[rad-green] Remembering the FBI’s Vilification of Martin Luther King

*https://consortiumnews.com/2020/01/20/remembering-the-fbis-vilification-of-martin-luther-king/
<https://consortiumnews.com/2020/01/20/remembering-the-fbis-vilification-of-martin-luther-king/>*

*Consortium News          January 20, 2020*

Remembering the FBI’s Vilification of Martin Luther King
*In 2017, when the FBI hailed the civil rights leader for PR reasons in a
tweet, Ben Norton issued a reminder about the agency’s ugly history.*

*King speaking to an anti-Vietnam war rally at the University of Minnesota *

*in St. Paul, April 27, 1967. (Minnesota Historical Society, CC BY-SA 2.0,
Wikimedia Commons)*

*By* *Ben Norton <https://consortiumnews.com/tag/ben-norton/>*
*Alternet
<http://web.archive.org/web/20170118142643/http:/www.alternet.org/fbi-honors-martin-luther-king-jr-50-years-after-plotting-neutralize-him>*

“First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you
and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you,” declared
socialist leader and union organizer Nicholas Klein in 1914 (in a quote
often misattributed to Mahatma Gandhi). Klein added, “In this story you
have a history of this entire movement.”

In 2017, nearly 50 years after his murder, Martin Luther King Jr. was
lionized by the very forces that ridiculed, attacked, and wanted to burn
him. The same government institutions that threatened King’s life and
called him the “most notorious liar in the country” and a “filthy, abnormal
animal” applauded him.

The radical legacy of the civil rights icon — who not only valiantly fought
Jim Crow, but also harshly condemned capitalism
<http://web.archive.org/web/20170118142643/http:/www.huffingtonpost.com/obery-m-hendricks-jr-phd/the-uncompromising-anti-capitalism-of-martin-luther-king-jr_b_4629609.html>
and
spoke out bravely against the U.S. war in Vietnam, alienating the vast
majority of the liberal establishment — has been so thoroughly whitewashed
that the very same government institutions that wished death on King are
now heaping praise on his memory.

In 2017, on Martin Luther King Day, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
posted a tweet
<http://web.archive.org/web/20170118142643/https:/twitter.com/FBI/status/821037660613398529>
honoring “Rev. Martin L. King Jr. and his incredible career fighting for
civil rights.”

King was arrested in 1963 for protesting the treatment of blacks in
Birmingham. (Wikimedia Commons)

What the FBI did not mention in its tweet is that King, who was arrested 30
times in his life, was a primary target of COINTELPRO — the FBI’s Counter
Intelligence Program that spied on, threatened, and even assassinated
revolutionary leaders in the black liberation, socialist, and
anti-imperialist movements.

The FBI relentlessly harassed and threatened King. It listened to his phone
calls. It spied on his romantic affairs. It taunted him and repeatedly
called his house.

After he gave his famous “I have a dream” speech in 1963, the FBI dubbed
King the “most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.” FBI
department heads held a meeting to discuss “a complete analysis of the
avenues of approach aimed at neutralizing King as an effective Negro
leader.”

In the name of fighting communism
<http://web.archive.org/web/20170118142643/https:/www.documentcloud.org/documents/1361822-1378-001.html>,
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ordered
<http://web.archive.org/web/20170118142643/https:/www.documentcloud.org/documents/1361823-1379-001.html>
King
and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference to be surveilled. The FBI
placed
<http://web.archive.org/web/20170118142643/https:/www.documentcloud.org/documents/1361824-1380-001.html>
dozens
of microphones in places King frequented and wiretapped his phones, with
the approval of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. In order to gauge “the
communist influences upon him,” the FBI tracked
<http://web.archive.org/web/20170118142643/https:/www.documentcloud.org/documents/1361826-1382-001.html>
“all
instances of King’s travels and activities.”

When King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1964, the FBI was
incensed. In an infamous November press conference, the FBI’s Hoover slammed
<http://web.archive.org/web/20170118142643/https:/books.google.com/books?id=VnQduXa4JdoC&pg=PA123&dq=%22most+notorious+liar+in+the+country%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiZx4-w9cnRAhVDxVQKHZW0CNYQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=%22most%20notorious%20liar%20in%20the%20country%22&f=false>
 King as “the most notorious liar in the country.” Off the record, Hoover
also called the civil rights icon “one of the lowest characters in the
country.”

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

A few days after the press conference, the FBI sent King a chilling
anonymous letter
<http://web.archive.org/web/20170118142643/https:/www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensored-letter-to-mlk-reveals.html>,
blackmailing him and telling him to kill himself. The FBI called King an
“evil, abnormal beast” and a “complete fraud and a great liability to”
black Americans. “Your end is approaching,” the FBI wrote, describing him
as “not a leader but a dissolute, abnormal moral imbecile.”

Through its surveillance, the FBI gathered evidence of King’s sexual
dalliances, and threatened to expose them to the world. “You are done… I
repeat you are done… You are finished… King you are done… You are done,”
the letter reiterated.

“King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what that is,”
the FBI concluded, strongly hinting at suicide. “You are done. There is but
one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal
fraudulent self is bared to the nation.”

King persevered for three more years until his assassination in 1968. In
1999, a jury
<http://web.archive.org/web/20170118142643/http:/www.nytimes.com/1999/12/09/us/memphis-jury-sees-conspiracy-in-martin-luther-king-s-killing.html>
decided
in a Tennessee civil suit that the U.S. government was complicit in the
killing of King.

A March 1968 FBI memo
<http://web.archive.org/web/20170118142643/https:/nsarchive.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/pages-from-churchv6_12_exhibits.pdf>,
from the month before King’s death, discussed ways to “prevent the rise of
a ‘messiah’ who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist
movement.” The memo, which is redacted, hinted that a leader like King
“could be a real contender for this position should he abandon his supposed
‘obedience’ to ‘white liberal doctrines’ (nonviolence) and embrace black
nationalism.”

“Through counter-intelligence it should be possible to pinpoint potential
trouble-makers and neutralize them,” the memo added. The next year, the FBI
was involved in the murder of Fred Hampton
<http://web.archive.org/web/20170118142643/https:/www.democracynow.org/2014/12/4/watch_the_assassination_of_fred_hampton>
, the chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party and
another potential “black messiah” the agency had targeted.

Fred Hampton.

Five decades later, however, despite their well-documented history of
trying to destroy King, the FBI and other government institutions now use
him to try to whitewash their sordid histories.

The real King was an uncompromising political radical. He recognized
<http://web.archive.org/web/20170118142643/https:/www.democracynow.org/2003/4/4/the_united_states_is_the_greatest>
that
the U.S. government was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the
world.” He implored people to “question the capitalistic economy” and
insisted, “We can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical
redistribution of economic and political power.”

King linked white supremacy to imperialism and Jim Crow in the U.S. to
apartheid in South Africa. When he came out against the barbaric war in
Vietnam, which would leave millions dead, he was castigated
<http://web.archive.org/web/20170118142643/https:/theintercept.com/2017/01/16/what-the-santa-clausification-of-martin-luther-king-jr-leaves-out/>
by
liberals and conservatives alike. The editorial boards of *The New York
Times *and *The Washington Post *cast their scorn on King; on one day, 168
separate newspapers berated him.

Yet King persisted. He declared that “the evils of racism, economic
exploitation, and militarism are all tied together, and you really can’t
get rid of one without getting rid of the others.” He also said activists
must must “make it clear that America is a hypocritical nation,” and
maintained, “The whole structure of American life must be changed.”

*Ben Norton is a journalist and writer. He is a reporter for The Grayzone,
and the producer of the “**Moderate Rebels*
<http://moderaterebelsradio.com/>“ *podcast, which he co-hosts with Max
Blumenthal. His website is **BenNorton.com* <http://bennorton.com/>*, and
he tweets at @**BenjaminNorton* <https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton>*.*

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