I want to say something insightful, useful, and witty about Rush Limbaugh's suggestion that he "sounds alot like Dr. King...more than Barack Obama". I want to feel some surprise or outrage in response to Laura Ingraham's mocking allusion to the assassination and murder of civil rights workers and black leaders as a type of joke in order to try to belittle Representative John Lewis.
But, Dr. King's memory is unfortunately part of "public memory". As a practical matter, this means that even white racists, such as the above murders' row of bigotry, who would have opposed Brother Dr. Martin Luther King Junior's radically humanistic struggle--and cheered his murder--can claim his legacy.
Ultimately, the audience for the White Right's public fellatio of a twisted and inverted version of Dr. King, one that shares little to no resemblance with the radical freedom fighter who actually lived, is their own public. The White Right and Tea Party GOP live in a fantasy world where global warming does not exist, tax cuts pay for themselves, and people rode dinosaurs on a planet that is only several thousands years old. This is a reality where what has famously been called the "paranoid style in American politics" has mated up with a political-entertainment news media complex to create a new type of normal which is detached from empirical reality.
A political community which is able to sustain such delusional beliefs will of course claim Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as one of their own and believe that he was a Tea Party Republican.
The facts are unkind (as they usually are) to the White Right and the Tea Party GOP conservatives who want to claim Dr. King's legacy, mission, and memory.
Given the ideological orientation of the contemporary Right-wing, a movement that is a union of white racism, white racial resentment, and authoritarianism, they would find almost every demand made by the organizers and supporters of the 1963 March on Washington to be "Un-American", "redistributive", "anti-white", an intrusion on "States' rights", and too "liberal".
Today's Tea Party GOP are the de facto heirs of the John Birch Society and White Citizens Counsels that fought against the Civil Rights Movement and full citizenship for people of color during the reign of Jim and Jane Crow.
With their coordinated assault on civil rights, voter disenfranchisement efforts, race-baiting, and open embrace of white identity politics, the former are simply continuing the latter's work in the present.
White supremacy changes and evolves over time. It is a type of poison handed down across generations and through communities. The Republican Party had their second moment of "race and reunion" when they absorbed the Dixiecrats in response to the victories of the Black Freedom Struggle in the late 1960s onward. The White Right would hate then, as they do now, the goals and animating energy of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
The Tea Party GOP is pathological in their hatred of the center right-leaning Barack Obama; Brother Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would be their public enemy number one.
Such sentiments are a family affair. Old traditions, and relations, die hard.
"It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists."
ReplyDeleteWilliam F. Buckley
Sounds about like the conservative "intellectuals" of today. You'll hear today's half wits call Buckley their hero. I wish they taught real history in school. We all know why they don't. A classic from one of the great ones.
http://youtu.be/-14SllPPLxY
I happened to come across a column written in the Chicago Tribune called "Mourning Dr. King". It ran on the day of his funeral. The complaints about lazy blacks, black criminality, and their "liberal" white enablers could have been written today. Buckley was a piece of work. Don't forget Saint Ronnie Reagan was also no fan of Dr. King and if I remember correctly suggested he was a troublemaker who got what was coming to him.
ReplyDeleteDoctor King was a conservative Republican. He would hate todays black thug culture. The content of the thug culture character is lacking of all virtue. It is everything Dr Martin Luther King was opposed to. Of course you wont allow my comment. You cant handle the truth, even though it would set you free.
ReplyDeleteSt Ronnie was proud of the murderers in Mississippi too. I believe you can use Reagan's public statements to run against the GOP today. Is there audio of his troublemaker statement?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T27dH9UXLcg Ted Nugent, one of our most public bigot's, calling himself black on his "Black Power" tour, all summer. Pathological hatred is one way of describing it. He also looks and sounds like a psychopath who has found his mental illness is a career.
ReplyDeleteLest we forget (and we already have) that Charlie and Davey's dad, Fred Koch, who bequeathed all that plunder to his darlings who then would eventually start and fund the so-called Tea-Party, was a founding member and rather large contributor to the John Birch Society "way back" in 1958/59. Daddy Fred wrote " A Businessman Looks At Communism" (supposedly sold over 2 million copies) which among other un-notable items stated, "Step one: Infiltration of high office of government and political parties until the President of the U.S. is a Communist..." As she writes in her memoir, "Wrapped in the Flag"- a Personal History of growing up in a Radical Right family, Claire Connor writes:"I know that this new radical Right is a rewrite of the old John Birch Society. This time, however, the movement has enormous political muscle, unlimited dollars, and right-wing media support."
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