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Happy MLK Day

Jill

It’s a good time to recognize an American leader who fought diligently for social justice and equality of all people, and who recognized that the struggle for civil rights has to occur on a variety of levels. We’ve come a long way, but there is still much more to be done. Today is a good reminder to leave complacency behind.

17 thoughts on Happy MLK Day

  1. My grandmother is a sweet lady, she really is. She to this day harbors a resentment of the Japanese because of the horrible nightmares she had during WWII, but she isn’t a racist by any means: in fact, she and my grandfather took care of an orphaned black boy one summer in the late 50s or early 60s (and still keep in touch with him today; he’s married and working as a building inspector in Vegas). She’s also a strict Protestant, thinking that her Lutheranism is of course paramount but also fond of Baptists as well.

    What I’m getting at is to rhetorically ask: “Why does my grandmother hate Martin Luther King, Jr.?” It’s not his race or his struggle for civil rights; neither is it his religion. No, the answer is “Because he was a Communist.”

  6. I couldn’t tell whether you were being facetious, heliologue!

    So I saw an ad for a Martin Luther King Day sale at an auto dealership. How’s that for depressing?

  7. That’s messed up, although I admit wishing everyone a happy mlk day in my company newsletter today. It’s hard to come up with content is the excuse I’m using.

  8. Heliologue –

    That just raises the question – why did she hate communists?

    I know that sounds snarky, but I’m serious. Was it a residual nightmare, like the WWII? I mean, it’s not like the communists ever did anything to anyone in the USA.

  11. rrp

    I mean, it’s not like the communists ever did anything to anyone in the USA.

    I’m not so sure that this is an appropriate standard to use. Afterall the Nazis never did anything to anyone in the US either.

    Take a look at the body counts of the Nazis versus the Communists. Would you ever frame an argument that sought to minimize Naziism? If you combine the Soviet and Chinese attrocities you find about 85 million victims compared to Hitler’s 21 million.

    There’s a very good reason to hate communists, just like there is Nazis, and it doesn’t hinge on their role in our domestic history. Both philosophies are offensive, hateful and butcherous.

  12. Tangoman,
    Although Nazis were most definitely defined by fascism and race hatred, there were many varieties of communists. They weren’t all Stalinists or Maoists, and they most certainly weren’t all “butcherous.” While, to the best of my knowledge, there have never been any American Nazis who rejected white supremacy, there have been thousands of American communists who rejected Stalinism and Maoism. And lest I be tarred with the red brush (excuse my mixing of metaphors), I’ll state for the record that I’m not communist, not even close. But I don’t think Nazism and communism can really be compared in that way.
    Also, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wasn’t a communist. He had his flaws, but that wasn’t one of them, as far as I’m aware. Unless his focus on economic justice and the poor make him one, which would make a whole lot of people communists who surely didn’t think of themselves as such.

  13. She hates Communists because she is a consummate Republican. I don’t know—but can reasonably infer—that she probably nodded in agreement when she heard McCarthy talk. Communists not only represented a military threat, but a threat to her religionationalist way of thinking.

    And no, King wasn’t actually a communist in any real sense of the word, though his late politics leaned towards democratic socialism, which is to say that King was liberal. No surprise. But given the (intenational? ignorant?) conflation of “liberal” and “communist” by right-leaning pundits even today, it’s no surprise that my grandmother feels this way.

    For those who missed it, my original post was supposed to convey a sense of genuine incredulity; my grandmother, who is a lovely woman in most respects, can harbor such a strange antipathy.

  14. Heliologue –

    Unlike some of the super-wacky responses to your interesting comment, I won’t presume to know your grandmother. However, I will answer your rhetorical with another rhetorical: Why was there so much success linking the civil rights movement with Communism?

  15. Betsy,

    Also, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wasn’t a communist.

    Just to be clear – I never implied that.

    They weren’t all Stalinists or Maoists, and they most certainly weren’t all “butcherous.” While, to the best of my knowledge, there have never been any American Nazis who rejected white supremacy, there have been thousands of American communists who rejected Stalinism and Maoism.

    I wouldn’t have assumed that you’re a communist and I hope no one assumes I’m a nazi 🙂

    If Naziism is defined by the genocides it committed then the two biggest practitioners of communism can’t escape being judged by the same standard, nor the minor variants in Cambodia and North Korea. To point to, I don’t know, how about the Communist Party of Berkeley, as an example of communists who aren’t butcherous doesn’t hold much weight. Also, I’ve seen defenses of communism that were based on the notion that Leninist, Stalinist and Maoist versions were perversions of “true communism” and that falls flat too, for you judge something on how it is expressed not on some ideal that no one has ever witnessed.

    Further, the very core concepts of communism are evil. The nobel sharing is enforced at the end of a gun. As Edward O. Wilson noted “Karl Marx was right, it is just that he had the wrong species.” The very core concepts of communism run counter to human nature. For more on this topic see this essay.

    Lastly, if you’re prepared to excuse American communists who denouced Stalinism and Maoism then you should be prepared to excuse American nazis who denounced Hitler’s genocide of the Jews, Gypsies and Slavs but still believe in white supremacy but not butchery based on white supremacy. Communism has to be enforced with force for it involves involutary redistribution of the products of people’s work.Both are rotten to the core and at the core are evil philosophies.

  16. Want to hear something bad? The local L.S. Ayres, subsiadary of the May Co., has an annual Whites Sale on MLK day. I can’t decide if it’s ironic or just that bad.

    I’m begging irony. I can’t take anything else.

  17. Also, I’ve seen defenses of communism that were based on the notion that Leninist, Stalinist and Maoist versions were perversions of “true communism” and that falls flat too, for you judge something on how it is expressed not on some ideal that no one has ever witnessed.

    If this were true, then why doesn’t the public at large view religion with the same contempt as they do Communism?

    Why was there so much success linking the civil rights movement with Communism? –Auguste

    Because both are principally the same thing. The only difference is that one was intrinsically a class struggle, and the second predicated that class almost entirely on race. Is there any difference, really, between a weary proletariat wresting power from the bourgeoisie and a downtrodden minority wresting power from a caucasian hegemon? I said earlier that Dr. King’s late political leanings identified closely with democratic socialism, which makes all sorts of sense when you consider that it was entirely about destroying sources of disenfranchisement. Historically, we view socialism as an economic construct—The Jungle being the popular meme—but there are many who egalitarianism as a fundamental precept.

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