He didn’t condone rioting, he called it immoral and counterproductive. This was true. I didn’t mean to imply that he did.
But he knew it’s usefulness in forcing his opponents to negotiate with his non-violent group. This is why he wanted to keep the movement unified by not condemning rioters. King quite astutely knew that the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were just the beginning of addressing the concerns of black people, particularly poor black people. That and these laws were not being enforced in large parts of the country, particularly the South.
Perhaps non-violent protest did get these pieces of legislation passed, I don’t know the detailed history of that specific time period, but it wasn’t enough. He would talk of riots as being intended to shock the white community, being the voice of unheard suffering, etc. He talked of the government needing to address the roots of the problems and middle class white people not being so apathetic while hypocritically telling riotous black people to wait for justice. He did not call for them to end outright.
Unfortunately, the more revolutionary side of King, including the side of him that was socialist and anti-capitalist, tend to be glossed over in favor of just focusing on his talk of non-violence.
The same goes for Gandhi, BTW. While he’s trumpeted as the one, tiny bloke who got England to back the fuck off just by sitting down in the middle of the road ; the truth is that beyond him a large part of the Indian independance movementinvolved socking the British right in the rhymes-with-nauticals. Including… Gandhi’s
The riots did not force anyone to deal with him, that is historical revisionism. King appealed to people’s consciences and not their fears. That is why it succeeded so spectacularly. This was not India with hundred of million of Indians versus thousands of British. This is 12 percent of the country versus 85 percent of the country. In order to win he could not play power politics but bring people to his side.
We remember the non-violent King and not the socialist one because that was the effective one.
One of the other major reasons the British got out of India is that they were really struggling to find people from Britain to run the place.
Once upon a time, a vaguely ambitious English chap looking for a chance to do something interesting could head to India and do something there - take a commission in the Indian army, work as a magistrate in some remote province, that sort of thing.
In the aftermath of World War II (and even just before it), the novelty had worn off, Britain was broke, and the Indians were getting increasingly insistent they wanted their country back.
I read somewhere that when the decision was finally made to grant India independence, there were something like 1200 Europeans in the Indian Civil Service (ie the bureacracy running all of India) and the rapidly declining numbers of people signing up for a chance to help maintain the jewel in the crown of the Empire facilitated the decision to leave.
We listened to prattle of 2nd Amendment solutions to eliminate Obama or Hillary, but that was just good ‘ol boys having fun smellin’ their farts. But let Madonna preach a message of LOVE …
[QUOTE=Madonna]
Welcome to the revolution of L♡ve… blowing up the White House, but I know that this won’t change anything.
I choose L♡ve. Are you with me? Say this with me: We choose L♡ve. We choose Love. We choose L♡ve.
[/QUOTE]
… and the Idiotocracy responds with prattle designed to incite criminal violence:
[QUOTE=Newt Gingrich]
What you have is an emerging left-wing fa卐ci卐m. She’s part of it. And I think we have to be prepared to protect our卐elve卐. Frankly, the truth is she ought to be arre卐ted.
[/QUOTE]
