Ever since Black Lives Matter emerged on the streets, there has been a backlash, spearheaded by the police mutual benefit societies, mislabelled as labour unions.

Their rallying cry has been that protest against police murders of Blacks causes people to kill police and leads to an increase in crime.

This has been expressed directly, as in New York City early this year, when there was a march of 30,000 demanding justice in the police murder of Eric Garner. Garner was strangled to death by a group of cops, a scene caught on video, and the “justice” system let the murderers off scot-free.

Following this outpouring, a deranged man killed two New York cops. He had nothing to do with the demonstration or BLM, and was from a different region of the country, but the police “union” charged that the demonstrators were responsible.

Now the charge against Black Lives Matter has been championed in mainstream politics, including among the Republican presidential candidates.

One of these candidates is the governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie. On the widely watched Sunday news show Face the Nation, Christie said: “The problem is this. There’s lawlessness in this country. The president encourages this lawlessness. He encourages it”. Christie was referring to mild comments Obama made to the effect that BLM has raised important questions.

When asked how Obama “encourages lawlessness”, Christie replied, “Oh, by his own rhetoric. He does not support the police. He doesn’t back up the police. He justifies Black Lives Matter”.

The interviewer interrupted, “But Black Lives Matter shouldn’t be justified at all?”

To which Christie said, “Listen, I don’t believe that that movement should be justified when they’re calling for the murder of police officers, no”.

Christie repeated his assertions during the recent debate, watched by many millions. None of the other candidates repudiated Christie. All of them are appealing to the Republican base among the most hardened racists.

The underlying message of this campaign plays into a very deep prejudice among many whites, not only open racists, that conflates Blacks, especially Black males, with crime. This justifies police murders in the minds of many whites.

Another episode in this campaign emerged following a march of thousands in New York City on 24 October against police brutality. One of the speakers at the largely Black march was film director Quentin Tarantino. In his brief remarks, Tarantino said, “If you believe there’s murder going on, then you need to rise up and stand up against it. I’m here to say I’m on the side of the murdered”.

The cops went berserk. Police mutual benefit societies across the country accused Tarantino of fomenting murder against police, and have called for a boycott of his new film, The Hateful Eight, and said they would provide no traffic direction or other normal police functions near theatres that show the movie.

The shooting of a police officer in a rural town in Illinois on 1 September was seized upon by right wing radio as proof that the Black Lives Matter protests were inciting murders of police. The truth demonstrated something completely different.

The local police department discovered that the officer involved had been stealing from the police themselves, and was about to be found out. He contemplated hiring a hit man to kill the town auditor, who, he thought, was closing in on him. Rather than face the music, he staged an elaborate suicide, making it look initially as if assailants – assumed to be Black – had shot him after a traffic stop. The announcement of the truth came in the midst of the Tarantino affair.

Meanwhile, on 10 October, officials in Cleveland released the findings of two “independent” investigations into the police murder of a 12-year-old Black boy, Tamir Rice, in November 2014. The murder was caught on video by a witness. It showed a police car pulling up to the boy, who was playing with a toy gun in a park. Officer Timothy Loehman got out of the car and shot the boy dead two seconds later.

The video showed that the cop made no attempt to investigate the toy gun. He made no attempt to ask the boy what he was doing – there literally was no time. The footage was repeatedly shown on US and international television, stone cold proof of a police murder.

The local prosecutor arranged for “independent” investigations. One was conducted by a prosecutor in Colorado, the other by a former FBI agent. Both found that the shooting, while tragic, was justified, arguing that any reasonable officer placed in the same scenario would have considered that deadly force was necessary.

Such conclusions are typical in the many cases of police murders of Blacks. The underlying assumption is that a Black person, even a 12-year-old boy, is likely a criminal and dangerous, so cops have the right – nay, the duty – to kill them.

The case is even more egregious given that Cleveland is in the state of Ohio, which has an “open carry” law, whereby people are permitted to carry guns openly. It is inconceivable that a white (child or adult) with a real gun would be summarily executed.