I’m glad—thrilled may be a better word—that we now have strong evidence that Martin Luther King was not merely an unfaithful husband and compulsive dog (we already knew that, and so did J. Edgar Hoover), but that he was far, far worse. Of course, this doesn’t change in any way my assessment of King’s important contributions to civil rights, human rights, the culture and the nation. I just love to see people who have adopted an impossible and unethical standard for other important historical figures in order to preen, grandstand and mold history to their liking and purpose, to be hoisted—HARD–by their own petard.
King biographer David Garrow unearthed previously classified FBI documents showing that King was a bad guy in private by any measure, even using a Donald Trump or a Bill Clinton standard.
For those whose view of candidate Trump was permanently lowered by his being caught on video crudely boosting about “grabbing women by the pussy,” William Sullivan, assistant director of the FBI, wrote in a 1964 memo among many recently released that King joked to his friends that “he had started the ‘International Association for the Advancement of Pussy-Eaters’.” There is an incident recorded by FBI agents and held in a vault under court seal at the US National Archives showing that King “looked on, laughed and offered advice” while a friend who was also a Baptist minister raped a woman described as one of his “parishioners”.
Believe it or not, that story gets worse. The FBI reported that King joined Logan Kearse, the pastor of Baltimore’s Cornerstone Baptist church, who had arrived in Washington with what the FBI summary describes as “several women ‘parishioners’ of his church” in an orgy in Kearse’s hotel room at the Willard Hotel. The FBI, having neen tipped off about the visit and that King would be involved, bugged the room.
The civil rights icon and his reverend friend “discussed which women among the parishioners would be suitable for natural and unnatural sex acts.” One of the women protested, so Kearse raped her as King watched.
When one of the women in the orgy resisted engaging in an “unnatural act,” King and several of the men present discussed among themselves how best to initiate her into the kinky practice. King told her that to perform such an act would “help her soul.”
Garrow was and remains a great admirer of King’s deeds and legacy, but now says that he did not realize the depth of King’s depravity until he had access to the FBI files and investigation summaries. In a his article published this week in the UK magazine “Standpoint,” Garrow says that evidence of King’s indifference to rape “poses so fundamental a challenge to his historical stature as to require the most complete and extensive historical review possible.”
The Guardian paid Garrow for the article, then refused to publish it. In the U.S., The Atlantic and the Washington Post—WHAT??? I thought “Democracy dies in darkness’!—and other publications wouldn’t touch it. But Garrow persevered, and all the efforts to deny the evidence, or pretend that it is part of a racist plot appear doomed to fail.
Writes Rod Dreher in the Spectator:
“I wish none of this were true, and perhaps we will learn when the recordings are eventually released that these claims are not true, but I very much doubt it. David Garrow’s reputation as a civil rights movement historian is beyond reproach, and as a Democratic Socialist, Garrow cannot be said to have political motives for trying to discredit King. Given his professional background and political convictions, one imagines that it must have been excruciating for Garrow to have written this. But Garrow is a historian, not a hagiographer. Besides, it’s better to face the painful truth and to deal with it than to remain sheltered by a canopy of lovely lies.”
I’m not sorry this is true.
I want to see the ignorant, doctrinaire college students, progressive history censors and pandering politicians face this crisis and either live up to their alleged virtues and censorious standards, or admit that they were dead wrong, as I and many others have been saying all along.
Bill Cosby was still a great performer and TV trailblazer for African-Americans. John Wayne gave a foolish and racially offensive interview once, but his body of work celebrated American values while inspiring and entertaining millions. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson and others were slave owners, but they also made the United States possible. Teddy Roosevelt was an autocrat, an imperialist, a bully and hypocrite, but he made America a great nation, created the National Parks, defeated the worst of the giant trusts, and lived a life that legitimately inspired millions. Clarence Darrow bribed a jury, and he also accomplished more good in courtrooms than any lawyer before or since. Winston Churchill was an unapologetic white supremacist, but he saved civilization from the Nazis.
As a civilization, we must recognize and honor the many, many men and women of all races and origins who have made humanity better by their public deeds, intellectual advancements and accomplishments in civic life, war and peace. Few of them, if any, did not have serious flaws or engage during their lives in conduct that today, or even in their own times, would be considered reprehensible. Using these acts, and solely these acts, to assess which historical figures are worthy of being remembered by future generations leads to a societal suicide, embracing a culture without heroes or aspirations.
The old newspaper editor was not only wrong but also naive when he said, in John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,”
“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
It was naive because ugly truths inevitably come out. I find it truly hypocritical and disgusting, but not surprising, that the Washington Post decided to side with the old editor when King’s character was at risk of exposure. Journalists who think that way cannot be trusted.
Neither can ideologues, zealots and activists who pick and choose who to subject to their cynical and self-serving standards. So I’m genuinely glad to learn that Martin Luther King was, when he wasn’t leading his people and the nation toward justice and racial advancement, at least as unsavory as Jefferson, Robert E. Lee and others.
We have a national holiday named after King, and he was as flawed as Columbus. We have a massive sculpture of the man on the National Mall; there are more than a hundred busts and statues of King across the country, more than there are of General Lee and Thomas Jefferson combined. Come on, Pete Buttigieg! Let me see you thread this needle. You said that the Democratic Party shouldn’t honor Thomas Jefferson. Explain why it should honor King. Go ahead, you’re supposed to be brilliant. Can you avoid choosing between #MeToo and Black Lives Matter?
So now its time to decide, you historical air-brushers, you public censors, you Soviet-style designators of non-persons, you grandstanding, virtue-signaling, arrogant, power-seeking presentists and statue-topplers. Your move. What do you want to do now?
My suggestion: admit you were wrong and grow the hell up.
______________________________
Pointer: Advice Goddess
Ethics Alarms 
According to himself. Garrow only read a SUMMARY of the FBI report that was inadvertently released when JFK documents were released. Garrow has previously said that the FBI allegations against King were not credible because they were part of a Hoover campaign to discredit him. Take care with the assertions as if they are demonstrated fact, my friend. I don’t know, you don’t know and Garrow admits he only read the summary before his public proclamation. Neither you nor I condone proclamations from people who have only read the summaries of the Mueller report; and we should treat this with as much care
The upcoming article, I understand, includes more than those files that Garrow initially saw. Garrow is, or was, a pro-King and a very careful historian.
Your warning is appreciated and well-taken, but all evidence points to a thorough unmasking.I can’t imagine that he would say what he said already if there was any doubt.
By the way, Barr’s summary was accurate.
King County in WA (home of Seattle) was named after obscure William Rufus King, and the name got repurposed to Martin Luther King in 2005 in a wave of progressivism.
I wonder if we’ll go back to the old guy now.
Uh-oh. I read this post of Jack’s while thinking about baseball…
I’m not saying Jack has enabled it (we veteran commenters should know his position on it), but I will say that Jack has given all of us fair warning of something, whereby he could be considered prophetic.
Call me Eeyore, but I think this MLK story cinches the inevitability of Pete Rose’s and Barry Bonds’ inclusion in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
I think that’s probably right, as I predicted here…
Well said and reported. I am a UVA 1967 grad and my hero, Jefferson was not even close to squeaky clean
Jack,
You NAILED it, NAILED it, NAILED IT!
The standard modern American doesn’t tend to buzz about these things until someone makes a documentary, preferably on HBO (those things, whether truthful or not, are such predictable catnip to influential hipsters that millions of people born in the 90s probably think that Clarence Thomas is a sexual harasser now.) So without a “shocking” Netflix special or something on the subject of MLK, this might all blow over and its implications will be ignored. (Speaking of HBO, I wonder if they’ll ever do one on Gandhi).
That was funny. True, but still,funny. Well done.
jvb
The Reverend Ralph Abernathy’s book “And the Walls Came Tumbling Down” addresses MLK’s personal life from a close friend’s personal observations. Michael you might want to take a peak if you are not barred from R/X rated materials. Jack 1 Michael 0.
I didn’t Understand the score. I was not disagreeing with Jack, so the score is irrelevant. I was cautioning to get more information before making strong statements. Thus, a timeout for people on the same “team” for many issues. Jack’s morning blog is more measured with more information about why he finds this credible. Jack 5,346. Naysayers 1 (but I don’t remember what they scored)
I remember reading that the FBI did surveillance in order to gather incriminating evidence on King, but if that is so, and the FBI considered him an enemy and wanted to harm him, it stands to reason that they would have released those tapes then. Why didn’t they?
Nice defense of the historian. But it is problematic for those engaged in revisionism of history. That might be any phase of history: the American Civil War, Spanish-American War, Vietnam, Iraq. The list goes on.
One of my primary assertions has to do with “it’s better to face the painful truth and to deal with it than to remain sheltered by a canopy of lovely lies” and, Good Lord, the opposition I get is amazing.
I was reading today about a philosopher named Eric Voegelin who wrote a work called Political Religions: about mythical paradigms mixed into modern ideologies. I tried to identify a ‘mythical paradigm’ and the first one that came to mind is the notion of ‘progress’ and of ‘progressive evolution’. This is one of the primary myths of our present: the idea that we learn and grow and revise our ethics to accord with conceptual advances. Therefore, our ethics become better and improved. I think it might well be a mythical paradigm.
And it should be obvious that with that idea in mind — that there could be erroneous mythical paradigms that operate in our perception — that it will apply in many different categories.
It is hard to deny that ‘civil rights’ is not a progressive good. But wait! One of the principal figures in advocating for this was 1) a plagiarist who did not write his most famous speeches, 2) a man who cheated to get his divinity degree (I can’t remember the specific details), and 3) a man with rather serious sexual issues that do not accord with his supposed values (though he excused himself saying ‘I’m no saint’).
How far will we go in our revisionism? Perhaps the major part of our view of our own present is based in (false) mythic paradigms? (Julius Evola certainly makes the case that this is so).
About Hoover’s secret blackmail files—he wanted power over these people, not to destroy them.
Personally, I think all this information was kept under wraps because it was never needed by Hoover. James Earl Ray took care of the situation before it became necessary to use it. Once King was dead and martyred, it would have been in the poorest of taste to have released the goods on him. If the portrait of Hoover we are now sold is accurate, he must have been pissed over the turn of events. All those FBI resources wasted on information Hoover could no longer twist his mustache (not that he had one) over and put to any use. Hate when that happens.
I think that is exactly what happened. Same thing with JFK (who was about as bad as King, without the accomplishments).
I agree wholeheartedly with both of you. Blackmail was Hoover’s M.O. and there’s no doubt in my mind he would have threatened to release the tapes if MLK had crossed the line. In the 1960s, there were enough Americans on the fence about civil rights and enough Americans steadfast in their beliefs about personal character that the tapes would have done irreparable damage to King’s reputation in the same way a dossier on JFK would have destroyed his presidency.
We’ll see whether these reports about King are factual or not. But it really doesn’t matter. True or not, this will all be ignored. The response will be crickets, radio silence for as long as it takes to blow over. There will be no reckoning whatsoever between BLM and metoo. They’ll just continue doing what they do. No MLK schools will be renamed. We just won’t talk about, will we. After all, Jack, it’s just sex. If MLK were a Frenchman, no one would even blink an eye. Don’t be so quaint.
Cynicism appreciated, but I don’t think it will be so easy. Rape isn’t a Biden hug.
I don’t think it’s cynicism. MLK is dead. He’s not going to be prosecuted. Identity politics prohibits allied groups from attacking each other. Case in point: The Pulse nightclub massacre. A Muslim shoots dozens of gay people at a gay night club. What to do. Do Muslims hate gays? Was the Muslim guy gay and couldn’t deal with it? What’s more important: Gay rights or Diversity? And so forth. All of which was simply swept under the rug. We just won’t talk about any of that, will we? Will the cognitive dissonance created by a rapist MLK be dealt with or just swept under the rug? It will be swept under the rug. Nothing to see here. There will be a moveon.org petition to sweep this things under the rug. No problemo. What about TRUMP!
Jack, I think another reason I’m not being cynical would be to look at the Virginia Democratic Party’s burying the blackface and rape stories. I really think everyone will just not talk about this and it will blow over. It’s worked before and it will work again. The civil rights industry and the media will simply ignore it (and flame anyone who brings it up) and, that will be that.
It’s a very interesting proposition. I’d also like to know how the progressive left will react to this discovery about one of their central figures. However, I don’t think there will be much interest. The places I’ve posted this article to have given almost nothing but silence. One comment said that he’d read it and he had nothing to say about it. The other comment was about how they thought this article was stupid. The given reason indicated that they’d only read the title and thought this article was trying to discredit MLK. I’m hoping I’m wrong about this, but without a mainstream media to rave at this story, I fear there won’t be much notice.
Denial only goes so far. Sometimes it takes a while to sink in: Bill Cosby’s drug-rapes were common knowledge many years before people began paying attention. Woody Allen and Bill Clinton finally were shunned by #MeToo. If it doesn’t make King play under the same rules, it will be vulnerable itself.
“I’d also like to know how the progressive left will react to this discovery about one of their central figures.”
There will be a variety of takes on it. They will contradict one another, but the point is that each individual leftist finds a view that satisfies them and keeps them whole.
1. The New Atheist Take: “Well, religion makes people do these things. This is just more proof that we need to work harder to eliminate Christianity.”
2. The Complete Denial Take: “This was fake evidence created by the right-wing establishment.”
3. The No True Scotsman Take: “Well he was kind of Republicanish, and was not strongly in favor of socialism. We need TRUE revolutionaries to look up to anyway.”
4. The Identity Politics Take: “Now we won’t have to hear right-wingers quoting MLK about ‘content of character’ anymore! Time to move beyond King’s toxic egalitarianism and embrace race-based everything!”
5. The Progressive Stack Take: “Sure, all heroes are flawed, but People of Color need heroes more than white people do, so it makes sense to tear down their statues and keep ours.”
6. The Opportunists’ Take: “I propose a movement to replace all statues of MLK with statues of Huey Newton.”
7. The Corporate Media Take: “Republicans gleefully pounce on the possibility that Martin Luther King may have participated in a rape. Will they succeed in erasing his legacy?”
Professor Turley today on this story:\
“If it is false, it is an elaborate effort to frame MLK and a failure by a leading MLK biographer. If true, it means that an American hero was hiding a despicable and contempt-worthy life. So why the limited coverage? These files are now available for review. “
Who has determined that these files and materials must be hidden from view till 2027 (or any date)? On what basis do they make such a decision? And cannot it be challenged with litigation?
Is’t the idea that ‘the public’ needs to be ‘protected’ from information (truth I gather) rather absurd?
There are ways to undo such court-ordered seals.
The very best thing about this revelation, assuming it is actually true, is that it should provide perhaps all the impetus necessary to stop the airbrushing of history by the “woke” Left.
When the most revered icon of perhaps the most dear cause to the Left is exposed as a sexual reprobate in his personal life, all moral authority for the removal of reverences to the slave-owning founders and other American icons who had personal qualities now considered irredeemable by Leftists is gone unless they treat him identically. It cannot and will not happen. The cognitive dissonance is simply too overwhelming.
Schadenfreude is not ethical, but in this case, it is beautiful. Isn’t it droll that Martin Luther King Jr., by his virtues, raised up an entire race from the depths of Jim Crow to equality, and by his vices, may wind up saving every other American icon with known personal failings?
MLK may wind up our greatest American hero, saving us from ourselves with both his virtues and vices.
Exactly, Glenn.
That’s a very rational hope, Glenn. I’m just fairly convinced the left has become completely irrational to the point of being unhinged. I think cause and effect has been repealed.
I doubt it. The left has far too many tools at its disposal to direct the narrative of this nation and is darn close to a monopoly on honor. There are also far too many true believers on the left. There will be a lot of denial (that article’s a bunch of BS), minimization (he didn’t rape anyone himself, so what?) and shutuppery (I don’t wanna hear it! Shut up! LEAVE IT ALONE!). The networks and the major publications will just refuse to cover it, and slime anyone who does as a conservative tool. The other toppling will just go right on as it did before.
We’ll see, l guess.
My vote’s with Steve’s scenario.
I am with Glenn, here. Either there is an awakening, or it is time to dig the bunker.
WOW!!!
How did I not know this information about King?
Did I ever hear about it?
Did I hear it and reject it with the King’s Pass?
Did I somehow just miss it being all over the news?
Where did I fail?
This is how the peeling away of the public facade of a man revealing the underlying character can negatively change an individuals perspective of that man’s character if ever I saw one.
This revelation is quite disturbing to me.
In my spare time, what little I have this year, I’ve been writing an essay relating to King’s 1963 “I have a dream” speech and now I feel that I must completely edit out parts relating to his personal character in case all this is factually true.
Reread. Rethink. Rewrite.
I’ve been aware of the antics of King’s suriving family for quite some time. The whole family is cutthroat and deeply disturbed. They successfully sued some guy for $100, and called it confirmation in a court of law that the FBI conspired to execute their father/Mrs. King’s husband. They regularly auction off their father’s artifacts, and sue each other over the proceeds.
While King himself bears no direct responsibility for actions taken after his death, I always felt that the behavior of his kids reflected the values he instilled in them, which in turn greatly tarnished my view of King. He was just not a good man in his personal life, and his kids had no sense of duty to honor his legacy (or they honor it too well).
Sadly, given his known infidelity, and the near uniform torpidity of his family, this new information is just not a surprise. His speeches still give me chills, so it is with reluctant acceptance, rather than confirmation bias, that I acknowledge these new facts.
Reread. Rethink. Rewrite.
Oh friend, you got that right!
This revelation about MLK opens up into a group of problems. All of them have differing degrees of relevance.
1) That it is nearly impossible to arrive at historical truth. Especially when it is a contested issue, or historical figure, everyone has personal interest in a) applying a specific perspective which may or may not be ‘true’, which occurs because b) people distort their own view through internal processes of self-deception based in *complicity* and also *interest*.
2) If we then choose to be persuaded by a given historian or the person who recites to us the history, a history, it is likely that we are doing so because we are responding to what Jack calls ‘bias’. We might recognize that this historian (or journalist or commentator or just a solitary individual) can only organize their perception and understanding through self-reference (internal subjectivity), and we *submit* to their narrative because, in one way or another, we desire to be influenced by it. In this sense we *choose* our specific historical perspective, the way we organize our understanding of events.
3) But there are various *pools* of subjectivity and ‘historical interpretation’ and we can, and we ultimately do, choose the particular pool that we desire to ‘believe in’. And we enter into it and adopt its ‘rules & regulations’: its ‘tenets’. It is a perceptual system and it has rules that determine its order. We then seek out other people with whom we reflect back and forth our *version*. Certainly, we are dealing to one degree or other with ‘reality’ (an event or some assertion of a given person) and this forms the basis of our versioning, but at some point — this is my assertion but it is really a question — we are in fact asserting a view which is arbitrary, personal and subjective.
3a) We notice this most clearly when we are face-to-face with the *obviously incorrect* views of our favorite enemies. We clearly see that *they are getting it wrong*, and we would wish that we could help them to correct themselves, but their position is so hardened — they are obstinate and ‘obstinacy makes them deaf for all that they have ears’ to quote a Chinese wisdom-phrase — that we can only tolerate them as we shake our heads, unable to grasp how this happens.
4) If we can notice that this happens in specific areas of more-or-less limited importance — in this case the life and activities of MLK — and that in certain senses it does not matter what is either *true* or *false* about the history or the details of the history, then it stands to reason that it is something in our own self which ‘upholds’ a specific narrative. We are captured by a larger narrative. In my view, this is where the term *metaphysic* has relevance. A metaphysic is a large, perhaps invisible, determining structure that had been formed in *pre-structures* of perception. How we are ‘programmed’ to receive these pre-structures is a cultural affair: one that deals on *communication* in the most elemental sense.
______________________
I suggest that what MLK represents is ‘historical progress’. He has taken on a symbolic content. I refer specifically to Jack’s essential view (the essence of his understanding of ethics) that is bound to the notion, that arises from the tenets of the idea, that we are ‘progressing’ in history from a benighted state to an enlightened state. I suggest that this is a manifestation of a ‘mythical paradigm intruding itself into a modern political and social stance’.
Now, for different reasons, the symbolism is being punctured: a countervailing view is aggressively asserting itself. Typical! Since everyone, in their respective *camps* is undertaking these sorts of ‘projects’, and for subjective reasons. That is where emotionality and sentimentalism enter in.
What I see is not historical ascent but actual historical descent. I agree that there are infinite numbers of signs of progress-as-advancement — as in technology — but there is not, not really, the social and perhaps advances that we suppose.
In this descent, for reasons I cannot grasp and which confuse me horribly, entire systems of perception turn in on themselves and against themselves and start to tear themselves to shreds. Its is like a sharp mechanism that spins out of control. If “the centre cannot hold” it is because there is operating at the center a strange ‘acid’ that eats away both meaning and understanding.
When the most revered icon of perhaps the most dear cause to the Left is exposed as a sexual reprobate in his personal life, all moral authority for the removal of reverences to the slave-owning founders and other American icons who had personal qualities now considered irredeemable by Leftists is gone unless they treat him identically. It cannot and will not happen. The cognitive dissonance is simply too overwhelming.
I would suggest stepping back from *belief* in the declared cause (social justice, the ‘liberation’ os this or that class of person, or what-have-you). The so-called Left asserts a ‘story’ about what it is doing, historically, and this is bound up in ‘narratives’ (so-called) that are then tied to a range of different views that make up Americanism (‘the tenets of the American civil religion’).
All well and good, I guess, as far as it goes. Except that it could be seen and described as flatly false.
Therefore, a question asserts itself (or re-asserts itself). What really is going on?
Traditionalist opponents of the (false) narrative of ‘historical progress’ assert the descent, not the ascent, to which I refer. But their view, this view, is so contrary to the accepted Mythical Paradigm of Our Present that it is as if one view must shatter another to be recognized, understood.
And those who hold to that view (say of ‘progress’) simply will not allow shattering to occur. It resolves down to a question of investment.
What is really going on in our present? A maddeningly simple question!
After this character revelation; wouldn’t it be great if the same group of people that marched in Charlottesville, Virginia trying to stop the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue would march in Washington to make a statement to social justice warriors that they don’t think King’s statue should be removed.
Showing a principled acceptance of the idea that an honorable man fighting for an arguably evil cause for honorable reasons and an evil man fighting for an honorable cause for arguably honorable reasons can both be honored versus a maddeningly one-dimensional civic Donatism? I second this.
It depends on the morlocks being principled rather than opportunistic in their approach though. I’ve become infinitely jaded against this possibility. Borrowing Alizia’s main thrust, if arriving at the particular narrative is more important than whether that narrative is true, one can expect them to do nothing but ignore information contrary to that end. This is why they appear so insane. Functionally, they are. Psychosis may have been the first mental condition they ““destigmatized””.
But you’re right. That’d be wicked cool.
Unrelated to the topics of this thread today, still I thought that perhaps you might appreciate this. If there were a PM function I’d have sent it that way . . . but . . .
[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCupLRVQ2H0 ].
Yes! I’d seen His Holiness, Pope Francis’s reaction to Salvini’s appeal to the Immaculate Heart. It hearkened my mind to Gabriel García Moreno consecrating Ecuador to the Sacred Heart and being killed on the steps of the National Palace by Freemasons with machetes. The common thread of course being that they’re both hated by liberals, in the fullest, most liberal, sense of the word, struck by the addled belief that God wills a plurality of religions – a hatred more becoming than most compliments.
Imagine a Catholic Italy! It’d be as unexpected as a Catholic Church! How are all these things happening all at once, after all had seemed lost, like the gears of some terrible machine that’d been asleep for 100 years suddenly started moving again – like all those Marian apparitions accompanied by inexplicable signs really mattered? The Conquering Queen (chaire kecharitomene!), Undoer of Knots, Exterminatrix of Heresies, is here for her rightful place at the throne, and the demons can only scatter, powerless as a Mayan death cult, in undignified panic!
If I were to become a wee bit ironic here I might take your imagined scenario a bit farther. For example, that the Unite the Right people appear in Washington to defend the monumentalism of the MLK mythos, and then everyone, congress, the police, local residents, all come out and engage in an orgy on the plaza. Even the horses join in! When they finish, everyone agrees that it is crucial to Bomb Iran in order to defend, well, everything that is really important.
What is curious — to me personally — is the structure of the American civic dream. It is sort of a variation of the Can’t We All Get Along motto.
This vision could be said to be, in itself, absurd.
When looked at closely, various people have (what they understand to be and what they say are) irreconcilable differences.
Civic Nationalists — for example Jack — desire in their heart-of-hearts to see an American Reconciliation, and assume, against the odds, that this will happen.
Please, no one get mad at me. I’m just thinking out loud. 🙂
I sent a very brief personal message to Unite the Right and the organizer suggesting this march idea and included a little statement about why rising above the inflamed rhetoric of the social justice warriors would be socially valuable.
We’ll see if I get a reply so we can start a conversation.
To have the *conversation* that you want will involve a great deal of research on your part. Here is a list of some of the groups that showed up there:
True Cascadia
ARM (Canadian-based Alt-Right Montreal)
Hammer Brothers
Anti-Communist Action
Nationalist Front
League of the South
Traditionalist Worker Party
The Daily Stormer
The Right Stuff
National Policy Institute
Identity Evropa
Rise Above Movement
American Guard
Detroit Right Wings
Vanguard America
National Socialist Movement
Ku Klux Klan (Loyal White Knights and the Confederate White Knights branches)
Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights
Naturally, you imagine that you will frame the conversation, and guide them through it, and I only wish to suggest that these groups (those I have studied, i.e. focused some attention on) know a great deal more about *you* than you can know, or will allow yourself to know, about *them*.
You have to frame them in a certain way, a negative way, as any level of *understanding* is thoughtcrime.
Most of these groups ground themselves in a reactionary politics and ideology, but their reaction is (usually) based in or influenced by traditionalist ideologies. Some realize it, many don’t, but their ideological underpinnings have been strongly influenced by European New Right thinking.
The term “the inflamed rhetoric of the social justice warriors” would make sense, of course, in a closed-loop conversation with those who shared your general viewpoint, and it is largely the view of most who write on this blog, including Jack, but if you hold to that view you will not actually understand what these people are reacting against, and why.
All across the Occidental world, in one form or another, local groups are forming around popular interests and popular sentiments and values that are trying to define a position of self-defense. This was so in the Interwar period, and it is true now. If you cannot see and understand their self-defense as being valid, you will only be able to describe them as inflamed rhetoricians.
My endeavor, obviously, has been to 1) study those outlandish groups and understand their position, their reaction, their ideology, and to locate them in an historical frame, and 2) attempt to communicate why they are rising up and 2a) what they are rising up against.
I would (humbly: my most salient character trait!) suggest that *you* (a general, plural person of the mainstream, raised up in conventional environments and indoctrinated in the ways of thinking and seeing of our present) do not want ‘conversation’, you simply wish to find a way to discredit what you don’t understand and establish ‘confirmation bias’ (as the term is used here).
Just imagine the day when David Duke’s autobiography will be read in the schools! 😉 (I have read 1/2 of it and it is really pretty good, but then I have established my thoughtcriminal bona fides).
I know this is probably feeding the psychological needs of a narcissistic troll; but…
Assumption #1
FALSE!
Assumption #2
FALSE!
Ignorant Statement
FALSE!
Assumption #3
FALSE!
Assumption #4
FALSE!
Young lady, you’re completely full of shit.
Oh ok, ok, I stand corrected then . . . 🙂