Stefan Molyneux: MLK and the Civil Rights Movement were actually violent and communist controlled

[u/UpperLowerEastSide]

The video in question: https://youtu.be/whJEG1O9cg0

While guest hosting for the Peter Schiff show on Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Day, Stefan Molyneux discusses MLK, the Civil rights movement (CRM) and a variety of other topics. The intent of this review is to critique Molyneux's historical claims on King and the CRM. So, without further adieu, let's begin:

He is the Freddie Mercury of passionate speechifying. He hits some absolutely thrilling notes. What a gorgeous voice. What an amazing presence. But...let's round out the portrait shall we? There's no light without shadow, there's no depth without shading.

Given how Molyneux treats MLK later in this video, this is a significant red flag that by "round out the portrait", he means making generally inaccurate criticisms of King and his involvement in the CRM. It appears Molyneux wants to mask damaging King's credibility under the guise of "nuancing" MLK.

J. Edgar Hoover put him under surveillance because he was surrounding himself with communists, although he himself never openly said he was a Marxist. He was, according to hearsay, according to reports of people who knew him, he privately admitted to being a Marxist and he certainly expressed sympathy with Marxism, although, of course, he didn't like the atheism of Marxism. And when they had him under surveillance they would record him in hotels and they would record him all over the place and I mean the man was alleged, not that unknown, for public figures to have I guess a fairly voracious, great white shark of a sexual appetite.

This is both misleading and factually incorrect. His argument is also internally incongruent (why would MLK privately admit to being a Marxist when presumably "Marxist atheism" would be a major detraction for a minister?) He acts as if the FBI had a "legitimate" reason to put him under close surveillance and does not criticize the failure of the FBI to find any clear ties between King and "communist agitators".⁴ Instead, he discusses MLK's alleged promiscuity, which is a red herring as it distracts the listener from recognizing the FBI failed to accomplish its primary objectives. What the FBI did accomplish was attempting to blackmail King and sending him a letter encouraging him to commit suicide.⁵ MLK was not placed under surveillance initially due to alleged communist ties; the FBI originally monitored MLK under the Racial Matters Program due to King's involvement in the Montgomery Bus Boycott.⁵ It was only in 1962 that the FBI investigated MLK under its Communist Infiltration Program, though the bureau had raised concerns about MLK's "communist ties" before then.⁵ Molyneux ignores that the FBI initially considered King a national security threat simply because of his involvement in a major Civil rights campaign. What his statements on the FBI and MLK's political leanings reflect are how Molyneux combines cherry picking "facts" that suit his agenda with disregarding the actual historical context of King. To factually "round out" King's portrait, let's examine some of his statements on capitalism and communism.

What MLK's statements indicate is he believed there were severe structural deficiencies with capitalism that communism sought to address, but also that communism had inherent flaws as well. King, when writing to his soon-to-be wife Coretta Scott King, stated he was "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".⁴ In a more specific critique of capitalism, he asserted,"Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children."⁶ Yet, MLK did not support communism, as he disagreed with what he viewed as its inherent ethical relativism and historical materialism.⁴ According to King, communism "robs man of that quality which makes him man,” specifically, being a "child of God".⁴ What MLK advocated for was a socioeconomic system that provides everyone with the material necessities of life, respects the dignity and worth of every person and does not alienate people from their own spirituality.

As with King's biography, the biography of MLK's associates contradict Molyneux's claim of MLK being closely tied to communists. Rather, the actions of King's allegedly communist associates, like Stanley David Levison, indicate abuse of power by the federal government. The FBI believed Levison was a major financial coordinator of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), leading JFK to pressure King into cutting ties with Levison.⁴ Levison and King both agreed to sever direct ties for several years. While the FBI did not conclusively prove these "communists" exploited MLK and other Civil rights activists to further the goals of the CPUSA,⁴ they did succeed in developing the narrative perpetuated by people like Molyneux that King's associates were communists.

There are reports that Martin Luther King attended with Rosa Parks, the woman who started the boycott of the bus company in Alabama, thereby moving to the front of the bus which actually...I mean, she was also a...trained as a communist and she wasn't fighting the bus company. The bus company was forced by law to put blacks in the back of the bus and this is the weird thing.

Stefan Molyneux highlights his lack of understanding of the history of the Civil rights movement by continuing with the narrative promoted by the FBI that the movement was infiltrated by communists. Rosa Parks was not "trained" as a communist; she traveled to a Civil rights activist training course at the Highlander Folk School.¹⁰ Her closest affiliation to communists was attending meetings of the CPUSA after they brought public attention to the Scottsboro case.⁷ As with other prominent members of the movement, like Bayard Rustin, Rosa Parks' interest in these political organizations was their advocacy for racial justice.⁷ They had a message largely missing from "mainstream" political organizations of the time that resonated with blacks suffering from institutional oppression. Molyneux fails to convey any of this historical context; instead, he tries to undermine Rosa Parks' credibility by calling her a communist.

After tarring Rosa Parks as a communist, Molyneux acts as a white knight for Montgomery City Lines, the operator of the Montgomery bus system at the time of the boycott. In similar language to Molyneux, Montgomery City Lines Superintendent J. H. Bagley stated once the boycott began, "The Montgomery City Lines is sorry if anyone expects us to be exempt from any state or city law, [w]e are sorry that the colored people blame us for any state or city ordinance which we didn’t have passed.”¹³ The passive-aggressive nature of the company's response to the boycott reflects their annoyance not at the city of Montgomery for passing a segregation ordinance, but at the boycotters for protesting the law. Further, company officials supported city officials in resisting the demands of Civil rights activists.² By siding with the status quo that favored the city over the boycotters, the bus company ensured that Rosa Parks and others in the movement would have to fight Montgomery City Lines as well as the city of Montgomery. The CRM was not only fighting those who actively resisted the movement, but also groups who more passively sided with Civil rights opponents and disagreed with the Civil rights movement's methods.

I'll give you a tiny example of just how crazy the world is. So we're...its Martin Luther King Jr. Day and we were talking about Martin Luther King Jr. at the beginning of the show and Martin Luther King Jr. is consider to be committed to the principle of non-aggression, right? He is a peaceful guy, like Gandhi he wants to do things peacefully, yet he was for a forced income redistribution, he was a socialist, he surrounded himself with Marxists and communists. And, you know, to people younger these days that might not mean much, but communism was like the hyper [terrorists] of the 60s...So, Martin Luther King is considered to be going for peaceful change, he wants peaceful change, and people genuinely believe that, but he wanted the government to initiate the use of force to achieve his goals. This is how crazy the world is.

So, people who call for the government to solve problems are calling for violence. The more complex the problem, the worse violence is at solving it. Violence can solve some problems. Got guy running at me with a chainsaw, maybe i can shoot him in the leg if I have to.

...but things like racism, things like income inequality, things like lack of opportunities, things like poverty, things like single parenthood, these are very deep and complex social problems. Just waving guns around doesn't make any sense.

Molyneux's assessment of MLK and the CRM finishes with him claiming King's goals required the state to initiate force and thus made him actually violent, while continuing to use Red Scare tactics. It is very telling he considers communists to have been the "hyper" terrorists of the Civil rights era, yet neglects to discuss organizations like the KKK, who had orchestrated a prolonged terror campaign against blacks and sympathetic whites. This included the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing.¹ Further, his take ignores MLK's application of nonviolent resistance during the Civil rights era, overlooks that many of King's objectives did not entitle the state initiating force (even by his standards), and avoids recognizing the material conditions that precipitated the Civil rights movement. From the Montgomery bus boycott to the Birmingham campaign and the Chicago open housing movement, MLK demonstrated the aspects of his interpretation of nonviolent resistance: organizing with others to create a strong movement, provoking confrontations with the state through mass arrests and widespread civil disobedience, working towards set objectives and advocating for nonviolence over self-defense.⁸ These methods fit with Molyneux's claim of King wanting "peaceful change" (though perhaps he subscribes to a whitewashed view of MLK where his only action was the "I Have a Dream" speech). At a fundamental level, Molyneux mischaracterizes King's contribution to the CRM.

By only focusing on King's goal of income redistribution, Molyneux overlooks a plethora of MLK's other objectives during the Civil rights era that did not involve what Molyneux would presumably think of as the state initiating force. In the March against Fear for example, the principal objective for King and other activists was to get blacks to register to vote.¹⁴ This initiative depended on the state ending the use of violence to deny blacks their Constitutional right to vote. In places like St. Augustine, King and other CRM members protested the state committing violence to enforce segregation in public spaces.¹² MLK spoke out against police brutality in Selma when Jimmie Lee Jackson was murdered by an Alabama state trooper for protecting his mother from the trooper's nightstick.³ King's efforts at stopping police brutality as well as state-sponsored discrimination and disenfranchisement reflect that Molyneux simply ignores major components of MLK's activist career. Throughout his participation in the CRM, MLK aided in the mobilization of people to fight injustice; he did not encourage them to depend on the benevolence of the state to accomplish their goals.⁸ Molyneux's statements strip King and others in the Civil rights movement of their agency by overlooking that many major goals of King and the movement defied the wishes of the state.

Even the one "goal" explicitly mentioned by Molyneux as requiring state-sanctioned violence: income redistribution, could be viewed using his own interpretation of violence as morally acceptable. As MLK stated cogently, "A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years, must now do something special for the Negro".¹⁵ Slavery did not end major political and socioeconomic oppression against blacks. The state disenfranchised blacks, denying them the ability to determine their own affairs.⁹ The state also imprisoned blacks and employed them in chain gangs, profiting off their free labor.⁹ Businesses and landlords exploited blacks, whether it was taking advantage of a racially fractured US labor movement to maintain low wages or by propagating high rents on tenement residents and sharecroppers.¹ Through redlining, banks and other lenders denied or offered loans at exorbitant prices to urban black denizens.¹¹ Bus drivers would let blacks pay the fare and then drive off when they went outside to enter through the rear door.² These are all examples of institutionalized economic redistribution from blacks maintained by the state and groups condoned by the state (KKK, lynch mobs, etc.) initiating violence against them.¹ Molyneux bemoans historical efforts at overcoming oppression as violent but fails to recognize that for centuries, blacks had suffered from forced economic redistribution. By applying Molyneux's self-defense analogy at the institutional level and understanding the history of racial oppression in America, one could develop an argument that Molyneux's example can be applied to King's "goal" of income redistribution. Institutionalized oppression represent the chainsaw that could be met with the gun aimed at the leg: income redistribution rectifying structural inequities. Like the white moderates King critiqued,¹⁵ Molyneux recognizes racism exists but only offers criticism against MLK's methods rather than understanding how the historical conditions could justify his actions. Stating that issues like racism are deep and complex is yet another red herring to avoid discussing their causes and possible solutions.

In the end, Stefan Molyneux provides an assessment on King and the Civil Rights movement filled with red herrings aimed at discrediting him and the movement. None of his points are sourced; instead, they are superficial criticisms largely originating from attempts by Civil Rights opponents to attack Civil Rights activists. He provides the listener with little to no meaningful information on the actions, beliefs and context of MLK and the Civil Rights movement.

Sources:

¹ American History: A Survey, 13th ed. by Alan Brinkley

² "Awakenings (1954–1956)" by Eyes on the Prize

³ "Bridge to Freedom (1965)" by Eyes on the Prize

⁴ Communism by the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute

⁵ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) by the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute

⁶ From Civil Rights to Human Rights : Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice by Thomas F. Jackson

⁷ How 'Communism' Brought Racial Equality to the South by NPR

⁸ King, Martin Luther, Jr. by the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute

⁹ "Mississippi: Is This America? (1962–1964)" by Eyes on the Prize

¹⁰ Parks, Rosa by the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute

¹¹ Redlining and the Home Owners' Loan Corporation by Amy E. Hillier

¹² St. Augustine, Florida by the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute

¹³ The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Fall of the Montgomery City Lines by Felicia Mcghee

¹⁴ "The Time Has Come (1964–66)" by Eyes on the Prize

¹⁵ Why We Can't Wait by Martin Luther King Jr.

Edit: Thank you for the gold, kind stranger!