Former Golden Globes president calls BLM a ''hate movement''

An email sent Sunday by a former Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. president criticizing Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors and likening BLM to a hate group touched off a firestorm among many of the organization’s members.

In the email, Phil Berk, who served eight terms as HFPA president, shared a post that called BLM a “racist hate movement” and described Cullors as “the self-proclaimed ‘trained Marxist.’” It was sent out to the association’s members, its staff and the group’s general counsel and chief operating officer, Gregory Goeckner.

The email lands at a sensitive time for the HFPA, which has come under pressure for not having any Black members as well as allegations of ethical and financial lapses raised in a Times investigation into the group. Last month, the group behind the Golden Globe Awards pledged to make “transformational change” and retained a strategic diversity advisor, Shaun Harper, a professor of racial, gender and LGBTQ issues at USC’s Marshall School of Business, and an outside law firm, Ropes & Gray, to audit and review its policies and membership requirements and bylaws. The HFPA, which in recent weeks has reached out to the National Assn. of Black Journalists and NAACP, plans to announce a set of reforms on May 6.

While Berk, 88, did not cite a source or provide a link to his email post, it appears to be have been an article originally published under the headline “BLM Goes Hollywood” that appeared on conservative commentator David Horowitz’s Freedom Center website, FrontPage Mag, on April 12.