Is This What the 1960's Looked Like?
- Thread starter FltDoc
- Start date
^ Think Malcolm X is a lot closer to the description that the poster above painted. MLK seemed to be more in the middle with a strong concern over civil rights than politics. Believe politics was more a means to the end with him rather than the end game.
This is more serious than the 60’s. believe me, i lived it.
Malcolm X concerned himself almost exclusively with black liberation and empowerment, having almost nothing to do with "politics" aside from that and until late in his life after leaving the NOI he advocated for black separation - a geographic area carved out and given to black people for a separate nation from the USA. He for most of his life didn't believe America could ever achieve racial equality and didn't care to try to fix things within the US political structure.
MLK on the other hand was vocally anti-war and creating a "poor people's campaign" in the late 60s that sought to address poverty among people of all races and advocated against military spending and for an "economic bill of rights." King, in his own words: "I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic." Quoted in the same article:
I agree, but only if djt wins—violence in the streets as soon as the election is called.
The fundamental difference there is that MLK based his argument on equality of opportunity rooted in foundational American values and Christian morality.
What this is is entirely different, an argument for equality of outcome based on, yes, misguided Marxist notions of groups and oppressors that is only rectified through demonstrably failed socialist economic theory.
What this is is entirely different, an argument for equality of outcome based on, yes, misguided Marxist notions of groups and oppressors that is only rectified through demonstrably failed socialist economic theory.
Word salad nonsense. What MLK was advocating for were the same sorts of things democratic socialists are advocating for now, and King was called a communist in his day. You might like the sanitized history book character MLK, but you'd have hated the actual man.
IT's most definitely not meaningless wordsalad.
There is fundamental (and profound) meaning there that is critical to this issue. That you don't see it or understand it perhaps is neither here nor there. No, I have profound respect for MLK the philosopher; he was a great man.
What I think is happening now is a total corruption and misrepresentation of who he was, one can be democrat-socialist without full blown Marxist... that's not who AOC or Bernie are though. Bernie is not a great man, but a worthless politician who never worked a day in his life. AOC has upper middle class minority guilt, it is precisely that, hate, which is what drives them and this issue.
That is why it is violent. You coopt the nobility of his cause, but don't actually fully understand his reasoning, and that is why you (general) protest by destruction rather than peacably as MLK would have strictly advocated.
There is fundamental (and profound) meaning there that is critical to this issue. That you don't see it or understand it perhaps is neither here nor there. No, I have profound respect for MLK the philosopher; he was a great man.
What I think is happening now is a total corruption and misrepresentation of who he was, one can be democrat-socialist without full blown Marxist... that's not who AOC or Bernie are though. Bernie is not a great man, but a worthless politician who never worked a day in his life. AOC has upper middle class minority guilt, it is precisely that, hate, which is what drives them and this issue.
That is why it is violent. You coopt the nobility of his cause, but don't actually fully understand his reasoning, and that is why you (general) protest by destruction rather than peacably as MLK would have strictly advocated.
You can be socialist, think capitalism evil, and believe in equality of opportunity without being Marxist.
You just believe in a failed economic theory which cannot actually generate it, at least not in a way where general prosperity is increased.
BLM founders are openly Marxist as far as I am aware.
You just believe in a failed economic theory which cannot actually generate it, at least not in a way where general prosperity is increased.
BLM founders are openly Marxist as far as I am aware.
Anytime anyone uses Marxist, Fascist, Socialist, or Nazi and tries to equate it with anything either party is espousing is simply uninformed and trying to sound smart. There’s very little difference in either party when in power.
When you can show me MLK carrying a hammer and sickle, burning cities, and calling for the destruction of the Constitution, you’ll be right.
What the FBI tried to smear him as, as compared to what the left is today, is not remotely close.
What a terrible take.
[laughing]
Didn’t even see this gem before I posted. So you found a quote where MLK termed himself a
Democratic Socialist, and some people called him a communist, so he’s just the same as the left today? The same left calling for violence,
open borders, the dissolution of the nuclear family, defunding police, censorship, whitewashing history, terror, and the complete rewriting of the constitution?
That is one hell of a hot take.
The American education system has failed you, and you also love the history book character MLK and would have hated the man.
This is malarkey. I thought you were smarter than this.
MLK was not communist and it's almost certain were he alive today he would side with the various black intellectuals who also oppose BLM. Those people do not oppose out of hatred.
MLK was a noble, great man. BLM, this movement and its leaders are decidedly not.
And if the
You don't need white washed history book character interpretations of who he (or anyone) was. You can bypass the filter you are projecting on to others (and your own incidentally, which is what you would need to do to deprogram yourself as it appears you're in agreement with those rafters morons) and go directly to the source; read his material for itself not just plucking quotes from the internet. Read his seminal letter from Birmingham jail and you will find I am telling you the truth, namely that his reasoning was entirely different than today's conflation of social justice with socialism.
What we have today is not that, fighting for social justice in the name of foundational American and Christian values, but a Machiavellian communist trojan horse that has deceived many ignorant and naive people that they are standing up for something good.
1968 was terrible. MLK and Bobby Kennedy assassinated, the Vietnam War, drugs became popular, and rioting in major cities.
Y'all keep running down tangents to avoid addressing the point I actually made - that it is an objective fact that MLK's had Democratic Socialist politics most similar today to people like Bernie and AOC.
And it seems, CRO, that Cruz of your argument is "it's different because racism existed then and doesn't now" which is a road we cant go down without this joining the long list of threads that get deleted for talking about race.
And it seems, CRO, that Cruz of your argument is "it's different because racism existed then and doesn't now" which is a road we cant go down without this joining the long list of threads that get deleted for talking about race.
If you keep looking for racism... guess what? You'll find it... somewhere.
The reality is that blacks have more opportunity here, today, than in any country at any time in history.
Instead of questioning my education, refute my statement with fact.
The system has indeed failed one of us.
Absolutely false. When you make such a claim, the burden is yours to back it up. You haven’t and when challenged you can only try to deflect.
By your logic FDR would be on the same point of the political spectrum as AOC based on some very loose comparisons. It’s nonsense, you know it, and it’s not anybody else’s fault that you can’t understand.
Trying to gaslight us into thinking that these leftist marxists are only peaceful protestors in the spirit of MLK is an outright lie.
The crux of my argument is that MLK's cause was a righteous one, whereas AOC's a self-righteous one. That his argument is based on foundational American values, whereas the radical left wants to redefine those values. MLK's economic beliefs are entirely separate from the justification of his American and Christian movement for equal rights under our constitution and moral framework.
We can talk about economics, sure... socialism is failed economic theory, it makes everyone poorer. Europeans live in capitalist society with democratic socialist welfare states that makes eveyone but the most destitute decidedly poorer than they would otherwise be. And their middle class, while stronger in the sense that it is broader, is much poorer than the American middle class.
MLK can be forgiven for being wrong on economic theory; he was not an economist and that was outside his area of expertise, but the same can not be said for this day and age. Time has shown it to be wrong, and the current socialist version of money printing capitalism known as Keynesian economics could also fail, but it wouldn't be a failure of capitlism but of what one could term socialist, government meddling of laissez faire capitalism. Also, they aren't "democrat socialist" but communists (antifa, BLM etc.)
This is not a coincidence.
We can talk about economics, sure... socialism is failed economic theory, it makes everyone poorer. Europeans live in capitalist society with democratic socialist welfare states that makes eveyone but the most destitute decidedly poorer than they would otherwise be. And their middle class, while stronger in the sense that it is broader, is much poorer than the American middle class.
MLK can be forgiven for being wrong on economic theory; he was not an economist and that was outside his area of expertise, but the same can not be said for this day and age. Time has shown it to be wrong, and the current socialist version of money printing capitalism known as Keynesian economics could also fail, but it wouldn't be a failure of capitlism but of what one could term socialist, government meddling of laissez faire capitalism. Also, they aren't "democrat socialist" but communists (antifa, BLM etc.)
This is not a coincidence.
There's gonna be civil war regardless of the outcome in November. You better ******* understand that right now
If FDR supported the de jure abolition of poverty through guaranteed, government provided income then yeah I'd put him on the same spectrum as AOC. But he didn't. He was, however, the most leftist president we've ever had.
That's not a statement I ever made. Y'all have been strawmanning the hell out of this thread. What I said was that protesters in general in the 60s were no different from protesters today, and that the American population at large had the same opinion (or worse) of protesters then as they do of protesters now.
All these arguments boil down not to "these people support different policies than the people then" - because people like King back then were calling for federal government programs to guarantee to all citizens the income and necessities for living (the same sort of Democratic socialist policies people are advocating for now), along with direct investment by the government specifically into black communities (essentially a form of reparations). Rather, they boil down to "I don't like these people and don't trust their motives," "I think the problems have already been fixed," and a heavy dose of hysterical accusations that are pretty identical to the hysterical accusations made against King and the protesters in the 60s. Agreeing or disagreeing on whether the problems have been fixed or not does not make for a fundamental difference where one is a hero and one is a villain, one is American and one is anti-American.
It's not a strawman; the protesters today either naively or knowingly are calling for communism which was not the impetus of the MLK movement. That is demonstrable.
Communism is antithetical to foundational AMerican values.
MLK's march for freedom and equality was not. That he, or you (general) today, believe in democrat socialist economic theory as a means of creating equality is a separate issue, it won't create prosperity nor will it fix the problem of police brutality. It's forcing equality by handing over the means of production to the government and then allowing them to decide your necessities and income (communism-lite). There are black intellectuals, and not all of them conservative or even economists, who understand that it won't work, that reparations too are a bad idea. If you want to actually fix these problems, you propose something else instead of deflecting to racism, and I think you (general) do much more (sometimes inadvertently, sometimes intentionally) to make the problems worse than you do to fix them.
Socialism is not evil, but naive and misguided. Marxism/Communism is actually evil, yes.
I'm not conservative. I support a strong liberal left, even radical ideas for change if you can come up with something new that is consistent with Amrican values and you can show it might work. I do not support radical regressive left ideas of socialism that we know good and well
today won't and can't work. Those ideas don't work mathematically and are brought to you by the same people that thought taking Bloomberg's money would net everyone a 1.6 million dollar windfall when all actuality it would be 116 bucks.
It's not a distinction without a difference then vs now like you think it is. The "hysterical accusations" of the past and how they might parallel today argument you are making is irrelevant to the point I made.
I'm not on anyone's side politically, incidentally. I'm against socialism not just because I was born in a communist country, I know first hand what it does to people, but that it won't work and I don't think Americans would be happier or more prosperous in communism-lite that is the European Union style of governance, which is the most directly comparable economy to ours. You (everyone who could read this except the very elite, very rich) would be much poorer.
Last edited:
Yes I know. An attempt to create a moral equivalency for the sake of legitimizing BLM and antifa. They are obviously quite different with one OPENLY calling for Marxism. What don’t you get about this?
We shouldn’t be because only one side actively endorses the notion of nonviolence, judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, and that our rights come from God and not government.
If you are truly torn about which side is closer to King’s vision, heaven help you.
That then, and now, there were hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters, there were riots, there was violence, there were people across the political spectrum, and there were absolutely Marxists then as there are now. But whether someone is a "Marxist," a Communist, a Socialist, none of those, a Christian, an Atheist, whatever else, it has no bearing on a specific change or cause or policy being advocated for. Whether the people saying "we need police reform and these are the specific ways we can accomplish it," or "we should have government policies to abolish poverty" are what you consider a Marxist or not is irrelevant.
Which side endorses non violence? They all vote to kill tons of people every year. We’ve been at war for all but like 20 years of our country’s existence. Non violence is only for the people who aren’t in power.
It's conflating a noble cause with an ignoble one.
It takes away all nuance and serious discussion to hide the reality of what's actually being proposed and why. Specific talk of policy of how/why/what would work best is drowned out by these bad arguments, this new form of illiberal liberalism you seem? to maybe be seduced by or an advocate of.
It can only make matters worse.
It takes away all nuance and serious discussion to hide the reality of what's actually being proposed and why. Specific talk of policy of how/why/what would work best is drowned out by these bad arguments, this new form of illiberal liberalism you seem? to maybe be seduced by or an advocate of.
It can only make matters worse.
War is a historical and ever present reality because people can't agree, primarily can't agree on resources.
So then the answer, as proposed here, is not just socialism for us, but socialism for the rest of the world too. We should give 90% of your wealth, and mine, and every other Westerner or Asian Tiger citizen and give it all out to exploited south americans, africans, and Asians and be done with it.
Where would that leave us? In a better world, a more prosperous world?
Obviously not. The same would be said for the microcosm of that confined to our own national borders, except it would only make the US weaker while our enemies grew stronger.
You (us) don't really realize how rich you are and why. It would take 3 Earths for everyone to live as well as the average US citizen lives currently.