Moderation as the Enemy of Justice
MLK: "great stumbling block...is the white moderate" Malcolm X: "This old, tricky blue-eyed liberal who is supposed to be your and my friend..."
Martin Luther King wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail in 1963 of his “regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’…”
The following year, Malcolm X in Ballot or Bullet said: “We need to expand the civil-rights struggle to a higher level — to the level of human rights. Whenever you are in a civil-rights struggle, whether you know it or not, you are confining yourself to the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam. … [T]he Negro problem is never brought before the UN. This is part of the conspiracy. This old, tricky blue-eyed liberal who is supposed to be your and my friend, supposed to be in our corner, supposed to be subsidizing our struggle, and supposed to be acting in the capacity of an adviser, never tells you anything about human rights.” [Video]
Karl Marx similarly said: “Our task is that of ruthless criticism, and much more against ostensible friends than against open enemies.”
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Succinctly and rightly reasoned Sam. And even those who were on the streets in "my day" protesting against Vietnam and protesting for civil rights (and there were risks, not just in the form of a police truncheon), have grown too comfortable in what for them is 'their golden years.' Worse still, they still believe themselves to be on the cutting edge of liberal thought, fighting for justice.
And too many “woke”, sensitive friends, who are freaked out by Trumps victory, don’t give a 🐀 rat’s ass about genocide, torture and World War III. Or is it that we don’t know what to do to? That helpless impotence leaves us with “virtue signaling.” Try telling them, particularly in NY, that they wasted their votes, voting DNC, when they could have made it count, voting Green.