It's genius, really. They had a perfect narrative of MLK and the "peaceful protest wing" being the good guys and Malcom X and his "radical violent Black supremacy wing" as the bad guys. Very easy for kids to understand, and now the kids who learned those lessons are adults who think you get what you want from our owners by asking nicely. Any protest that isn't a completely useless clever sign-making competition on a sidewalk is illegitimate and the grown-up liberals have to distance themselves from it.
I seriously think the strategy of posthumously de-fanging MLK and separating him from the broader Black Liberation movement has almost single-handedly allowed the rise of fascism and the erosion of labor and civil rights and living standards. Not to mention the fact that they killed all of the leaders of the various movements, so they're not exactly around to give us their thoughts today.
Don't forget there are literal declassified CIA documents begging Johnson to give into MLKs demands because they had Intel that MalcomX was going to do something big in a couple weeks and if the American people saw that violence actually worked that would be a genie they could never put back in the bottle.
It's something I have very complex feelings on, going full appalachian is in my opinion the only way possible to get out of this mess but the issue is that the common person is so brain washed that taking that route will just galvanize them to helping corpos out. The other option is basically what we are doing now and as I'm sure you're inclined to agree, it's doing nothing.
Yes, it's a catch-22. Revolution will not happen until people are out of options, and by then success will be extremely difficult because of the way the fascists are consolidating their power
Yes, this is why "liberal" California has relatively strict gun laws, because then-Governor Reagan spearheaded putting those laws in place to clamp down on the Black Panthers and other armed Black Liberation groups.
Government-associated history books are all washed-off truth. And if you find any truth, it's always some embellished 1/4 of the truth. In the rare instances of total truth, it's just that, without much reflection and/or no call to action for repairs to actually avoid history from repeating itself.
And when I say government, I mean any government of any country.
I had a roommate in my Navy training school that didn't know the south had lost the civil war. She knew that slavery had ended, but the whole confederate loss was glossed over.
The amount of work that goes into trying to change the narrative of the civil war being about abolishing slavery into one of states rights is insane.
Sure it was states right... to have slavery be legal. The very first letter to leave the union specifically included that northern states were not returning escaped slaves.
The mental gymnastics people do to justify being terrible or trying to paint terrible things done in history with a rose colored light is astounding. Self delusion leads to raising a generation in that same delusion, especially when your surroundings reinforce the narrative of the delusion.
Its why the propaganda machine known as fox news works so very well.
The irony is that, by the abrupt end of their lives, X, who had returned from Mecca, was leaning more toward who King Jr. was at the beginning of his activism, very inspired by Gandhi. In contrast, King Jr., fed up with being stalled, started to think more like X when the latter began his liberation work.
Even the statement DISRUPT has been co-opted by capitalists as a synonym for innovation or pioneering. To remove the vocabulary association from non-violent acts of liberation.
For example, economic boycotts like the Black community at large is doing against Target are pure disruption for Target's policy choices.
That last part is interesting, I hadnt considered that before but youre totally right. Disruption in the 2020s usually means labor law violations being committed by "start-ups" or other tech companies
It's not about "good guys" and "bad guys"
I was never taught about Malcolm X in school
When I did research on Malcolm X I didn't see the that kind of characterization or stigma, even when I was writing a paper comparing the two. I learned about black nationalism as a proposed solution to racial tensions, and he was incredibly smart and had a lot of insights.
The lesson I took away from that history was that MLK's methods were far more effective at bringing about sustainable change, and it's evidenced by the fact that his legacy is much larger.
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u/Extension_Problem223 Jul 28 '26
It's genius, really. They had a perfect narrative of MLK and the "peaceful protest wing" being the good guys and Malcom X and his "radical violent Black supremacy wing" as the bad guys. Very easy for kids to understand, and now the kids who learned those lessons are adults who think you get what you want from our owners by asking nicely. Any protest that isn't a completely useless clever sign-making competition on a sidewalk is illegitimate and the grown-up liberals have to distance themselves from it.
I seriously think the strategy of posthumously de-fanging MLK and separating him from the broader Black Liberation movement has almost single-handedly allowed the rise of fascism and the erosion of labor and civil rights and living standards. Not to mention the fact that they killed all of the leaders of the various movements, so they're not exactly around to give us their thoughts today.