Today is January 18, a day the U.S. Federal government has
designated an official holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., a
man that government murdered on April 4th, 1968. [1]
Naturally,
certain media outlets devoted some airtime or text space to content
about King. Democracy Now! (democracynow.org, which is also aired on
various radio stations) played parts of his speeches, including the last
one, which he delivered in Memphis, Tennessee, the night before he was
murdered there. He was in Memphis to support striking African-American
sanitation workers, who were horribly abused and underpaid by the racist
rulers of that city. The death of two of their brethren in a trash
compactor was the last straw for these workers, prompting the strike. [2]
King's last speech foretold his own death.
The
murder of King is tragic on a number of levels. On the deepest level,
it is the triumph of evil over good. That is the hardest part to take.
It
was a victory of racists over the oppressed "black" population of
America. That gave heart to racists all over the world, ad pain and
gloom to "blacks" worldwide.
It was a success for the U.S. power
structure, whose members fervently hated King. King was the target of
vicious attacks in leading U.S. media for his opposition to the Vietnam
war, by the Washington Post in its editorial page a year earlier, and
Life magazine, among many others.
It was a sweet victory for the
FBI, especially the two leading culprits running that secret police
agency, John Edgar Hoover and William Sullivan. Hoover branded King "the
most dangerous negro in America." Sullivan at least met with poetic
justice, shot dead in an apparent assassination. His killer was the son
of a police official, and he claimed to be out hunting and thought
Sullivan was a deer. (Sure.)
It was a victory for the CIA, which
carried out the hit and arranged to frame the fall guy, a petty criminal
and racist named James Earl Ray.
The "elimination" of King threw
the civil rights movement into disarray, removed its most stirring
orator nad leading figure, an irreplaceable person. It prompted riots in
100 cities, allowing the pwoer structure to kill more blacks (those
inclined to rebellion). It helped elect the "law and order" candidate
for president that November, RIchard Milhous Nixon, one of the most
pathological figures in U.S. history. It helped deepen the racial
divide. Divide and rule is a cardinal principle of the U.S. elite. And
tactially, it freed the way for the Johnson regime to crush the rally in
Washington King had organized, which intended to stay in the capital
city of the Empire until certain legislation was passed by Congress to
economically aid the poor.
From the point of view of the ruling
class, King was a menace. By coming out against the horrendous war on
Vietnam, talking about the need to reform the capitalist system to
resolve the race issue, and reaching out to aid workers, King could
potentially raise people's consciousness by connecting the separate
"issues" of war, racism, labor rights and the economic system and
dcreate broad unity in segments of the populace. An intolerable menace.
And
what of King's main nemesis, the creator of the secret police agency,
the FBI? The bourgeois elite have mostly turned their backs on Hoover.
Apparently his legacy of political repression is inconvenient for them-
it clashes with their propaganda about loving "freedom and democracy"
and the U.S. as "the land of the free." But he is memorialized anyway.
THe natioaal headquarters of the FBI, the main nest of this colony of
fascist insects, is emblazoned with Hoover's name: "The J. Edgar Hoover
FBI Building." As a state within a state, the FBI is free to honor the
discredited Hoover. Establishment emdia and politicians maintain a
discreet silence about this outrage, and do not demand the building be
renamed. You see, in the U.S., unlike in other police states, no one
controls the FBI. The U.S. is the police state to beat all police
states.
King was a saint. That is, a person who was willing to
sacrifice his own life for the greater good of humanity. He opposed
violence against the vicious repression and terrorism against black
people. He in a very articulate and dignified way asked the system to
change its ways. Its response was to murder him.
So I spent part
of the day crying. Not for the death of a good man. Good people die all
the time. I can handle that. In part what caused my tears was the power
of King's own words. In part the poignancy that a rare person, an
American saint, was eliminated by an evil power structure that has ruled
America from the beginning without interrupttion. But the main cause of
my tears was the FACT that evil won, as it often does on this planet.
Evil is destructive of humanity. And on a deeper level, Evil is
anti-Life.
1] Reactionaries and racists on every level of
American society opposed the creation of the holiday. The political
utility of the holiday for the power structure is that it can coopt
King's legacy, erase his opposition to the Vietnam war and his economic
critique of U.S. capitalism, and transform a vital leader and potential
source of contemporary inspiration to push for change, into a plaster
saint.
2] Democracy Now ! program, click here. Memphis sanitation strike as per Wikipedia, click here.
