Obama, Clinton, and King (as MLK Day approaches)
With the dust-up between the Barack and Hillary camps over Clinton’s intensely stupid gaffe comparing war-monger Lyndon Baines Johnson with peacemaker Dr. Martin Luther King, it seems a good time to bring up several embarrassing facts about MLK, his life, and his actual legacy.
I’ll start by pointing out what no-one who hangs her/his last hope of change on elections and elected officials wants to hear during an election year. Powers and principalities resist changing oppressive patterns until failure to do so threatens their first concern…. stability. Neither John Kennedy nor Lyndon Johnson welcomed any “opportunity” to make history. They were both dragged kicking and screaming through the morass of political risk into signing legislation that was put before them by a mass and disobedient movement that threatened the social order (and not by violence, but by unmasking the mimetic of racism and war by offering their bodies).
That is why Clinton’s claim that King’s dream was only “realized” by the stroke of Genocidal Johnson’s pen actually is offensive as hell. Pointing out that the enormously creepy Johnson — also a Democratic Party political operator like both Obama and Clinton — drove the nation deeper and deeper into the murderous quagmire of the American military occupation of Vietnam… is, shall we say, inconvenient.
Johnson campaigned against Goldwater in 1964 as the comparative “peace” candidate, portraying the Bad Republicans as the war mongers; whereupon he was elected by the credulous public in a landslide, and escalated the occupation into the deaths of almost 3 million Southeast Asians, 58,000 US troops, and the still under-reported ecocide resulting from a horrifying chemical war directed against the whole peoples of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
All politicians, and even hamburger empires, like to quote MLK’s “I have a Dream” speech, selecting two or three useful, out-of-context quotes designed to be inoffensive to consumers and white people who believe they live in a meritocracy. So does the press… and now it’s their turn.
When Dr. King spoke out against the war in 1968, and when he called out the US as a malignant and imperial power, and when he connected the racism that underwrote Jim Crow and its de facto correlatives in the oh-so-innocent North to the racism that allowed America to sleep soundly while Vietnamese men, women, and children were being slaughtered wholesale… then he was beyond the pale. The mainstream press — far from embracing King — fell all over themselves to denounce and marginalize him. The includes all the so-called “liberal” sheets that still tell the rest of the media what is and is not “news.”
Dr. King had the courage to tell us then that every bomb dropped in Vietnam exploded over Harlem. When I hear that kind of truth-telling from either of the pre-anointed Democrats, instead of their relentless phrase-mongering and dressed-up equivocations, then we can take them seriously. Right now all we see are smooth-talking politicians.
With Martin Luther King Day right around the corner, expect plenty more of this disgusting mis-attribution to promote political careers.
James M:
“Powers and principalities” … have you been reading the Bible, Stan?
This was brilliant, and a much-needed pre-emptive call of “B.S.!” just in time for the inevitable wave of self-serving MLK quote-plundering. This always gets me SO agitated. I even caught the Randroids at my local UC Berkeley Objectivists’ club (yes, there exists such a thing) doing it as a means of attacking affirmative action!
As with Jesus, these are just more examples of the inevitable degeneration of a once-liberating and beautiful message as it becomes warped by cynical rhetoriticians.
13 January 2008, 1:34 pmChris:
“…a mass and disobedient movement that threatened the social order (and not by violence, but by unmasking the mimetic of racism and war by offering their bodies…”
Some critics of pacifism have suggested that MLK owed much of his movement’s success to the existence of a parallel revolutionary & sometimes violent movement like the Black Panthers. The argument runs along the lines that MLK offered the powers that be a lesser of two “evils” when faced with reform versus revolution, and that his political non-violence would have been easier to ignore without the existence of political violence.
I’m not advocating this position so much as inviting further comment/criticism of this opinion.
Thanks,
13 January 2008, 7:47 pmChris
Josiah:
Mass movements are more important than whichever of the various evils we determine to be the lesser on election day, that’s for damn sure.
So then the question is how to revive such movements, especially ones which would actually hasten the end of this war or affect the structuralized de facto version of Jim Crow that was left untouched by the defeat of the de jure version in both the North and the South (and the West…).
13 January 2008, 8:06 pmLegume Sam:
American culture is in a double bind. Anyone who’s smart tries to stay in the “consumer bubble” in which the compensation for a day of wage labor (or a day uselessly spent looking for wage labor while remaining unemployed) is a movie or some recorded music or a few hours of television. This stuff is universal; life outside the “consumer bubble” is life spent outdoors, homeless; this can, I hear, be a real drag in the winter outside of California.
Is there, in the US, really a vocabulary anymore that talks about “politics” as political economy, or as anything more than voting for the neoliberal of one’s “choice”? It seems there’s really no place anymore for a conversation about the world, about anything outside of “making a living” and/or “enjoying” (not really) the fruits to be gotten from “making a living”…
13 January 2008, 9:21 pmJosiah:
Chris, your might want to check out this little commentary on violent and non-violent resistance by Arundhati Roy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2Ok6apsHlg
Your comment reminded me of her words here. What does it mean when the most militant resistance makes ‘the comfortable uncomfortable’?
13 January 2008, 11:46 pmCraig:
James M:
“This was brilliant, and a much-needed pre-emptive call of “B.S.!” just in time for the inevitable wave of self-serving MLK quote-plundering.”
It isn’t just MLK. It appalled me to no end seeing liberals argue against Bush’s Iraq policy by citing the famous “you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater” quote with no knowledge of where that quote actually came from. For many people, MLK’s speech is a blessing; it’s so moving, so hopeful, that you can bury his whole life with it, as if he actually died in 1963.
Legume Sam:
“Is there, in the US, really a vocabulary anymore that talks about “politics” as political economy, or as anything more than voting for the neoliberal of one’s “choice”? It seems there’s really no place anymore for a conversation about the world, about anything outside of “making a living” and/or “enjoying” (not really) the fruits to be gotten from “making a living”…”
The truth is spoken only on the level of subversion. The Wire, I hear, is one example of a more honest look at a real, decaying American city. This reminds me of an episode of the X-Files, the one in which Cancer Man’s life is re-imaged as the man who assassinated MLK because he spoke out against the Vietnam War. He becomes the embodiment of every liberal who stood by him during the civil rights marches but turned against him when his critiques became more radical.
14 January 2008, 12:00 amStan:
Just to split hairs a bit… pacifism as an unwaiverable principle is not quite the same as non-violent resistance as a political strategy.
14 January 2008, 6:17 amJosiah:
The point I thought Craig and Roy (and Stan, several times in the last few threads) were making was that we can’t claim to be “pure” or “pristine,” because it’s dogmatic to completely reject anything so broad as “non-violence” or “violence” in all concievable contexts. Perhaps non-violence is necessary in places where violence is not already concentrated, whereas counter-violence is needed in the alley where the rapist lurks, in the Occupied Territories, etc…? I think Craig’s point about both the tactics of SNCC and the Black Panthers being necessary in different places and times is a good one. You could say, in the same vein, that slavery wouldn’t have ended without BOTH armed insurrections and abolitionist pamphleteering, or that the Vietnamese nationalist cause needed both Ho Chi Min’s diplomatic legwork in Paris and guerilla strategy in the jungle. Surely self-defense classes for women as well as non-violent anti-rape campaigning, are necessary. A little dualist/dialectical, no doubt, but I think there’s something to the idea of multiple tiers of strategy for different places…? Sorry, babbling a bit.
14 January 2008, 7:52 ameoinmonkey:
Using MLK and the “I have a dream” speech to attack affirmative action is, I would say, about the second most common way of hearing that speech referenced in the United States. I know it was at the university i attended, by both College Republiscum and “centre” liberal columnists in the campus paper. Everyone loves a famous quote from a famous man taken out of context!
14 January 2008, 10:22 amJon Levine:
As we prepare ourselves for the yearly festival of lies that mark the Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday Holiday (the fabrications that would make King’s “dream” either impossibly unachievable, or simply that of a juicier burger or a more luxurious car) it is especially important to remember not just his April 30, 1967 “Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam” speech but also his earlier presentation to the Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam, delivered on April 4 that same year (see for the text of that sermon, “Beyond Vietnam”).
After that address, delivered at New York’s Riverside Church, it was not just the so-called “liberal media” that turned their backs on their presumed champion of non-violence but also much of the existing civil rights movement. Speaking out against not simply the war, but also the capitalist imperative that drove the U.S. to invade and occupy Vietnam drew the ire of all of the “go along to get along” folks even within Rev. King’s inner circle.
When the reverend was assassinated precisely one year later (while supporting striking sanitation workers), it was ruling class retribution for this, the anti-war stand, and the King’s new Poor People’s Campaign. These are the legacy of Dr. King that we will never hear either Clinton or Obama eulogize.
14 January 2008, 3:05 pmCharles:
On Chris’ question, much of King’s work ( like the Montgomery bus boycott) was done before the Panthers came into existence. But there’s likely some validity to your point. The urban rebellions ( Watts 1964 or 65) would have been more the violence that the powers-that-be were concerned about.
14 January 2008, 4:56 pmCharles:
If anybody sees the movie _The Great Debaters_, notice that the white Harvard debaters quote W.E.B. Dubois to attack the Black debaters’ arguments for civil disobedience. That’s similar to abomination of quoting M.L.K. to attack affirmative action.
I believe King spoke directly in favor of affirmative action somewhere.
14 January 2008, 5:00 pmDeAnander:
as the old saying goes, “the Devil can quote Scripture for his own purposes” — !
14 January 2008, 6:21 pmStan:
Still can’t too strongly recommend Lassiter’s book, The Silent Majority. No study of the South or the Civil Rights Movement is complete without it, imho.
14 January 2008, 6:33 pmMihailo:
Stan, you hit the nail on the head, so I posted your link to DemocraticUnderground.
Here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=4062025&mesg_id=4068161
14 January 2008, 9:50 pmChris:
From Laila Lalami’s blog of 1/15/08 http://www.lailalalami.com/blog/
…I copped this link to LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibit on The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas, Minister of Culture of The Black Panther Party.
Click on the thumbnails for enlarged images and quotes from the artist.
http://www.moca.org/emorydouglas/
15 January 2008, 3:49 pmCharles:
Hello De. Are you settled in your new location ?
Charles
15 January 2008, 4:53 pmeoinmonkey:
A repost from BGSU Student Newspaper, MLK Day, 2003, by a good friend of mine. It doesnt even need editing:
“This letter is written in response to the concluding sentiment of yesterday’s editorial. The writer(s), in an attempt to interweave current debates on affirmative action and the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., suggest that King would have opposed affirmative action. This would be a warm and fuzzy sentiment were it correct, but it is in fact desperately mistaken.
The misconception that King would have opposed affirmative action is not a new one — in fact, it is favored by many who oppose affirmative action, because it seems like an air-tight debate stopper (”If MLK was against it, it must be bad.”) This error can be corrected if we examine the words of the man who gave his life espousing views that were not only highly controversial at the time, but would be highly controversial today.
In 1967, just one year before his death, King wrote “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community,” in which he said, “A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis.” King was also a key organizer in “Operation Breadbasket,” which dared to boycott businesses where a disproportionately low number of blacks were employed. This is even more extreme than current affirmative action programs.
King did hope that someday people would not be judged by the color of their skin, but he also thought that as long as the effects of slavery, Jim Crow laws and other institutionalized racism persisted, some sort of boost ought to be provided.
It is not only unfortunate, but terrifying, that the words of such a great man are being ignored in favor of a watered-down, saccharine image of an “unthreatening” civil rights advocate who wanted only simple equality and nothing more. In fact, King said of such a notion, “On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up.”
My argument here is not that affirmative action is a “solution,” or that King’s words are infallible. My argument is simply that King did in fact support the idea of affirmative action. King also had myriad other beliefs that many people today would find threatening or at least unacceptable. I happen to consistently agree with him, but that is not my point. My point is that the best way to honor him is to remember what he really had to say and what his legacy actually is, not to sugarcoat and whitewash his teachings (pun quite intended).
16 January 2008, 11:59 amJessica Teaman
GRADUATE STUDENT”
Mihailo:
A follow-up thought, posted to CommonDreams (John Nichols commentary (”MLK, LBJ, Clinton, Obama and the Politics of Memory”):
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/15/6390/?jal_edit_comments#comment-182726
On the “Daily Show”, tonight, January 15th (a week and a day since HRC drew her King/LBJ comparison), Jon Stewart aired the full clip, and said, in effect (I’m making a leap to paraphrase it this way):
‘Huh? What’s the big deal, seems reasonable to render unto The President, what is The President’s.’
That Biblical comparison seems apt to me, at the moment, because no matter how willing LBJ was to sacrifice the ‘future of the party, for a generation’, a dark mist of suspicion, fear and loathing still obscures LBJ’s ghost.
It’s some sort of Mother of All Battles of the Unconscious. The top of the mountain, The Dream, is hidden in a Black Cloud.
Barr McClellan (the former press secretary’s father, attorney and Texas pol) wrote a book called “BLOOD, MONEY, & POWER: How LBJ Killed JFK.”
http://www.bookfinder4u.com/IsbnSearch.aspx?isbn=0963784625&mode=direct
What *did* LBJ know about the MLK, JFK, and RFK assasinations?
I haven’t read the book, not that I expect that it would Reveal All, but I know I don’t fully believe the Official Stories, either.
17 January 2008, 1:31 amCharles:
Duplicate comment detected; it looks as though you’ve already said that!
^^^^^
17 January 2008, 12:18 pmI said it ,but it didn’t show up