Posted on 01/17/2020 11:03:52 AM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
3) Among some of the more specific lines of inquiry I wish to pursue are those which would illuminate the reasons for the continued existence of religious conviction among millions of Soviet citizens, all of whom have been subjected to varying degrees of oppression and discouragement by powerful agencies of propaganda and anti-religious education. This tenacity to spiritual commitment is worthy of careful study for these precise methods to the control of man's relationship to God may be unique in human experience.
4) As a Baptist I am especially interested to be in contact with the large number of practicing Baptists within the Soviet Union.
5) As a Negro I have special concern with the influence that Soviet theory and practice have had upon the millions of colored peoples who populate the less industrially developed areas of the world. As a believer in non-violence as revealed in the teachings of Jesus Christ, I am anxious to examine the reactions of the people in a society which for so many years has sought to deny the basic spiritual and moral doctrine of Christianity.
6) As one who attempts to adhere to a non-violent philosophy I am anxious to experience the reaction of Soviet officials and people to those of us who hold to the view that peace and justice justice are possible to the degree that the world uncompromisingly embraces the Judeo-Christian ideals...
(Excerpt) Read more at kinginstitute.stanford.edu ...
Needless to say, permission was denied.
Bkmrk.
King would be condemned by today’s progressives.
bkmk
The letter was an outright challenge to the state atheism of the Soviet Union.
In February 1962, Hoover told Attorney General Robert Kennedy that Stanley Levison, one of King’s closest advisors, was “a secret member of the Communist Party” (Hoover, 14 February 1962). In the following months, Hoover deployed agents to find subversive material on King, and Robert Kennedy authorized wiretaps on King’s home and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) offices in October 1963.
Hoover responded to King’s criticisms of the Bureau’s performance in civil rights cases by announcing at a press conference in November 1964, that King was the “most notorious liar in the country” (Herbers, “Dr. King Rebuts Hoover”). Surprised by the accusation, King replied that he could only have sympathy for Hoover as he must be “under extreme pressure” to make such a statement (Herbers, “Dr. King Rebuts Hoover”). King asked an intermediary to set up a meeting between himself and Hoover to understand what had led to the comment. Andrew Young, a King aide who was present at the meeting, recalled that there was “not even an attitude of hostility” between the two, but at about this same time, the FBI anonymously sent King a compromising tape recording of him carousing in a Washington, D.C., hotel room, along with an anonymous letter that SCLC staff interpreted as encouraging King to commit suicide to avoid public embarrassment (Senate Select Committee, 167).
King,in his 1957 book “Stride toward Freedom: the Montgomery story”, wrote the following devastating critique of the sort of communism practiced in the Communist super state of the Union of Soviet Socialist republics.
“During the Christmas holidays of 1949 I decided to spend my spare time reading Karl Marx to try to understand the appeal of communism for many people. For the first time I carefully scrutinized *Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto. I also read some interpretive works on the thinking of Marx and Lenin. In reading such Communist writings I drew certain conclusions that have remained with me as convictions to this day.
First, I rejected their materialistic interpretation of history. Communism, avowedly secularist and materialistic, has no place for God. This I could never accept, for as a Christian, I believe that there is a creative personal power in the universe who is the ground and essence of all reality-a power that cannot be explained in materialistic terms. History is ultimately guided by spirit, not matter.
Second, I strongly disagreed with communism’s ethical relativism. Since for the Communist there is no divine government, no absolute moral order, there are no fixed, immutable principles; consequently almost anything-force, violence murder, lying-is a justifiable means to the ‘millennial’ end. This type of relativism was abhorrent to me. Constructive ends can never give absolute moral justification to destructive means, because in the final analysis the end is pre-existent in the means.
Third, I opposed communism’s political totalitarianism. In communism, the individual ends up in subjection to the state. True, the Marxists would argue that the state is an ‘interim’ reality which is to be eliminated when the classless society emerges; but the state is the end while it lasts, and man is only a means to that end. And if man’s so-called rights and liberties stand in the way of that end, they are simply swept aside. His liberties of expression, his freedom to vote, and his freedom to listen to what news he likes or to choose his books are all restricted. Man becomes hardly more, in communism, than a depersonalized cog in the turning wheel of the state.
This deprecation of individual freedom was objectionable to me. I am convinced now, as I was then, that man is an end because he is a child of God. Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man. To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person. Man must never be treated as means to the end of the state; but always as an end within himself.”
Martin Luther King Jr., *Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story* (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), 92-93
I think that it is pertinent to note that the above was written in 1957, a period in which the oppression’s of the Soviet Union were painfully evident, evidenced by the brutal repression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. At the time Stride toward Freedom was written, domestic attitudes toward communism could not have been more hostile. Toward the end of Dr. Martin Luther King’s life, the counterculture revolution of the sixties and the leftist tinted civil rights movement made favorable considerations of communism generally more palatable.
I meant to add, that while I believe that King, as a Christian could never be a communist because of the atheistic qualities of that philosophy, his proximity to the counsel of his Marxist and Communist inner circle strongly influenced his eager acceptance of socialist policies, such as the guaranteed minimum wage, the rejection of the capitalist profit motive, and government ordered wealth redistribution.
King frequently expressed a Hegelian dialectic synthesis of the thesis of capitalism and the antithesis of Marxism. I believe that communists are socialists who really mean it.
Nothing “dubious” about the “allegation”. Levison was one of the CP’s top financiers, providing funding for CP Treasurer William Weiner and taking over Weiner’s position after Weiner’s death. King was also in contact with Hunter “Pitts” O’Dell, a Soviet agent for decades. Far from trying to “make MLK think he was not himself under investigation”, the Kennedys explicitly warned King that he was under investigation and advised him to stay away from these people, and King ignored them. That was in the early 60s, though; at the time this letter was written, prior to his October 1960 arrest, King was actually closer to VP Richard Nixon than he was the Kennedys, which makes his request to visit the USSR more interesting.
Initially he was always listed as the Rev. Dr. MLK. The molders of popular culture did away with the Reverend part of the title, leaving just the Dr. But people asked what kind of doctor? When learned Doctor of Divinity, then that title had to go as well. Or so it seems to me as I remember.
This post from yesterday is for you Leni. MLK Jr. does not fit firmly into a Republican or Democrat camp. And his personal life, like many great figures including in the Bible, was filled with foibles.
But communist and Russian colluder he was not. Please do your research.
Ping to this above thread from yesterday featuring MLK’s request to visit the Soviet Union.
MLK was many things, good and bad, and he had severe reservations about unfettered capitalism. But communist and Russian colluder he was not. Please do your research instead of abiding by the James Comey type takes on history. Thanks.
From the Washington Post, Jan.15, 2019: "In a letter to his wife, Coretta, King wrote: 'I love you so much, etc. He goes on to write about his OPPOSITION TO CAPITALISM, trade monopolies and about the necessity for gradual social change."
I've been researching and posting on this forum for almost 22 years...and I don't really appreciate any lectures stating "do your research".
Leni
Your perspective is no different than the woke-ies trying to dismantle the legacies of our founding fathers and other historic greats for their slave ownership and various foibles.
Leni
The woke SJW’s want nothing more than to claim MLK Jr. as one of their ‘own.’ Strip him of his Christianity and Baptist affiliation, ignore his robustly classical, Western education and values, and turn him into their own icon of the America-hating, socialist sort.
I don’t see the historic honesty on your part in validating their narrative. Or in propagating a Mueller investigation style revisionism of history. King was no Russian colluder.
He was complicated and woefully fallen personally, and not neatly fitted into a box politically — but neither were many of our founders. He is still a true American patriot worthy of celebration. Particularly among Christians who ultimately do believe in the core components of his ‘dream’ of a desegregated existence.
You are wrong. Whoever YOU are. You and your convictions, evidenced by your PC namesake are RINO wrong. It is why MLK’s records are sealed. And, when they are unsealed, you will find just what a tool he was for and with the Comintern. The 1920’s playbook of the Comintern was and always has been to divide the black population (from wherever they originated) from whites, as a form of class warfare dialectic. One look at your social climbing scrambling scruffling losers the Bushes, whose Norte Americano effort continues (thank God and Trump Jeb! was stopped, George P. will be as well) who are pals now with yet another Mahtha’s Vinyahd Marxist American hating pair— the obamaumao’s. Woods and trees difficult to differentiate from your apparent perspective. Explain how you have such “special” knowledge from the book stacks at Princeton where history is re-tooled. Versus family who actually lived and fought against the Comintern, the Panthers, the Leftist Marxists with trust funds in Hahvahd Yahd. The ones who provided the “role models” for constructed proteges, who still live in the Soviet Statist model, plastered over with Bush big R republicanism (and Romneybot moronic Planet Kolob worshippers, and the NorteAmericano Cheap Labor Express).
James Comey? Where do you get that cur’s actions in what I’ve said? The corrupt FBI bureaucrat — who was and is a lying sociopathic Mick Mobster, along with the Clinton’s, for whom he laundered drug money at HSBC (their “hook” on him) and his german irish pal Mueller who allowed another murdering mobster, Whitey Bulger to remove the “problem” Italian mafia from the Boston lace curtain Irish machine of Honey Fitz. Corrupt Irish mobsters-— just like the Kennedys, who went after MLK for their mobster reasons- not any sociopolitical information. And LBJ, like the clintons, a Klan democrat— the actual moving power behind the fraud perpetrated on generations of Black Americans, using massive Statist power and “plantation” mentality of the War on Poverty to keep opportunity and freedom away from vast swaths of poor Americans targeted along with blacks. Statist, Marxist, and corrupt all in one package. And they used MLK right along with it, propaganda that continues to this day with the silliness of complete lack of truth, like obamaumao and his rewriting of history to “tranform” the country into what-— something the incompetent Condoleeza would like. Academics— a sad lot.
Might add that Comey and Mueller came “up” under the g-dmmd Bushes. They and the clintons need to disappear along with all of their “college” of world reformers.
Wrong— the “wokies” are freaking Communists working under the new guise of Statist Globalists in the control of the Oligarchs. Russia is simply a seller of commodities, of which it has vast stores. The old Statist police machinery is working for the oligarchs.
High minded morons like Soros and his brats, on the other hand are doing what he has done since he actuated, aided and abetted his German National Socialist Worker’s Party pals, and their Dear Leader supported by the Theissens and Krupps to stay just Left of center, but Socialist, as a sop to the labor criminals of the Communists, further Left. They are the AntiFA- which is the violent street army of whites and blacks for the Green New Deal Democratic Socialists of America. And all of them- Soros, and the DSA will be destroyed— there is NO place in our Constitutional Republic for them- not based on historical records and the millions who have been killed at their hands.
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