“MLK embraced non-violence and they shot him anyway” is a glorious leap of logic, up there with “had he been armed he could have done a John Wick on James Earl Ray” fantasies of NRA members who like to pretend they’d have supported King back in the day.
What great things did the race riots of the ‘60s accomplish? Besides electing Nixon?
A great essay, of course, but it’s frightening to wonder how large the audience is for it, and how depraved the entire intellectual life of our country may have become.
One factoid I found interesting was that at the height of the Vietnam war the war itself was massively unpopular but the protests (and protesters) were also massively unpopular. It seems the median respondent agreed with what the protesters were calling for but couldn’t stand the protesters themselves (perhaps because they looked different, or their tactics turned them off?). Nixon of course picked up on this, and in his first major televised speech on the war he announced he’d start pulling some troops out of Vietnam but also took a shot at the protesters (this was his Silent Majority speech). He exploited that divide to keep the war going for years after most Americans wanted out.
Why is this important? Because MLK and Nixon both grasped that public opinion is what protests are all about. The minute you turn off your audience, you’re cooked. It’s why MLK’s marches didn’t involve punching cops or even defacing property—only hard core racists were turned off by his tactics (though eventually radicals turned on him too, for not being radical enough—one reason his approval numbers dropped by ‘68).
Right now these protests are doing what they need to do—bring public attention to Trump’s kidnappings that are getting very unpopular. Keep it nonviolent, play on public opinion, make Trump fill the role of Bull Connor. Any idiot who throws rocks or sets something on fire is going to turn this into “Trump protecting us from rioters” and only a damn fool would defend such actions.
And wearing their Sunday suits and showing up peacefully to be arrested when necessary and everything. 50 years later punching hippies in the Nixon mold is still the media M.O.
Yep—MLK’s tactics helped move a lot of people off the fence—the sort that didn’t really have an opinion on segregation, or rationalized it, or just accepted it without thought, and the sight of clean cut nicely dressed and peaceful marchers being set on by thugs (police and civilians alike) swayed them in favor of civil rights. It not only led to legislation but also moved businesses and general attitudes.
A lot of factors led to the anti-civil rights backlash of the late sixties so I don’t want to oversimplify but that did coincide with race riots and pro-violence radicals becoming more prominent and better known, taking the spotlight from MLK and his allies. A lot of the same people who polled in favor of civil rights laws and gave LBJ a landslide as a referendum on them would lead to Humphrey taking only about 40% four years later.
The last thing Trump wants is a massive nonviolent protest that terrifies Republicans and creates dissent in the ranks of ICE itself. The best thing for him is riots that he can crush with popular opinion behind him.
Another argument for violence I see a lot is "hey you COWARD, if you were in Germany in the 20s you'd be saying we need to 'peacefully protest' Hitler, huh?"
Which completely ignores the fact that the German Left in the 1920s frequently engaged in violent street action against the Nazis, which ended up being insanely, devastatingly counterproductive and was probably the main reason why normie Germans started taking Hitler seriously as the "hold-your-nose-but-vote-for-him" candidate who could restore law and order.
"If Dr. King were alive today, he’d probably concede that our current situation is more dire because the president is Donald Trump, who is more like George Wallace than Lyndon B. Johnson or even Barry Goldwater. Stephen Miller is like having Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond in the White House. However, it’s unlikely this grim reality would turn Dr. King into Rambo."
Thank you, Mr. Robinson, for another excellent, informative piece. If we are to have any hope for the future, we must know the truth of the past (and the present).
Excellent post SER. I’ve been doing peaceful protests where I live. Of course we haven’t been confronted with hoards of masked armed men. A lot of us are seniors. Cannot imagine how bad THAT would look for the Gestapo beating a bunch of olds and lobbing tear gas at them.
JVL over at the Bulwark was musing on protest yesterday and some tiresome person was all over the comments about how change always requires violence, making an extremely tendentious point that violence *against* non-violent protesters was what shifted public opinion. Maybe so, but JFC, dude.
I also want to ask the folks who love to post guillotines on social media if they know what happened after 1789, why it was called the Reign of Terror, what happened to Robespierre. Or if they're willing to have their violent revolution go the way of Iran, because they never seem to think that's a possible outcome.
True. My daughter told me yesterday that a friend has a concealed carry permit, and carries a gun. I can't say for sure about her friend, but knowing my daughter, her friend most likely falls on the liberal side of the aisle.
Linda, I can’t speak for anyone other than myself and from my personal knowledge, but around these parts anyway, gun ownership has always transcended political persuasion. Hell, my Trumpster son-in-law (who’s otherwise a great dad and a fine young man; YES, it’s possible) taught my 14-year-old granddaughter how to use an AR-15. My daughter (who’s even more of a dyed-in-the-wool Socialist than I am) and I were horrified at first. Now, I have to admit, I don’t mind it as much as I initially did.
Thanks, Stephen. I always appreciate your knowledge of so many things.
My very simplistic view is this: much like women and people of color in the workplace, we have to be better just to be heard. Looting, setting things on fire, etc takes focus off your legitimate complaints and puts the attention on the destruction.
Yesterday, I sought out LIVE feeds of LA on YouTube. Every site showed cars on fire or fights, but when you actually clicked into the video, there were people, crying, speaking Spanish and begging to know where their loved ones were taken, or just a bunch of armed guard and police standing around.
THAT is the preview we should see on these videos. Don’t give them the opportunity for anything else because that is ALL anyone will focus on.
I figure the reason MLK is so constantly distorted today and why he was so hated by the right is mostly that he was effective, and so is nonviolence. It’s a little counterintuitive to people who get you need to stand up to bullies and resist invading armies that what works in mass movements being attacked by internal security services is often pretty different. It takes discipline and determination to do though and MLK’s being there and later his example kept the movement holding to those. Of course those trying to use thugs to break the movement hated him. He was an effective resistance leader.
You are correct. Dr. King was correct. And the people supporting violence are wrong about history. Research shows that nonviolent protests work much better at effecting change than violent protests - the 3.5% tipping point. The Civil Rights movement is an excellent example of this. But there have been many examples worldwide.
The theory of why nonviolence works is that it turns movements led by the young and activists into movements joined by the middle class. Once moms and pops and grands join, the youth in the military have a more difficult time following orders to shoot people. Once they crack and fail to follow orders to create violence, then the fascist leaders begin to lose support and power.
If protests are violent, they never gain support from the middle.
The business of chaos agents is of course chaos, and business is good when there are marginalized people fighting for their rights. I do see some folks talking reckless online especially given the surveillance that's happening. And also there are people who love to do this, knowing that Black people will get blamed.
Note that this is in addition to the false flag elements who like to start trouble on purpose. Indeed I'm reminded of the outsiders who came in to wreck property during the George Floyd protests so that Black people would get blamed. And indeed this happened.
Tactically, since these protests are spontaneous and everyone is freelancing, please everyone be sure to isolate and point out people going to these protests and engaging in destruction and trying to hurt people.
Also really interesting that even LAPD said the protests were peaceful in LA.
“MLK embraced non-violence and they shot him anyway” is a glorious leap of logic, up there with “had he been armed he could have done a John Wick on James Earl Ray” fantasies of NRA members who like to pretend they’d have supported King back in the day.
What great things did the race riots of the ‘60s accomplish? Besides electing Nixon?
A great essay, of course, but it’s frightening to wonder how large the audience is for it, and how depraved the entire intellectual life of our country may have become.
Thank you - excellent piece!
A song by an old friend of mine, used to play a bit with him
Larry Long, "I Don't Believe in Violence"
https://soundcloud.com/larry-long/i-dont-believe-in-violence-is-not-gods-will-by-larry-long
One factoid I found interesting was that at the height of the Vietnam war the war itself was massively unpopular but the protests (and protesters) were also massively unpopular. It seems the median respondent agreed with what the protesters were calling for but couldn’t stand the protesters themselves (perhaps because they looked different, or their tactics turned them off?). Nixon of course picked up on this, and in his first major televised speech on the war he announced he’d start pulling some troops out of Vietnam but also took a shot at the protesters (this was his Silent Majority speech). He exploited that divide to keep the war going for years after most Americans wanted out.
Why is this important? Because MLK and Nixon both grasped that public opinion is what protests are all about. The minute you turn off your audience, you’re cooked. It’s why MLK’s marches didn’t involve punching cops or even defacing property—only hard core racists were turned off by his tactics (though eventually radicals turned on him too, for not being radical enough—one reason his approval numbers dropped by ‘68).
Right now these protests are doing what they need to do—bring public attention to Trump’s kidnappings that are getting very unpopular. Keep it nonviolent, play on public opinion, make Trump fill the role of Bull Connor. Any idiot who throws rocks or sets something on fire is going to turn this into “Trump protecting us from rioters” and only a damn fool would defend such actions.
And wearing their Sunday suits and showing up peacefully to be arrested when necessary and everything. 50 years later punching hippies in the Nixon mold is still the media M.O.
Yep—MLK’s tactics helped move a lot of people off the fence—the sort that didn’t really have an opinion on segregation, or rationalized it, or just accepted it without thought, and the sight of clean cut nicely dressed and peaceful marchers being set on by thugs (police and civilians alike) swayed them in favor of civil rights. It not only led to legislation but also moved businesses and general attitudes.
A lot of factors led to the anti-civil rights backlash of the late sixties so I don’t want to oversimplify but that did coincide with race riots and pro-violence radicals becoming more prominent and better known, taking the spotlight from MLK and his allies. A lot of the same people who polled in favor of civil rights laws and gave LBJ a landslide as a referendum on them would lead to Humphrey taking only about 40% four years later.
The last thing Trump wants is a massive nonviolent protest that terrifies Republicans and creates dissent in the ranks of ICE itself. The best thing for him is riots that he can crush with popular opinion behind him.
Another argument for violence I see a lot is "hey you COWARD, if you were in Germany in the 20s you'd be saying we need to 'peacefully protest' Hitler, huh?"
Which completely ignores the fact that the German Left in the 1920s frequently engaged in violent street action against the Nazis, which ended up being insanely, devastatingly counterproductive and was probably the main reason why normie Germans started taking Hitler seriously as the "hold-your-nose-but-vote-for-him" candidate who could restore law and order.
https://open.substack.com/pub/markmcinerney/p/the-cauldron-of-california?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1b56qu
"If Dr. King were alive today, he’d probably concede that our current situation is more dire because the president is Donald Trump, who is more like George Wallace than Lyndon B. Johnson or even Barry Goldwater. Stephen Miller is like having Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond in the White House. However, it’s unlikely this grim reality would turn Dr. King into Rambo."
Quite right.
Thank you, Mr. Robinson, for another excellent, informative piece. If we are to have any hope for the future, we must know the truth of the past (and the present).
Excellent post SER. I’ve been doing peaceful protests where I live. Of course we haven’t been confronted with hoards of masked armed men. A lot of us are seniors. Cannot imagine how bad THAT would look for the Gestapo beating a bunch of olds and lobbing tear gas at them.
JVL over at the Bulwark was musing on protest yesterday and some tiresome person was all over the comments about how change always requires violence, making an extremely tendentious point that violence *against* non-violent protesters was what shifted public opinion. Maybe so, but JFC, dude.
I also want to ask the folks who love to post guillotines on social media if they know what happened after 1789, why it was called the Reign of Terror, what happened to Robespierre. Or if they're willing to have their violent revolution go the way of Iran, because they never seem to think that's a possible outcome.
“MAGA has all the guns”
They have a lot of them, but they don’t have all of them. Many progressives understand that they too have 2nd-Amendment rights.
True. My daughter told me yesterday that a friend has a concealed carry permit, and carries a gun. I can't say for sure about her friend, but knowing my daughter, her friend most likely falls on the liberal side of the aisle.
Linda, I can’t speak for anyone other than myself and from my personal knowledge, but around these parts anyway, gun ownership has always transcended political persuasion. Hell, my Trumpster son-in-law (who’s otherwise a great dad and a fine young man; YES, it’s possible) taught my 14-year-old granddaughter how to use an AR-15. My daughter (who’s even more of a dyed-in-the-wool Socialist than I am) and I were horrified at first. Now, I have to admit, I don’t mind it as much as I initially did.
Thanks, Stephen. I always appreciate your knowledge of so many things.
My very simplistic view is this: much like women and people of color in the workplace, we have to be better just to be heard. Looting, setting things on fire, etc takes focus off your legitimate complaints and puts the attention on the destruction.
Yesterday, I sought out LIVE feeds of LA on YouTube. Every site showed cars on fire or fights, but when you actually clicked into the video, there were people, crying, speaking Spanish and begging to know where their loved ones were taken, or just a bunch of armed guard and police standing around.
THAT is the preview we should see on these videos. Don’t give them the opportunity for anything else because that is ALL anyone will focus on.
I figure the reason MLK is so constantly distorted today and why he was so hated by the right is mostly that he was effective, and so is nonviolence. It’s a little counterintuitive to people who get you need to stand up to bullies and resist invading armies that what works in mass movements being attacked by internal security services is often pretty different. It takes discipline and determination to do though and MLK’s being there and later his example kept the movement holding to those. Of course those trying to use thugs to break the movement hated him. He was an effective resistance leader.
You are correct. Dr. King was correct. And the people supporting violence are wrong about history. Research shows that nonviolent protests work much better at effecting change than violent protests - the 3.5% tipping point. The Civil Rights movement is an excellent example of this. But there have been many examples worldwide.
The theory of why nonviolence works is that it turns movements led by the young and activists into movements joined by the middle class. Once moms and pops and grands join, the youth in the military have a more difficult time following orders to shoot people. Once they crack and fail to follow orders to create violence, then the fascist leaders begin to lose support and power.
If protests are violent, they never gain support from the middle.
The business of chaos agents is of course chaos, and business is good when there are marginalized people fighting for their rights. I do see some folks talking reckless online especially given the surveillance that's happening. And also there are people who love to do this, knowing that Black people will get blamed.
Note that this is in addition to the false flag elements who like to start trouble on purpose. Indeed I'm reminded of the outsiders who came in to wreck property during the George Floyd protests so that Black people would get blamed. And indeed this happened.
Tactically, since these protests are spontaneous and everyone is freelancing, please everyone be sure to isolate and point out people going to these protests and engaging in destruction and trying to hurt people.
Also really interesting that even LAPD said the protests were peaceful in LA.