Martin Luther King Jr vs The Military Industrial Complex
Martin Luther King Jr. vs. The Military Industrial Complex
Junious Ricardo
Stanton
“The greatest purveyor
of violence in the world today is my own government” Martin Luther King Jr.
April 4, 1967
In light of the US '
assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani I felt it was appropriate to share a
commentary I wrote about Martin Luther King Jr several years ago.
AmeriKKKa is even more vile than when King railed against its imperialism and
the war in Southeast Asia . Would that we had
more men and women like King willing to stand and speak truth to power
and promote peace instead of war and imperialism.
One year prior to his assassination
by the United States ’
imperial forces, Martin Luther King Jr. gave a profoundly well thought out and
cogent speech at Riverside Church in New
York City on why he opposed the Vietnam War. In it
King gave a history of Western imperialism in Southeast Asia, how the United States stepped in to fill the European
colonial vacuum after the French were run out of Vietnam . He gave a detailed
synopsis of the Vietnamese people’s struggle for freedom and how the US callously rejected their attempts to forge friendly
relationships with America .
King detailed the hypocrisy and
mendacity of Americans travelling thousands of miles to wage a war for “freedom
and democracy” when Blacks who were being drafted to be crippled and maimed in
higher numbers than our percentage of the population were denied freedom and
democracy at home. King put the war in a global context of racism, imperialism
and moral depravity. He linked the war in Southeast Asia
and the Vietnamese people’s valiant struggle to free themselves from the yoke
of Western imperialism and neocolonialism with Afro-Americans ongoing struggle
for dignity, human rights and personhood. King noted the cruel irony of an
imperialist war that conscripted Black and white boys to fight and die in side
by side solidarity when they were forbidden to live side by side in the United States
due to vestiges of American apartheid.
King saw the war as a great drain
of resources and waste of human potential at a time when poverty was rampant in
the US ,
that the Vietnam War was undermining the struggle for human rights and economic
justice at home.
He shared with the audience how he
was at a loss to preach to young Black people about the value of non-violent
civil disobedience in the face of virulent government sanctioned brutality especially
when they asked him, “What about Vietnam
and America ’s
use of unrestrained violence and atrocity?” He stated in a matter of fact way
to the crowded church that it troubled him deeply that “the greatest purveyor
of violence in the world today is my own government.”
As a clergyman, a citizen, as a
conscious and conscientious human being King stated to remain silent in the
face of such institutionalized evil was betrayal. This marked a transformation
of King and a change in his program. He added peace to his agenda. Martin
Luther King Jr. was the only prominent religious figure who came out in
opposition of the war. His contemporaries like Norma Vincent Peale was silent;
Billy Graham uttered not a mumbling word, Bishop Fulton Sheen remained mute,
only King, a Black man, stood up and spoke truth to power about peace.
His continuous assault on the
Military Industrial Complex, US
foreign policy and his campaigns to break down US racial apartheid and economic
privation was the straw that broke the camel’s back with regard to the ruling
class’ tolerance of his movement.
The same liberal journalists, newspapers and politicians who
lauded him for being non-violent in the face of Southern whites’ insanity and
brutality turned on him when he challenged the moral depravity and financial
waste of the Vietnam War. Once the ruling elites’ campaign to turn the tide of
public opinion against King went into full effect, the government put their
plan to neutralize King in motion.
King was planning a Poor People’s
March on Washington D.C.
This was a huge no-no as King’s
support invigorated the Peace and anti-movements and as he forged a wider
coalition for social justice and change, thus thwarting the usual divide and rule
paradigm of the ruling elites. So the
ruling class determined he had to go!
So a year later on April 4, 1968
Martin Luther King was murdered. King’s assassination was part of a larger
counter insurgency program run by the FBI and CIA called COINTELPRO and
Operation Chaos respectively and local police. The US government declared war
on dissent going full bore framing, demonizing, jailing and even murdering US
citizens for daring to want change. https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/investigations/ChurchCommittee.htm
Today every vile and immoral act
the government sanctioned during that era is legal thanks to the 9-11 false
flag operation.
https://www.collective-evolution.com/2017/09/11/16-facts-16-years-later-about-911-that-are-no-longer-a-conspiracy-theory/
Today America is undeniably at the point King warned us about in 1967. He said,
“The war in Vietnam
is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we
ignore this sobering reality... we will find ourselves organizing ‘clergy and
laymen concerned’ committees for the next generation. They will be concerned
about Guatemala -- Guatemala and Peru . They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia . They will be concerned
about Mozambique and South Africa .
We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies
without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life
and policy.”
Alas King was wrong; sadly the
peace movement is moribund and non-existent in America ,
it has been co-opted by the corporate/government war machine which does not
bode well for the soul of America .
posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 9:37 AM
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