Martin Luther King is shoved back by Mississippi patrolmen during the
220-mile ‘March Against Fear’ from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson,
Mississippi.
Photograph: Underwood Archives/UIG/REX/Shutterstock
The major threat of Martin Luther King
Jr to us is a spiritual and moral one. King’s courageous and
compassionate example shatters the dominant neoliberal soul-craft of
smartness, money and bombs. His grand fight against poverty, militarism,
materialism and racism undercuts the superficial lip service and
pretentious posturing of so-called progressives as well as the candid
contempt and proud prejudices of genuine reactionaries. King was neither
perfect nor pure in his prophetic witness – but he was the real thing
in sharp contrast to the market-driven semblances and simulacra of our
day.
In this brief celebratory moment of King’s life and death we should
be highly suspicious of those who sing his praises yet refuse to pay the
cost of embodying King’s strong indictment of the US empire, capitalism
and racism in their own lives.
We now expect the depressing spectacle every January of King’s “fans”
giving us the sanitized versions of his life. We now come to the 50th
anniversary of his assassination, and we once again are met with
sterilized versions of his legacy. A radical man deeply hated and held
in contempt is recast as if he was a universally loved moderate.
'I've been to the mountaintop': an excerpt from Martin Luther King’s final speech - video
These neoliberal revisionists thrive on the spectacle of their
smartness and the visibility of their mainstream status – yet rarely, if
ever, have they said a mumbling word about what would have concerned
King, such as US drone strikes, house raids, and torture sites, or
raised their voices about escalating inequality, poverty or Wall Street
domination under neoliberal administrations – be the president white or
black.
The police killing of Stephon Clark in Sacramento may stir them but
the imperial massacres in Yemen, Libya or Gaza leave them cold. Why?
Because so many of King’s “fans” are afraid. Yet one of King’s favorite
sayings was “I would rather be dead than afraid.” Why are they afraid?
Because they fear for their careers in and acceptance by the neoliberal
establishment. Yet King said angrily: “What you’re saying may get you a
foundation grant, but it won’t get you into the Kingdom of Truth.”
The neoliberal soul craft of our day shuns integrity, honesty and
courage, and rewards venality, hypocrisy and cowardice. To be successful
is to forge a non-threatening image, sustain one’s brand, expand one’s
pecuniary network – and maintain a distance from critiques of Wall
Street, neoliberal leaders and especially the Israeli occupation of
Palestinian lands and peoples.
Martin Luther King Jr turned away from popularity in his quest for
spiritual and moral greatness – a greatness measured by what he was
willing to give up and sacrifice due to his deep love of everyday
people, especially vulnerable and precious black people. Neoliberal soul
craft avoids risk and evades the cost of prophetic witness, even as it
poses as “progressive”.
The killing of Martin Luther King Jr was the ultimate result of the
fusion of ugly white supremacist elites in the US government and
citizenry and cowardly liberal careerists who feared King’s radical
moves against empire, capitalism and white supremacy. If King were alive
today, his words and witness against drone strikes, invasions,
occupations, police murders, caste in Asia, Roma oppression in Europe,
as well as capitalist wealth inequality and poverty, would threaten most
of those who now sing his praises. As he rightly predicted: “I am
nevertheless greatly saddened … that the inquirers have not really known
me, my commitment or my calling.”
If we really want to know King in all of his fallible prophetic
witness, we must shed any neoliberal soul craft and take seriously – in
our words and deeds – his critiques and resistances to US empire,
capitalism and xenophobia. Needless to say, his relentless condemnation
of Trump’s escalating neo-fascist rule would be unequivocal – but not to
be viewed as an excuse to downplay some of the repressive continuities
of the two Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations.
'I Have A Dream': students from Martin Luther King Jr's former school recite speech
In fact, in a low moment, when the American nightmare crushed his
dream, King noted: “I don’t have any faith in the whites in power
responding in the right way … they’ll treat us like they did our
Japanese brothers and sisters in World War II. They’ll throw us into
concentration camps. The Wallaces and the Birchites will take over. The
sick people and the fascists will be strengthened. They’ll cordon off
the ghetto and issue passes for us to get in and out.”
These words may sound like those of Malcolm X, but they are those of
Martin Luther King Jr – with undeniable relevance to the neo-fascist
stirrings in our day.
King’s last sermon was entitled Why America May Go to Hell. His
personal loneliness and political isolation loomed large. J Edgar Hoover
said he was “the most dangerous man in America”. President Johnson
called him “a nigger preacher”. Fellow Christian ministers, white and
black, closed their pulpits to him. Young revolutionaries dismissed and
tried to humiliate him with walkouts, booing and heckling. Life magazine
– echoing Time magazine, the New York Times, and the Washington Post
(all bastions of the liberal establishment) – trashed King’s anti-war
stance as “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio
Hanoi”.
And the leading black journalist of the day, Carl Rowan, wrote in the
Reader’s Digest that King’s “exaggerated appraisal of his own
self-importance” and the communist influence on his thinking made King
“persona non-grata to Lyndon Johnson” and “has alienated many of the
Negro’s friends and armed the Negro’s foes”.
One of the last and true friends of King, the great Rabbi Abraham
Joshua Heschel prophetically said: “The whole future of America will
depend upon the impact and influence of Dr King.” When King was murdered
something died in many of us. The bullets sucked some of the free and
democratic spirit out of the US experiment. The next day over 100
American cities and towns were in flames – the fire this time had
arrived again!
Today, 50 years later the US imperial meltdown deepens. And King’s
radical legacy remains primarily among the awakening youth and militant
citizens who choose to be extremists of love, justice, courage and
freedom, even if our chances to win are that of a snowball in hell! This
kind of unstoppable King-like extremism is a threat to every status
quo!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment