Martin Luther King Jr. Celebrations Overlook His Critiques of Capitalism and Militarism Zaid Jilani

[99th_Monkey]

Martin Luther King Jr. Celebrations Overlook His Critiques of Capitalism and Militarism
by Zaid Milani * Jan. 18 2016 * The Intercept

America’s celebrations of Martin Luther King, Jr. typically focus on his civil rights activism: the nonviolent actions that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The last few years of King’s life, by contrast, are generally overlooked. When he was assassinated in 1968, King was in the midst of waging a radical campaign against economic inequality and poverty, while protesting vigorously against the Vietnam War.

This was a campaign whose intellectual roots were found in a younger King, who grew uneasy with the excesses of capitalism around him even as he focused on civil rights issues. In the summer of 1952, he wrote a letter detailing these concerns to Coretta Scott, whom he began dating earlier in the spring. In that letter, he concluded that “capitalism has outlived its usefulness”:

I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits. It started out with a noble and high motive, viz, to block the trade monopolies of nobles, but like most human systems, it falls victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.

https://theintercept.com/2016/01/18/martin-luther-king-jr-celebrations-overlook-his-critiques-of-capitalism-and-militarism/

[marmar]

1. k/r

[Octafish]

2. National Day of Service

While the man's life and work were wholly committed to peace, justice and righteousness; the Corporate McPravda focus on The Dream speech.

GOOGLE's doodle is a crummy cartoon of Dr. King shouting in profile. Most Americans have no clue what he was about.

[99th_Monkey]

3. And that's no accident.

i.e. that people have no idea what MLK was truly about. Just saying.

[Octafish]

4. Matches how they make out Ronald Reagan was a saint.

"Martin Lucifer Coon." - Reagan White House staffers.

[Blue_Tires]

6. Jilani certainly doesn't...

[Blue_Tires]

5. Motherfuck Jilani

Passing off 20-year-old insights like he's breaking new ground or something...

Just shameless whoring for mouse clicks...

[99th_Monkey]

7. My my. Such nasty vitriol. killing the messenger much? n/t

[Blue_Tires]

8. Just voicing my disapproval...

If that's a crime or something...

Besides, I've had run-ins with him on Twitter and he's a shady piece of shit like the rest of those Greenwald toadies...

Forgive me, but I've just grown weary of every moron on the right and left ignore MLK the other 364 days of the year, but one day in January, every pseudo pundit has to invoke him to further their own political agenda...

[99th_Monkey]

9. So you think MLK Jr. was pro-war and pro-capitalism? How did you come to that conclusion? nt

[Blue_Tires]

10. I didn't say that, and do not put fucking words in my mouth

What I *DID* say was that Jilani isn't saying anything that isn't already widely known, and like all the sycophants at the Intercept, (and punditsphere in general) he's cynically using the holiday to whore for mouse clicks and further his own ends...

[99th_Monkey]

11. So it's all about shooting the messenger, but you agree with what he says.

So you apparently agree that MLK Jr. was for world peace and leveling the economic playing field. That's
cool. Sadly, I think that is precisely why he was assassinated. He refused to stick to desegregation and
launched the Poor People's March on Washington.

[Blue_Tires]

12. That messenger's life isn't even worth a bullet...

lowlife scum, all of them

[99th_Monkey]

13. I kind of gathered you're not fond of the author. Got it.

What I don't get is how nasty and hateful you are being.

"not worth a bullet"? <-- not ok talk in my Universe.

[deutsey]

14. Another aspect of King's life often overlooked today is the FBI's determination

"to discredit King and to knock King off his pedestal" (Church Committee testimony, 1975)

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/vol6/pdf/ChurchV6_1_Schwarz.pdf

Mr._Epstein. I might add, Mr. Chairman, I do not have the docu-
ment in front of me, but the document that recommended the dis-
crediting of Dr. King and the appointing of a new leader which was
in January of 1964, which was the recommendation from Mr. Sullivan,
and he was soliciting in that memorandum the Director's authoriza-
tion to pursue that possibility further, a recommendation that ap-
proval be 'given for him to explore this whole matter in greater detail
as set forth above, and underneath' it is "OK, H." And then there
is the note from the Director which says, "I am glad to see that light
has finally, though dismally delayed," come to the Domestic Intelli-
gence Division. I struggled for months to' get over the fact that the
Communists were taking over the racial movement, but our experts
here couldn't or wouldn't see it, H."

Senator Mondale. That was the memo in which it was proposed
that King be destroyed as a civil rights leader, and that the FBI
ought to sponsor his replacement by another person not in the civil
rights movement. ...

Mr. Epstein. That is correct.