“was MLK a liberal?” was a legit post title

I think this is a legitimate question based on the narrative we receive in public education, the recuperation of King into the national pantheon, and the kind of hopeful rhetoric King uses in a lot of his speeches about the US living up to its failed promises. He was a legendary speaker who knew exactly how to frame circumstances in a way which implicated the very core of the nation's liberal ideology. Effectively saying, 'by your own logic, we deserve nothing less than prompt and comprehensive liberation.' It is pretty cringe to call him a Liberal, because doing so obscenely reduces his stature. But I also don't think it is fruitful to play tug of war with his corpse on social media trying to claim him. It is about as productive as the people who run around saying Jesus was a socialist.

The man was an organizer above all. He organized with radicals as well as liberals. What he notably didn't do was throw more radical figures like Malcom X and Kuame Ture to the wolves in order to appease the liberals, even if he personally held a less radical position (hopeful of reconciliation). Liberals love to hold him up as champion of non-violence, but King never blamed the oppressed for taking up violent resistance either. He spoke about it with lament, but as an inevitable result of the ongoing circumstances. It is a fundamentally different position from liberals today who will turn you over to the cops at an anti-cop protest for busting a window. Worlds apart.

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