program to students at four universities, including two HBCUs and economic development; and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts through 2022.

Saranac Hale Spencer at Factcheck.org noticed Claremonts math didnt quite add up to the purported $20 million figure, and asked the institution to explain the discrepancy. Claremont responded with a boilerplate statement that neglected to answer her question.

So Spencer did some further digging and found SVBs charitable foundation donated to 10 organizations, including a group supporting wildlife affected by the wildfires in Australia, a hospice care project and various childrens organizations. Along with that, the foundation pledged $5 million for 25 full undergraduate scholarships at four universitiesArizona State University, Tulane University, Florida A&M University and Xavier University of Louisiana. Only the last two colleges are HBCUs, and all of the scholarships were open to anyone who met established financial and academic eligibility requirements.

To recap, theres not a single BLM related cause to be found, nor any group with a demonstrated commitment to torching capitalism, the nation state, and Western civilization.

We could do this all day, as Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo apparently did, only to find that Claremont pulled this misinformation stunt with nearly every company in its database. In the case of Bank of America, which Claremonts database links to $18 billionyes, billion, with a bin BLM and related cause donations. Marshall found that BOA earmarked $1.8 billion housing and business loans in minority communities, which is money that has to be paid back, likely with interest, to BOA, because thats how loans work. Marshall also noted a tiny fraction of that total (no specific numbers are cited) goes in grants to organizations like Asian Americans Advancing Justice, National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development and The Leadership Conference Education Fund.

I did a search under Kelloggyou know, the breakfast cereal companywhich Claremont claims gave BLM and related causes a whopping $91 million. Look through the paperwork, though, and youll find the company gave $1 million in planning funds to 10 groups, including a coalition that helps pastoralist women in Tanzania, and a U.S.-based effort that trains restaurants to desegregate their staff racially and raise wages for workers of color. Five of those groups were then selected to receive $80 million over the next eight years, including a collective working to help Indigenous South and Central Americans with land tilling and ownership; environmental legal groups in Kenya, Sierra Leone, and the U.S; an initiative to end End Youth Incarceration in Hawai'i; a group working to end racism in Brazilian schools; and Healing Through Justice, which addresses trauma and mental health issues in Black and brown kids from underserved communities in Chicago. Kellogg also gave $1 million to the NAACPthe oldest and, frankly, most establishmentarian racial equality group in the U.S.

For Claremont, providing mental wellness services to Black kids is a BLM related cause, which on its own shows how unscrupulous and dishonest the mission behind its database is.

You get the picture.

FactCheck.orgs Spencer calculates that, of the more than $82 billion Claremont claims corporations gave to BLM, actual donations to BLM groups account for about 2 percent of the total amount included in the database for all corporations.

Among the groups Claremont includes as BLM related: the ACLU, NAACP, Urban League, United Negro College Fund, the Jackie Robinson Foundation, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, The American Heart Association, YWCA, Amnesty International, YMCA, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Chinese for Affirmative Action, and the Equal Justice Instituteand I am only stopping here because otherwise we will all age into dust.

Maybe the most laughablebut still dangerousassertion Claremont makes in its Newsweek piece is that its database reveals that the radical Left has the meansand willingnessto realize its policy preferences in ways that bypass the democratic political process.

Whoo boy. Lets get into this.

Claremonts discussion of the lefts means conveniently ignores its own funding by Donors Trustknown as the dark money ATM of the right for the anonymity of most of its backers, which it has no legal obligation to divulge, although right-wing mega-donors including the DeVoses and Kochs are on-record for being among their numbers.

Donors Trust then distributes its dark money millions to the right-wing groups currently leading the charge against voting rights, trans rights, climate policy, and racial equality. It is aligned with groups like the Federalist Society, another Donors Trust grantee, whose leader, Leonard Leo, is responsible for Trumps selection of the triumvirate that completed the courts conservative supermajority, allowing Roe v. Wade to be overturned and a slew of other civil rights to now hang in the balance.

Federalist Society member John Eastman, the author of the coup memo that attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and reinstall Donald Trump, is a senior fellow at Claremont. In fact, Eastman authored Claremonts amicus friend of the court brief in Moore v. Harper, one of the most frightening cases before this Supreme Court, because if Claremont and its allies win, Republican state legislatures will be empowered to commit all kinds of partisan chicanery in elections, and state courts will be barred from doing anything about it. (Eastman, in fact, is the guy who got the independent state legislature theory from the extremist margins to SCOTUS in the first place.)

Claremont also filed an amicus brief in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which has led to gun control laws being challenged in multiple states. Claremont has been a paid booster of Pizzagates Jack Posobiec and anti-woke activist Christopher Rufo, who proudly boasts about creating misinformation-driven social panics around critical race theory and trans existence.

Claremonts president, Ryan Williams, promotes ideas steeped in 19th-century race science, and claims the Constitution is really only fit for a Christian people. As if thats not enough, after helping promote Trumps election denialism, Claremont is now all-in with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, helping him realize every fascistic idea he can come up with.

Thats what Claremont stands for. Their attacks on BLM are really about their disdain for what they see more broadly as ungrateful Black people disrupting the American status quo. SVB failed for many reasons, but BLM had zero to do with it. Its all a great, big racist distraction from the actual undermining of institutions and stability that Claremont is undertaking. And sadly, it sure seems to be working.

(The Claremont Institute did not respond to The Daily Beasts request for comment and clarification.)

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Debunking the Right-Wing Lie That Black Lives Matter Got $82 Billion From Corporations - The Daily Beast