WOUNDED KNEE: NFL Players Kneel for Social Justice, But Is Trend Now Splintering Liberals?

Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2017/09/25/wounded-knee-nfl-players-kneel-for-social-justice-but-is-trend-now-splintering-liberals/

The trend of National Football League players electing to take a knee during the singing of the national anthem, launched last year by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick as a means of protesting alleged racial biases in the criminal justice system, soared to new highs Sunday after President Donald Trump tore into kneeling players Friday night during a speech in Alabama.

But is the kneeling movement, initiated by Kaepernick to protest police brutality, on the verge of splintering social justice causes? A scan of social media activity shows there is a growing resentment forming inside of groups such as Black Lives Matter, who are now apparently noticing that white liberals have appropriated the act as a form of “resistance” against all things Trump, and not a call for criminal justice reforms that players like Kaepernick had originally intended.

David Rothkopf, a Democrat who served in the Clinton administration and now helms his own media advisory firm while also serving as a columnist and occasional CNN contributor, appeared to have stepped into an identity politics quagmire when he suggested over the weekend that the kneeling trend should be co-opted into an all-encompassing form of Trumpian resistance:

Trump added fuel to the kneeling controversy Friday night when he suggested to a crowd in Alabama, while stumping for GOP Senate candidate Luther Strange, “wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘get that son of a bitch off the field right now — he’s fired’.”

He doubled-down on Monday after his comment caused the number of players electing to take a knee soar during Sunday’s slate of NFL games.

Meanwhile, Trump’s decision to chime in on the kneeling fad indicates the trend is due to become synonymous with “resistance” politics. David Corn, Washington D.C., bureau chief for the left-leaning Mother Jones magazine, suggested as much days after Rothkopf took heat for proposing the idea:

 

 

The posts by Corn and others drew some comical responses:

 

And now there’s this: