January 20, 2020
MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey
Martin Luther King Day and the End of America
Friends,
Today, Monday, January 20, 2020, is an official Federal
holiday, MLK Day. And, as I promised last year (January
21, 2019) I am re-issuing a longish research essay I originally
published in THE UNZ REVIEW on January 16, 2018. It was intended as a strong
cautionary note on the ongoing and mindless canonization of Martin Luther King
Jr. (whose actual birth date is January 15), and whose symbolic, political and
cultural uses in completing the revolutionary transformation and destruction of
the United States cannot be overstated. From the far frenzied Left to the
dominant “conservative movement inc.”, King is now the salutary, untouchable,
indeed, indisputably holy and magical American talisman—an Icon—whose legacy
cannot and must not be questioned. To do so, of course, means you are by
definition a “racist,” a “bigot,” probably a “fascist,” as well. And from the
usual Progressivist voices to almost the entirety of the pundits on FOX (can
you find an exception?) and in the Establishment conservative media, King is
the newest Founding Father who confirms the imposed narrative that “America was
founded on the ‘proposition’ of Equality.” The problem, however, is that this
historical template is false, undone by a serious and thorough examination of
history and the documentation available. But it is used by both the
Progressivists AND the elitist Movement (Neo)Conservative advocates—whose
philosophies emit from the same essential foundations, only differing in
variations of application—to advance an agenda that in the end heads
irreversibly Left…and the destruction of our Western civilization.
I will continue to run this piece each MLK Day as a reminder
and challenge to think again, more critically and historically, about what this
day actually means and continues to become.
-------------------------
Martin
Luther King Day and the Perversion of American History
For the past thirty-five years
(officially since 1986) the third Monday in January has been celebrated as a
federal holiday, Martin Luther King Day. Federal and state offices and many
businesses either close or go on limited schedules. We are awash with public
observances, parades, prayer breakfasts, stepped-up school projects for our
unwary and intellectually-abused children, and gobs and gobs of over-the-top
television “specials” and movies, all geared to tell us—to shout it in our
faces, if we don’t pay strict attention—that King was some sort of superhuman,
semi-divine civil rights leader who brought the promise of equality to millions
of Americans, a kind of modern St. John the Baptist ushering in the Millenium.
And that he stands just below Jesus Christ in the pantheon of revered and
adored historical personages…and in some ways, perhaps above Jesus
Christ in the minds of many of his present-day devotees and epigones.
It seems to do no good to issue
a demurrer to this veritable religious “cult of Dr. King.” There are, indeed,
numerous “Christian” churches that now “celebrate” this day just as if it were
a major feast in the Christian calendar. In short, Martin Luther King has
received de facto canonization religiously and in the public
mind as no other person in American history.
Mention the fact that King may
have plagiarized as much as 40 % of his Boston University Ph.D. dissertation
[cf. Theodore Pappas, Plagiarism and the Culture War: The Writings of
Martin Luther King, Jr, and Other Prominent Americans, 1998 and Martin
Luther King Jr Plagiarism Story, 1994], or that he worked closely with
known Communists throughout his life, or that he advocated American defeat in
Vietnam while praising Ho Chi Minh, or that he implicitly countenanced violence
and Marxism, especially later in his life [cf., Congressional Record,
129, no. 130 (October 3, 1983): S13452-S13461]—mention any of these accusations
confirmed begrudgingly by his establishment biographers David Garrow and Taylor
Branch, or mention his even-by-current-standards violent “rough sex” escapades which
apparently involved even under-agers (cf., Cooper
Sterling, VDare.com, January 13, 2018) and you immediately get
labeled a “racist” and condemned by not just the zealous King flame-keepers on
the Left, but by such “racially acceptable” Neoconservatives like James
Kirchick and Dinesh D’Souza who supposedly are on the Right.
Indeed, in some ways Establishment
“conservatives” such as Jonah Goldberg, Rich Lowry (National Review),
D’Souza, Glenn Beck, the talking heads on Fox and the furious scribblers
at The Weekly Standard, and many others, not only eagerly buy into
this narrative, they now have converted King into a full-fledged, card-carrying
member of “Conservatism Inc.”—the (contemporary) “conservative movement,” a
“plaster saint” iconized as literally no one else in our history.
Celebrating King becomes a
means for these ersatz conservatives to demonstrate their “civil rights” and
“egalitarian” bona fides. The Neocons, with their philosophical and
ideological origins over on the Trotskyite Left of the 1930s and 1940s, when
they made their pilgrimage towards conservatism in the 1960s and 1970s brought
with them a fervent believe in a globalist New World Order egalitarianism that
characterized Trotskyite Marxist ideology, and the determination to redefine
and re-orient the traditional American Rightwing, and to re-write, as well,
American history.
Thus, the purges of the old
conservative movement in the 1980s and 1990s—there was no room for Southern
conservatives like Mel Bradford, no room for traditionalist Catholics like
Frederick Wilhelmsen or Brent Bozell Sr., no room for paleo-libertarians like
Murray Rothbard, no room for Old Right anti-egalitarians like Paul Gottfried,
and no room for “America Firsters” like Pat Buchanan…And those traditional
conservatives who were too significant in the “pantheon of greats,” like a
Russell Kirk, they attempted to simply whitewash and give them new, cleaned up
images and identities (part and parcel of their “rewriting” of conservatism).
Thus, Kirk’s opposition to the civil rights bills of the 1960s and 1970s, his
staunch arguments against egalitarianism, his willingness to debate cognitive
disparities between the races (publishing, for example, reviews of Dr. Audrey
M. Shuey’s study, The Testing of Negro Intelligence, in his
publication, The University Bookman—I know, as I was there in
Mecosta when it happened) are all swept under the carpet or carefully ignored.
In this, in fact, the dominant
Neocons have joined with their cousins on the “farther Left,” to the point that
Bush consultant guru and Fox pundit, Karl Rove, could boast that hardcore
Marxist/Communist historian Eric Foner (who lamented the collapse of Soviet
Communism) was his favorite historian (when examining Reconstruction) (See Dr.
Paul Gottfried’s incisive critique of Foner and those “conservatives” who have
praised him, “Guilt Trip,” The American Conservative,” May 4, 2009,
pp. 21-23).
King Day has become, then, for
the Conservative Movement an opportunity for it to beat its chest, brag about
its commitment to civil rights and the American “dream”, the unrealized idea of
equality (that is, to distort and re-write the history of the American
Founding), and to protect its left flank against the ever increasing charges
that it could be, just might be, maybe is—“racist.”
And for the “farther Left,”
that catapulting cultural Marxist juggernaut that continues to move the
societal and political goalposts to the Left, King Day becomes as a major
ideological blitzkrieg, a weaponized cudgel used to strike down and silence
anyone, anywhere, who might offer the slightest dissent to the latest barbarity
and latest “advance” in civil rights, now expanded to include not just
everything “racial,” but also same sex marriage, transgenderism and abortion on
demand. Martin Luther King–that deeply and irredeemably flawed and fraudulent
figure imposed upon us and our consciousness—has become an icon, a totem, who
serves in martyred death the purposes of continuing Revolution.
The heavily-documented
literature detailing the real Martin Luther King is abundant and remains
uncontroverted and basically uncontested. During the debates over establishing
a national “King Day” in the mid-1980s, Senators Jesse Helms and John East
(both North Carolinians) led the opposition, supplying the Congress and the
nation, and anyone with eyes to read, full accounts of the “King legacy,” from
his close association and collaboration with the Communist Party USA to his
advocacy of violence and support for the Communists in North Vietnam, to
implicit support for Marxist revolution domestically. Ironically, it was Robert
Woodson, a noted black Republican, who highlighted in a lecture
given to honor the “conservative virtues” of King at the Heritage Foundation on November 5, 1993, the difficulties
in getting black advocates of the older generation to respect King’s role as a
Civil Rights leader. According to Woodson, as quoted in an excellent essay by
Paul Gottfried,
“when Dr. King tried to bring the Civil Rights movement together
with the [Marxist] peace movement, it
was Carl Rowan who characterized King as a Communist, not Ronald Reagan.
I remember being on the dais of the NAACP banquet in Darby, Pennsylvania when
Roy Wilkins soundly castigated King for this position.” [Paul Gottfried, “The
Cult of St. Martin Luther King – A Loyalty Test for Careerist Conservatives?” January 16, 2012]
But not only that, behind the
scenes there were voluminous secretly-made FBI recordings and accounts of
King’s violent sexual escapades, often times with more than two or three others
involved in such “rough sex” trysts; and of his near total hypocrisy when
discussing civil rights and other prominent civil rights leaders. It is, to put
it mildly, a sorry record, scandalous even by today’s standards…Indeed, King
makes Harvey Weinstein look like a meek choirboy in comparison.
But you won’t hear any of that
mentioned by the falling-all-over-itself Mainstream Media or the media mavens
on Fox. In fact, such comments will get you exiled to the far reaches of the
Gobi Desert and labeled a “racist,” quicker that my cocker spaniel gobbles down
his kibble.
Rather than rehash and restate
all the various accusations, backed up with substantial and overwhelming
documentation, let me offer something of an annotated bibliography and history
of MLK Day. Almost all the material is now available and accessible online,
including material from the Congressional Record.
First, essential to
understanding the background of just how we got King Day, the late Dr. Samuel
Francis’s account is critical. Originally written to preface the publication of
voluminous testimony and documentation placed in the Congressional
Record by Senator Helms, Francis’s essay and the Helms’ dossier were
eventually published in book form (I have a published copy, but I’m unsure if
you can still find it on Amazon). A few years back Dr. Francis’s introduction
and his detailed background essay and the lengthy Congressional Record material
(which he prepared for Helms) were put online. For a complete understanding of
King’s association and cooperation with American Communists and his endorsement
of Vietnamese Communism, as well as his putative endorsement of Marxism here in
the United States while condemning the free enterprise system, these two items
are essential reading:
To fully understand the serious
plagiarism charges leveled against King and the academic and
politically-correct skullduggery that surrounded Boston University’s decision
not to rescind his doctoral degree, Theodore Pappas’s two detailed studies,
cited above, offer fascinating and scandalously revealing details. But other
writers, also, upon cursory examination, have found numerous other instances of
his plagiarism.
Remember the “I Have a Dream”
speech? Well, as Jim Goad wrote in Takimag back in 2012:
“…the immortalized in MLK’s
“I Have a Dream” speech in the part where he beseeches God…to “Let freedom ring
from the Stone Mountain of Georgia.” King stole that passage about Stone Mountain from a 1952 oratory delivered
by another black preacher at the Republican National Convention. He also
allegedly plagiarized parts of the first public sermon he ever delivered back
in 1947.” [Jim Goad, “I’m So Bored with MLK,” Takimag, January 16,
2012]
But, say the Neocon scribblers
at National Review and the pundits on
Fox, wasn’t King really a conservative at heart, an old-fashioned black Baptist
who believed in the tenets of traditional Christianity? Shouldn’t we simply
overlook these all-too-human foibles?
To answer that Dr. Jack Kerwick
penned an essay several years ago that addresses these futile attempts to
sanitize and “conservatize” King on the part of “conservatism inc.,” in its
efforts to shore up its leftward flank and, through sanctifying him, to defend
the template of egalitarianism as central to the American Founding.
I take the liberty of quoting
Kerwick at length:
“In honor of African-American History month, let’s take a quiz. In
each of the following statements, a famous African-American is quoted. Identify
that person among these answer choices: (a) Jesse Jackson; (b) Jeremiah Wright;
(c) Al Sharpton; (d) Louis Farrakhan; (e)Barack Hussein Obama; and (f) Martin
Luther King, Jr.
(1)George Washington was undoubtedly valorous. “But to the end of
his days he maintained a posture of exclusionism toward the slave,” and he “was
a fourth-generation slaveholder.” Washington “only allowed” blacks “to enter
the Continental Army because His Majesty’s Crown was attempting to recruit”
blacks “to the British Cause.”
(2)The black American is “the child of two cultures—Africa
and America. The problem is that in the search for wholeness
all too many” blacks “seek to embrace only one side of their natures.” Blacks
in America are “Afro-American [.]”
(3) “Colonialism could not have been perpetuated if the Christian
Church had really taken a stand against it.” For example, “the vicious system
of apartheid in South Africa” had among “its chief defenders…the Dutch Reformed
Protestant Church.”
(4) “If the Church does not participate actively in the struggle
for peace and for economic and racial justice” future generations will look
back upon it as “one of the greatest bulwarks of white supremacy.”
(5) President Lyndon Baines Johnson had a “comprehensive grasp” of
the problems of poverty and civil rights that he faced. He had “sincerity,”
“realism,” and “wisdom” in how he approached them.
(6) Blacks, like everyone else, have “a right to expect the
resources of the American trade union movement to be used in assuring” them “of
a proper place in American society.” Young blacks especially “need to think of
union careers as earnestly as they do of business careers and professions.”
(7) America maintains “a continued alliance…with racism and
exploitation throughout the world.”
(8) Both Marxism and “traditional capitalism” are partially true
and partially false. The former may fail to “see the truth in individual
enterprise,” but the latter fails to “see the truth in collective enterprise.”
(9) Communism was “a judgment on” the “failure” of “Western
nations…to make democracy real and to follow through on the revolutions that we
initiated.”
(10) The “potential explosiveness of our world situation is much
more attributable [than anything else] to disillusionment with promises of
Christianity and technology.”
(11) America “is still behind European nations in
all forms of social legislation.”
(12) “Our children are still taught to respect the violence which
reduced a red-skinned people [the American Indian] of an earlier culture into a
few fragmented groups herded into impoverished reservations.”
(13) “The misery of the poor in Africa and Asia” is the “result of
years of [Western] exploitation and underdevelopment.”
(14) “We in the West must bear in mind that the poor countries are
poor primarily because we have exploited them through political or economic
colonialism. Americans in particular must help their nation repent of her
modern economic imperialism.”
(15) If there is to be “peace on earth,” people’s “loyalties must
transcend” not only “race,” “tribe,” and “class,” but “nation.” This “means
[that] we must develop a world perspective.”
(16) “There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is
that we now have the resources to get rid of it.” What this implies is that the
time is now “for an all-out world war against poverty. The rich nations must
use their vast resources of wealth to develop the underdeveloped, school the
unschooled, and feed the unfed.”
(17) The United Nations is to be applauded, for it is the product
of “the fear of war.”
(18) Since “the destructive power of modern weapons eliminates
even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good,” those “who
sincerely feel that disarmament is an evil and international negotiation is an
abominable waste of time” are sorely mistaken.
(19) “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money
on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual
death.”
(20) America “must not only radically readjust its attitude
toward” blacks; it “must incorporate in its planning some compensatory
compensation [“Affirmative Action”] from the handicaps [blacks] inherited from the
past.”
(21) What’s necessary for combating poverty is “a broad-based and
gigantic Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged, our veterans of the long siege
of denial.”
(22) Because America was “born in genocide,” “racial hatred,” and
“racial supremacy,” nothing less than “a reconstruction of the entire society,
a revolution of values” is demanded. After all, “a nation that put as many
Japanese in a concentration camp as” America did during World War II will think
nothing of putting “black people in a concentration camp” as well.
(23) America needs a “revolution of values”—i.e. “socialism.”
(24) The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of
1965 were “at best surface changes.” Only a “redistribution of economic power”
could rectify the injustices inherent in “the system” of “capitalism.”
(25) The Vietnam War was “senseless,” “unjust,” and “racist [.]”
In truth, it is America that is “the greatest purveyor of
violence in the world today [.]”
*Bonus Question: Which of the foregoing famous African-Americans
said this about Ronald Reagan?
“That a one-time “Hollywood performer” who lacked “distinction
even as an actor” could “become a leading war hawk candidate for the
presidency” had to have been due to a most “melancholy turn of events [.]” In
fact, “only the irrationalities induced by a war psychosis” could explain it.
If you selected “(f),” Martin Luther King, Jr., as your answer to
ALL these questions, then you achieved a perfect score! That’s right: Though
some word tenses were changed so as not to date the quotation in question and
give away the answer, the hard truth of the matter is that, contrary to what
contemporary “conservative” commentators [in the GOP and on Fox News] would
have you believe, King was obviously about as much of a conservative, to say
nothing of a “Reagan conservative,” as any of the other famous black Americans
mentioned at the beginning of this article. His statements, in fact, reveal a
man of the hard left, and certainly to the left of Barack Obama. “The truth,”
as Friedrich Nietzsche so simply, yet powerfully, put it, “is hard.” [Dr.
Jack Kerwick, February 2015]
Finally, I should also mention
Peter Brimelow’s superb essay that offers additional insight on the King Day
holiday and which summarizes much of the information, ideological uses, and
controversy surrounding the day. It was originally published in 2015, but he
has republished it each year to coincide with this annual national paroxysm: “
‘Time To Rethink Martin Luther King Day’–The 2017 Edition.”
I can think of no better
summation of the real meaning of King Day and its bare-knuckled ideological use
to deconstruct, dissolve and obliterate American traditions and heritage than
to cite, again, Sam Francis:
“[T]he true meaning of the holiday is that it serves to legitimize
the radical social and political agenda that King himself favored and to delegitimize
traditional American social and cultural institutions—not simply those that
supported racial segregation but also those that support a free market economy,
an anti-communist foreign policy, and a constitutional system that restrains
the power of the state rather than one that centralizes and expands power for
the reconstruction of society and the redistribution of wealth. In this sense,
the campaign to enact the legal public holiday in honor of Martin Luther King
was a small first step on the long march to revolution, a charter by which that
revolution is justified as the true and ultimate meaning of the American
identity. In this sense, and also in King’s own sense, as he defined it in his
speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, the Declaration of Independence becomes
a “promissory note” by which the state is authorized to pursue social and
economic egalitarianism as its mission, and all institutions and values that
fail to reflect the dominance of equality—racial, cultural, national, economic,
political, and social—must be overcome and discarded.
“By placing King—and therefore his own radical ideology of social
transformation and reconstruction—into the central pantheon of American
history, the King holiday provides a green light by which the revolutionary
process of transformation and reconstruction can charge full speed ahead.
Moreover, by placing King at the center of the American national pantheon, the
holiday also serves to undermine any argument against the revolutionary
political agenda that it has come to symbolize. Having promoted or accepted the
symbol of the new dogma as a defining—perhaps the defining—icon of the American
political order, those who oppose the revolutionary agenda the symbol
represents have little ground to resist that agenda.” [January
16, 2006]
I will not be celebrating this
day; rather, it is for me a mournful reminder of what has happened and is
happening to this country.
Dr. Boyd D. Cathey is the retired State Registrar of the North Carolina Division of
Archives and History. He holds an MA degree in American history from the
University of Virginia (where he was a Thomas Jefferson Fellow) and a PhD
degree in history and political theory from the Catholic University of Navarra,
Pamplona, Spain (where he was a Richard M. Weaver Fellow). In 1971-1972 he
served as assistant to the late Dr. Russell Kirk. He has taught university
level courses in Argentina and in the United States, and has published works in
French, Spanish and Italian. His volume on Southern history, The Land We Love: The South and Its Heritage,
was published in late 2018 by The Scuppernong Press.
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