system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What were the Manson Family's motives?

I get that it was something to do with growing tensions between black people and white people, but I can't really get my head around it. And the wiki articles don't seem to provide much on motive.
gpt
I don't blame you for not being able to wrap your head around it. It's very confusing. 

Basically, Manson believed that an all out race war was coming between whites and blacks, and that the blacks would eventually win. However, Manson believed that blacks weren't smart enough to govern themselves. So, Manson was going to take himself and his selected cult members (The Family) and hide underground until after all the whites had been killed offed. Then, they would reemerge and lord over the blacks. 

Now, Manson believed in a coming race war before the whole Beatles obsession. However, when he started listening to the Beatles, he began to interpret their lyrics to mean that THEY knew it was coming to, and cited a whole bunch of lyrics as being "clues" to their knowledge. Not only that, he believed the Beatles, as well as popular music in general, was trying to spark the race war, the scenario itself named by Manson "Helter Skelter" (after the Beatles song). 

So, Manson was going to help this race war along by making even more inspiring and revolutionary music. However, he wanted to give Helter Skelter a push. The way he chose to do that? By murdering high profile white entertainment icons (Tate-LaBianca) and making it seem like it was blacks that did it, hence sparking the race war, which, as we all know, worked out really well for The Family in the end.