As protests erupt in Minnesota again, following the police shooting of another unarmed Black man, right-wing media and extremist groups are focused on the Black Lives Matter Founder Patrisse Cullors’ recent home purchase. Among those in right-wing media to lambast her were Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and right-wing operative Candace Owens, who suggested Cullors, a Black woman, had no business moving to a predominantly white neighborhood.
The real estate publication Dirt reported the purchase April 7, featuring photos of the estate and its location in Topanga Canyon, along with the home’s price tag of $1.4 million. According to Dirt, the property was sold to a corporate entity that public records show is controlled by Cullors. Mainstream and right-wing media quickly reported the story, and Cullors has faced backlash for the purchase from both the right and the left, as some have accused Cullors, a self-described Marxist, of hypocrisy.
In a statement sent to multiple news outlets, Black Lives Matter Global Network stated that it “did not commit any organizational resources toward the purchase of personal property by any employee or volunteer” and that Cullors had not received any money from the organization since 2019. That didn’t stop Owens, the founder of BLEXIT, a campaign to encourage Black Americans and other minorities to leave the Democratic Party for the Republican Party, from claiming Monday on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" that Black Lives Matter paid for the purchase.
“She is a communist through and through, and she has been unbelievably unapologetic in her approach,” Owens replied.
“Apparently building the Black movement was Patrisse moving herself, a Black woman moving herself into the other areas of the communities she claims are oppressing Black Americans,” Owens continued. “She’s fearful of white people. ‘White people are so bad.’ Well, why doesn't she want to live amongst Black people? Why is she choosing to move herself to an all-white neighborhood?”
Carlson laughed. “It’s Topanga County, not Riverside County,” he quipped.
Carlson segued seamlessly from the discussion of Cullors and BLM to looting in Minneapolis following the police shooting of Daunte Wright in a Minneapolis suburb. (Black Lives Matter neither condones nor encourages looting.)
“Really quickly, the looting we were seeing in Minneapolis was just reflexive. This police shooting does sound like it raises questions of competence of the police officer and what's going on in the Minneapolis police,” he said. “But looting in immediate response to that, why would we put up with that?"
“The Democrats see some advantage in this,” Owens replied. “Right now you have a bunch of criminals who love Black Lives Matter as an organization, they love when a Black person dies, and we don’t know what the reasons are, we don’t know what happened, but it signals to them that they can run into the streets and grab whatever they want, whether it’s from Target, whether it’s from Walmart.”
This is not the first time Owens attacked Black Lives Matter or protests following police killings of Black Americans. In May 2020, she claimed that Minneapolis protests were a “media-manufactured race war.” In June that year, she described George Floyd as “a horrible human being” and claimed racism “doesn’t exist as a problematic thing,” adding later, “there is something really ugly and broken about [Black] culture.”
