Je Suis Martin Luther King
ANGLO AMERICA, 19 Jan 2015
Daniel Horgan – TRANSCEND Media Service
Today, January 19, 2015, is Martin Luther King Day here in the US. The world has changed quite a bit since our former great civil rights leader was with us. Fortunately we know about many great things regarding Martin Luther King and what he stood for. Equality and social justice might encompass them all in some way or another.
There are still many things that are not known in the mainstream about Dr King’s life. While he fought successfully to achieve Civil Rights in its legislative form here in the US, he was a man who also believed these ideals should transcend all borders and be enjoyed by all the people of the world. Sadly this is what got Dr. King into even more dire trouble than he had ever seen. Some would say it may have cost him his life. On April 4th, 1967 at Riverside Church in New York City, backed by the “Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam”, Dr. King gave a speech entitled ‘Beyond Vietnam”. He challenged the US government, on very intelligent merits, regarding the War in Vietnam. He eloquently laid out the missteps in US foreign policy in Vietnam that led us to war. He spoke for the voiceless peasants in South Vietnam. He spoke for the soldiers whom he felt were also victims. He spoke to the notion that liberty was being fought for in south east Asia, when it could still not be found in southwest Georgia or east Harlem.
In doing so he challenged the entire military industrial complex of the United States. For this he was labeled a communist by the US government. He had gone too far. “Peace and Civil Rights don’t mix”, he was told, even by people very close to him. This greatly saddened Dr. King. He felt these people must not have really known him if he were to forget about people and human rights issues beyond the borders of the US. So to really know Dr. King, we must understand this. In addition of course, was the fact that he was a man of nonviolence. Any violence carried out, he would most likely oppose, as a means to achieve something. Any provocation of violence that would not contribute to the ultimate goal, he would also likely oppose. He said in his speech on that fateful day at Riverside that the US must always know its enemy. “Surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions.”
So what would Martin Luther King think about the war on terrorism and the latest round in the conflict, which has played out so sadly in Paris and the French countryside? Would he have marched in unity with Parisians? Would he have championed the right to free speech at any cost?
As David Brooks points out in his NY Times column: “The satirists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down.” This shows a stark difference between the US and France. You might also say that the US has grown up since the days of Martin Luther King and that hate speech, or speech that is bound to provoke violence is not acceptable either socially or legally. We owe this at least in part to the movement that Martin Luther King led and to the man he was. He would be likely today to support that there should indeed be a limit to free speech in this regard. (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/09/opinion/david-brooks-i-am-not-charlie-hebdo.html)
Another NY Times article worth reading highlights how the depiction of the prophet Mohammed by Charlie Hebdo is offensive to ALL Muslims (not just extremists). Dr. King would certainly think it is a good idea to understand this! “Islamic tradition is full of written descriptions of Muhammad and his qualities — describing him as the ideal human being. But clerics have generally agreed that trying to depict that ideal is forbidden. That puts satirical — and obscene — depictions like those in the French magazine Charlie Hebdo far beyond the pale.” Certainly MLK would not agree that speech should be so free so that it should or could offend a quarter of the worlds population, who are Muslim. (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/01/14/world/middleeast/ap-ml-picturing-the-prophet.html?_r=0)
Also at issue here is not only free speech. There is personal and national security. All of these are the responsibilities of the government in any relatively free society to protect or provide. Within the US, as David Brooks rightly points out, these publications would likely be seen as hate speech and banned. This would be done not only to limit the offensiveness of speech but also to protect US citizens from extremists Muslims like those who attacked Charlie Hebdo. As a friend recently said to me regarding Charlie Hebdo and free speech: “Is it ok to say anything, anywhere? Can you yell “FIRE” in a crowded movie theater?” An old argument for the present day.
Having worked for an NGO in a conflict zone that gives local human rights defenders (including journalist) of other countries unarmed protective accompaniment, I could speak to the guidelines that we had for those local human rights defenders or journalists. First of all the human rights defenders or journalists would have to be committed to nonviolence just as Martin Luther King and his movement were. This includes the subtraction of ANY unnecessary actions or speech deemed offensive or that might unnecessarily provoke violence. So in the case of Charlie Hebdo, if they had been in a country where the government was not willing to protect them and they had asked an international organization such as ours for unarmed protective accompaniment, they would not have been successful.
This is important to point out because today the war on terror is global. It might be fought somewhere in a far off land in the form of a drone, or it might come to the streets of your hometown (As it did in New York on 9.11 or this past week in Paris and Lunel.) The fact that the war on terror is or has the potential to be truly global is the result not only of extremists that we call our enemies, but also a result of the many missteps of our government since Vietnam and 9/11. Supporting blindly our European ally of France whose race relations with its own Muslim population may actually be far worse than what we have here in the US, may also be another in the road of the long line of missteps. In the end, as people who want to express ourselves freely, and as a government operating at home and in international environments, it is imperative that we strive to conduct ourselves in a way in we which we desire peace over conflict.
Just as MLK felt toward the tail-end of his life, some of us might feel the same: That it can be hard to voice your opinions sometimes. Even among your closest friends or allies. But as Dr. King pointed out in 1967 at Riverside: ‘A time comes when silence is betrayal. I come to this house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice…. Now it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war… A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death…. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the alter of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.”
Today is Martin Luther King Day. Let us remember and honor him properly.
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Daniel Horgan is an occasional contributor to Transcend Media Service. He is a former student of Johan Galtung and Dietrich Fisher at the European Center for Peace Studies. He speaks as MLK did at Riverside Church in NYC, 1967: “As a child of God. As a citizen of the world. As one who loves America.”
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 19 Jan 2015.
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