The San Francisco 49ers have opened a large can of worms.

In what many may see as a sincere effort to show that the organization has a new dedication to the eradication of racially motivated injustice toward Black people, they raised a Black Lives Matter flag last week to fly with the American and California state flags in front of their headquarters at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.

Maybe the 49ers don’t know that Black Lives Matter is a lot more than a noncontroversial slogan, but it is. It’s a political organization that goes way beyond drawing attention to the mistreatment of Black people at the hands of police or the quest to end discrimination.

And it’s Marxist.

One of BLM’s cofounders, Patrisse Cullors, was proud to admit it back in 2015: “We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories. And I think what we really tried to do is build a movement that could be utilized by many, many Black folk.”

Would it be OK to have a flag with a hammer and sickle flying next to the American flag at a stadium funded in great part by American taxpayers?

Is it a good idea for a major professional sports franchise to align itself publicly with any political party or movement?

Cullors told Real News Network that her Marxist ideas came from her mentor for 10 years, Eric Mann. Maybe you’ve never heard of Eric. He was a mover and shaker with the Weather Underground in the ’60s. That group, along with Students for a Democratic Society, was known for blowing up government buildings and police stations.

The 49ers, the NFL and other teams and leagues have made a point to show their support for the idea that Black lives matter in lower case, but do they realize what they’re supporting when they support Black Lives Matter, the organization?

The 49ers former quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, has become the patron saint of the the BLM movement. He wore a Fidel Castro — speaking of Marxists — T-shirt to a postgame press conference to complain about government oppression.

Do you think he or anybody connected to the BLM movement is aware of what would happen to him if he publicly protested the government in Cuba or Communist China?

I got an up-close look at a Marxist country’s sports team 32 years ago when I covered Rendezvous ’87 in Quebec City. It was the NHL All-Stars against the Soviet National team.

I’ll never forget the nasty looking KGB agents who guarded all the ice rink exits during the USSR’s practices, to make sure none of the players took the opportunity to escape their Marxist Utopia.

There have been suggestions that an NFL team or teams could wear a BLM logo on their uniforms this season.

Would that be a good idea? Not for anyone who knows what those three letters actually stand for.

Meanwhile, out in Seattle, Amazon bought the naming rights to KeyArena, where the NHL’s expansion team will play next year, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos decided to change the name to Climate Pledge Arena.

Jeff couldn’t help himself. He had to use a building to promote his cause. Could that be the start of a new trend?

How about Drill Baby Drill Arena?

Fracking Stadium?

Life Begins at Conception Field?

It would be a great way for various interest groups to get their message out to millions of people, but do teams really want to go there?

Maybe the 49ers raising the flag goes beyond virtue signaling and was well intentioned. Maybe commissioner Roger Goodell apologizing to the players for not agreeing with their decision to kneel during the singing of the national anthem and encouraging them to do it from now on was justified.

Or maybe they all should listen to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Black African immigrant who says, growing up in Africa and the Middle East, she saw firsthand what happens when there is severe racism and no police.

And she also says she has to speak up when she hears of people being fired for questioning Black Lives Matter orthodoxy.

In a Wall Street Journal commentary, she wrote: “I have no objection to the statement ‘black lives matter.’ But the movement that uses that name has a sinister hostility to serious, fact-driven discussion of the problem it purports to care about.”

Maybe 49ers CEO Ned York should have run the idea past her before he ran the BLM flag up the pole.

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