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After Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, some pundits and news organizations suggestedwithout evidencethat woke investments contributed to the collapse.

Silicon Valley Bank donated $73M to BLM Movement, one March 15 Newsmaxheadlinecirculating on social media read.

Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson andJesse Wattersalso made similar claims.

Silicon Valley Bank brace yourself spent more than $73 million on donations to BLM and related organizations, CarlsonsaidMarch 14.

The Newsmax article and similarpostswere flagged as part of Facebooks efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about ourpartnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The Newsmax article pointed to adatabasefrom the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank. The database tracks pledges and contributions to the BLM movement and related causes, according to the institute.

In the databases explanatory notes, the institute said its definition of the BLM movement includes organizations such as Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation; Movement for Black Lives; grassroots groups; independent BLM chapters; the fiscal sponsors of BLM organizations; and BLM partners such as the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Claremont Institute defined Black Lives Matter related causes as organizations and initiatives that advance one or more aspects of BLMs agenda. However, Black Lives Matter is not one entity with a set agenda. It is a decentralized international activistmovementwith no formal hierarchy.

The Claremont Institute and Silicon Valley Bank did not respond to PolitiFacts requests for comment.

An institute spokespersontold MarketWatchthat most of Silicon Valley Banks roughly $70.5 million in contributions fell in the related causes category. He also said the bank donated to the NAACP and ACLU.

The banks charitable contributions included in Claremonts $70 million-plus total went primarily to groups and initiatives with no clear tie to the Black Lives Matter movement:

A prominent Black Lives Matter organization, Black Lives Matter Global Foundation Network, told PolitiFact in a statement that the Black Lives Matter movement includes thousands of organizations, so there is no way for the group to say with certainty whether Silicon Valley Bank donated to any one of them. The group also said the banks possible contributions to Black causes are irrelevant to what caused the banks collapse.

A report in the newsletterPopular Informationfound an error in the databases calculations: Nearly $3 million in contributions that the database had initially counted occurred in 2019, not 2020. The Claremont Institute, which started tracking this data in 2020, updated the database to reflect that information, meaning the banks total contributions for 2020 were $70.65 million, rather than over $73 million, as the initial claims said.

As of March 22, Newsmax had not corrected its headline to reflect that change.

Facebook posts claimed Silicon Valley Bank donated $73M to BLM Movement.'

The claim stemmed from a database kept by the Claremont Institute. It showed that since 2020, Silicon Valley Bank had donated or pledged to donate more than $70 million to causes related to the Black Lives Matter movement. The institute defined related causes as organizations and initiatives that advance one or more aspects of BLMs agenda.

Black Lives Matter is not one entity with a set agenda; it is a decentralized international activist movement with no formal hierarchy.

A close look at the Claremont list shows that Silicon Valley Banks charitable contributions went primarily to groups and initiatives with no clear association to the Black Lives Matter movement.

We rate this claim False.

Read the original:
Claims that Silicon Valley Bank donated $73 million to Black Lives ... - Poynter