On this day 76 years ago Mohandas Gandhi was assassinated: Today we initiate a Season of Nonviolence

"Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong but of the weak." - Mohandas K. Gandhi

"We are ruthless and ask no quarter from you. When our turn comes we shall not disguise our terrorism." - Karl Marx, Marx-Engels Gesamt-Ausgabe, vol. vi pp 503-5 (The final issue of Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 18 May 1849)

 

Mohandas K. Gandhi and his assassin Nathuram Godse.

 

“In politics you cannot follow nonviolence. You cannot follow honesty. Every moment you have to give a lie. Every moment you have to take a bullet in hand and kill someone.” -  Gopal Godse,  co-conspirator in Gandhi's assassination, Time Magazine, February 2000.

Seventy six years ago Mohandas Gandhi was shot three times in the chest and killed by Hindu nationalist Nathuram Godse at 5:17pm. Godse was part of a team of assassins that had tried 10 days earlier to bomb and kill Gandhi.

Body of Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi lies in state at Birla House in New Delhi.

 

Gandhi despite his successful struggle for independence and the establishment of the largest democracy on the planet was felled, after repeated assassination attempts, gunned down as he went to worship. 

The assassins murdered the independence leader because they did not believe that India could survive with Gandhi promoting Satyagraha and a Muslim state next door. Gopal Godse, a co-conspirator and brother of the assassin Nathuram Godse, argued as late as February 2000 in a Time magazine interview that: “In politics you cannot follow nonviolence. You cannot follow honesty. Every moment you have to give a lie. Every moment you have to take a bullet in hand and kill someone.”

Communists view nationalists as a threat to their revolutionary project, and nationalists often have a critical view of Marxist-Leninists, but they both agreed in their hostility to Mohandas Gandhi. 

The nationalists were open and transparent about their evil intent, but the communists had more guile, and their reasons for rejecting him more complex. 

 

The Soviet press published an article written by S.M. Vakar in 1948 following Gandhi's assassination on January 30, 1948 titled "The Class Nature of the Gandhi Doctrine" subtitled "Gandhi as a Reactionary Utopian" in the Soviet philosophy journal Voprosy filosofii (Questions of Philosophy). The Marxist Leninist argument was outlined as follows:

Although Gandhi regarded the union and independence of the Indian peoples as his goal, his reactionary-Utopian social theory and the reformist methods of struggle connected with it caused his activity to fail in facilitating overthrow of the colonial yoke [...] The social essence of the Gandhi doctrine and its fundamentally reactionary role in the history of India's national liberation movement has hardly been treated in Marxist literature. Yet this doctrine still retards the development of class awareness among the Indian masses.

What was this social essence of Gandhian thought that so troubled the Marxist-Leninists in the Soviet Union? First, the reformist methods of struggle referred to in the above quote was nonviolent resistance and secondly his social theory rejected class struggle as another manifestation of destructive violence. On September 11, 1906 a new word came into existence that would give a better understanding of Gandhi's social theory and method of struggle which he described as:

'Satyagraha.' Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement 'Satyagraha,' that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence, and gave up the use of the phrase 'passive resistance,' in connection with it, so much so that even in English writing we often avoided it and used instead the word 'Satyagraha' itself or some other equivalent English phrase.

The Marxist-Leninists embrace revolutionary violence and a movement led by a small vanguard of intellectuals and professional revolutionaries that carry out the changes "necessary" by whatever means necessary and reject nonviolence as naive. They follow the doctrine of  Vladimir Lenin as presented in his 1902 revolutionary tract "What is to be done."

 

Over a century has passed since both sets of ideas have been set out and applied around the world. An analysis done by Maria J. Stephen and Erica Chenoweth systematically explores the strategic effectiveness of both violent and nonviolent campaigns using data on 323 campaigns carried out between 1900 and 2006.[1] Their findings demonstrate that major non-violent campaigns were successful 53% of the time versus only 26% for major violent campaigns and terrorist campaigns had a dismal 7% success rate.

Today, India with all its flaws is the world's largest democracy with a growing economy that presents new competitive challenges to the developed world and Communism has amassed a body count of 100 million dead and counting. It would appear that Gandhi's criticisms of the communists were prescient:

"The socialists and communists say, they can do nothing to bring about economic equality today. They will just carry on propaganda in its favor and to that end they believe in generating and accentuating hatred. They say, when they get control over the State, they will enforce equality. Under my plan the State will be there to carry out the will of the people, not to dictate to them or force them to do its will." - Mohandas Gandhi

"It is my firm conviction that if the State suppressed capitalism by violence, it will be caught in the coils of violence itself, and will fail to develop non-violence at any time. The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence." - Mohandas Gandhi

It is Satyagraha that is relevant today in 2022 and offers an alternative to the conflagrations suffered in the 20th century and the wars that plague the world now. Gandhi's Satyagraha is a call to principled non-violence but even pragmatists and realists looking over the historical record cannot fail to be influenced by the fact that non-violent civic resistance works and offers a better chance of a better life for more people.

The author in Geneva, Switzerland paying his respects to Bapu.

His example has inspired me to commit to nonviolent strategic resistance as a method of struggle, and others have also embraced his legacy, and that of one of his disciples, Martin Luther King Jr., to observe their death anniversaries of January 30, 1948 and April 4, 1968 as a Season of Nonviolence, a time for right action.     

Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mohandas Gandhi, founded the Season of Nonviolence in 1988 as an annual celebration honoring the philosophies and lives of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi. Dr. Michael Beckwith assisted in the development of this initiative.2024 marks 36 years of this observance. Over 174 days on a weekly basis there will information highlighting the nonviolent philosophies of Gandhi, King, and Oswaldo Payá .

A 2018 documentary by Deutsche Welle about the assassination of Mohandas Gandhi is available online. It is also available in Spanish.

There are many disciples of Gandhi and King that have continued their good works around the world.

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, a non-violent icon born in Havana, Cuba on February 29, 1952 who's compatriots lovingly called him "Bapu" is one of them.   

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas spent his entire adult life defending the human rights of the Cuban people. He founded the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) in 1988 and used nonviolent means to demand that human rights be respected in Cuba. He mobilized tens of thousands of Cubans through the Varela Project on the need for a democratic transition. However, he did not only focus on the human rights violations of the Castro regime and consistently defended human rights in stark contrast to the current government in Oswaldo's homeland.

Two instances separated by a decade involving the United States and Iran demonstrate this courageous consistency in speaking truth to power.

On January 12, 2002, the Cuban Communist Party's daily newspaper Granma offered the official position of the dictatorship on the prison camp in Guantanamo: "We will not create any obstacles to the development of the [U.S. military] operation, though the transfer of foreign prisoners of war by the U.S. government to the base—located on a space in our territory upon which we have been deprived of any jurisdiction—was not part of the agreement that the base was founded upon."

The first Cuban on the island to criticize and denounce the United States for housing Afghan prisoners in Cuba and demanding they be treated with dignity was Cuban opposition leader Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas on December 17, 2002:  

"It's obviously a matter of shame that our land is being used for that purpose, having foreign prisoners brought to Cuba. Even if they are terrorists, they deserve respect. Their human rights should be respected."

Ten years later, on January 11, 2012,  Oswaldo Payá was criticizing the honoring of the Iranian despot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, denouncing both his antisemitism and brutal human rights record:

"Tyrant lizard on the hill. Currently, Ahmadinejad speaks at the University of Havana. It is an insult to the students and an outrage to the sacred remains of Father Varela, and against the virtue and homeland of the Cubans." 

"Mahmoud, why do you deny the Holocaust? Would you repeat it? Never again against any people."

Twelve years ago on July 22, 2012 this consistent human rights defender was killed in what was a premeditated state security operation that led to the car crash, together with the killing of MCL youth leader Harold Cepero Escalante. Over the past decade his family and friends have demanded an investigation into these two deaths, and in June 2023 the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights confirmed that the two human rights defenders had been assassinated by Cuban government agents.

The hatred and violence promoted by communists and ultra-nationalists only end in death and destruction, but time has also demonstrated the constructive power of love and nonviolence.  On this Martyr's Day lets us remember Gandhi, King, and Payá and their constructive nonviolent legacies that decade later continue to have positive results.

Over the next 64 days this site will be highlighting some of them.

Remembering José Martí and his legacy on his 171st birth anniversary

 "Freedom can not be fruitful for the peoples who have their forehead stained in blood." - José Martí*

José Martí, 28 January 1853 – 19 May 1895

 
He re-launched an independence struggle, but he did so without inciting hatred or dehumanizing his opponents. He was a fervent supporter of civil liberties, particularly the freedom of thought and expression. In addition, he worked as a journalist and poet, having previously been imprisoned by the Spanish monarchy for his political views. Today, January 28 marks 171 years since the day José Julián Martí Pérez was born.
 
Cubans of all ideological stripes claim him as their own, but objectively who has maintained the spirit of his words and ideas? There is a movement in Cuba that seeks to restore human rights and liberties using nonviolent means. There are courageous Cubans who risk everything standing up to dictatorship and some of them have been assassinated in the process and their families targeted for reprisals, and forced into exile.

José Martí wrote that "There is no forgiveness for acts of hatred. Daggers thrust in the name of liberty are thrust into liberty's heart." Following this statement to its logical conclusion leads us over a century later to new generations carrying on his legacy.

"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together.’" - Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, December 17, 2002

"Those who steal the rights of others steal from themselves. Those who remove and crush freedom are the true slaves." -  Harold Cepero Escalante, November 3, 2002  

In their writings and in their lives, Oswaldo and Harold exemplified the best qualities of José Martí, rejecting hatred and continuing to defy injustice while pursuing liberation and national reconciliation. 

Cuban Martyrs: Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and Harold Cepero Escalante,

Today in Cuba over a thousand Cubans are jailed for calling for freedom, and an end to dictatorship. They are the direct heirs of José Martí. Let us honor them, and Cuba's apostle in campaigning for their freedom, and for the liberation of Cuba from the present communist dictatorship.  

*"La libertad no puede ser fecunda para los pueblos que tienen la frente manchada de sangre." - Jose Marti  

#WeRemember: International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27th

"It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere." - Primo Levi, 1986 The Drowned and the Saved

Never Again is Now.

Today, January 27, 2024 is recognized by the United Nations as International Holocaust Remembrance Day and is observed around the world.  

We must never forget what happened,  6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust, and remain vigilant now and in the future to battle against the mass destruction of innocent human beings.

 

 

Primo Levi was right, it can happen anywhere - even in Israel, and even here.  

Three months and twenty one days ago on October 7, 2023, Hamas, an Iranian proxy, invaded and attacked Israel killing 1,200 and taking 240 hostages. This strike ignited a Middle East war between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas, which has its base of operations in Gaza. This was the largest mass killing of Jewish people since the Holocaust. Two days after the Hamas terrorist attacks, before Israel had responded to the attacks, on the steps of the Sydney Opera House in Australia over a thousand protesters chanted, “Gas the Jews.” Sadly, the Cuban dictatorship backs Hamas, and is spreading anti-Semitic tropes.

Three years and twenty one days ago on January 6, 2021, when the citadel of American democracy was laid siege by an angry mob that resulted in five deaths - Nazis where there in the crowd. Robert Keith Packer, age 56, was wearing a "Camp Auschwitz" t-shirt, making light of the notorious death camp. Auschwitz was the largest of the German Nazi concentration camps and extermination centers. Over 1.1 million men, women and children lost their lives there.

“The moment infants are killed in their beds, women are raped, people are thrown on the ground and murdered, cruelly, satanically, and having done no wrong - that is a Holocaust”

Ruth Haran survived both the Holocaust and the October 7 Hamas massacre. pic.twitter.com/hOP2Q4IbY5

— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) January 26, 2024

 Five years and three months ago on October 27, 2018, Robert Bowers entered the Tree of Life synagogue with an AR-15, and three handguns shouting anti-Semitic slurs and opened fire killing eleven, and wounding six others. It was believed to be the deadliest attack against Jewish people in U.S. history, but it was not the first.

Unfortunately the international community has failed more than once since 1945 to prevent another mass slaughter. Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge murdered between one fourth and one third of its population between 1975 and 1979, civil libertarian Nat Hentoff pointed to another genocide that could have been stopped in Rwanda in 1994, and in 2016 we witnessed another in Syria where religious minorities, including Christians were being targeted. Today, we are witnessing the genocide of Muslim Uyghurs in China.

It is also important to remember that antisemitism is on the rise world wide and people of the Jewish faith need our solidarity and support now more than ever in confronting rising hatred and intolerance to ensure that what Nazi Germany did never be repeated. 

At the same time it is important to remember and honor the martyrs and heroes who resisted the Nazis.  Including Raoul Wallenberg, who saved 140,000 Jewish people, and was disappeared by the Soviets in January 1945. They are exemplars in moral courage that are much needed today. 

In 2017 in the United States we saw Neo-Nazis on the march in Charlottesville, North Carolina first in a torchlight parade chanting anti-Semitic rants that the following day turned deadly in violent clashes that claimed an innocent life. We must remain vigilant and denounce this evil ideology wherever and whenever it arises.

It can happen here. It can happen anywhere. We are not "OK".

When violence erupts in a society where the rule of law exists, it must not be tolerated, but dealt with an expeditious manner through the judicial system. However, where the poisonous tropes of anti-Semitism, and hatred against the Jewish people arise, it must not be censored by the government, but challenged by people of good will in the battle of ideas to expose both its intellectual and moral bankruptcy. 

Hate speech has Marxist origins that are in opposition to free expression. Perversely, it claims that language can be violence to censor speech while at the same time defending physical violence as justified. When you outlaw speech and drive it underground you imbue it with power and credibility it does not deserve. They tried this approach in Wiemar Germany and it only helped the Nazis take power.

"To forget the victims means to kill them a second time. So I couldn't prevent the first death. I surely must be capable of saving them from a second death." - Elie Wiesel

 

Vladimir Lenin died 100 years ago today and Communist Cuba's hand picked president is celebrating his legacy

 #Lenin100

 

Today, 100 years ago, Vladimir Lenin died. His bloody revolutionary career claimed millions of lives through politically orchestrated famines or outright murders, and he sentenced the peoples of the Soviet Union to seven decades of despotism. 

Communist Cuba's president pays homage to Lenin.

Raul Castro's handpicked president, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, today over Twitter observed the death of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin and honored the late mass murderer, and despot. Below is the text translated to English, and a screen grab of what the Cuban president posted.

"#Lenin100 is trending on this platform today, a century after the physical disappearance of the leader of the October Socialist Revolution and the world proletariat. #Cuba honors his memory."

Responded to his X post pointing out that it was the dictatorship in Cuba honoring Lenin's memory, not the Cuban people, and added that "Lenin was truly one of the bloodiest mass murderers in history as well as a dictator and psychopath. You should be ashamed honoring this monster."

 

Soviet leader: Lenin worse than Stalin

Who was this man, whom the Castro regime honored today on the 100th anniversary of his death?

The Russian communist revolutionary had several hundred aliases, but Lenin was the one he was best known for, and that he used politically. All the Bolshevik leaders used aliases.  

Molotov, a contemporary who held a leadership position in the Soviet Union, was quoted in David Remnick's 2014 book, Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. 

"'You know its a pity that Lenin died so early. If he had lived longer, everything would have been normal.' But Molotov said, 'Why do you say that?' My friend said, 'Because Stalin was a bloodsucker and Lenin was a noble person.' Molotov smiled, and then he said, ' Compared to Lenin, Stalin was a mere lamb."

Molotov was born Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Skryabin and took the revolutionary name Vyacheslav Molotov. Molotov was one of the few Bolsheviks in Moscow, and he was part of the group that successfully carried out a coup against the social democrats in October 2017, and he was in the leadership group with both Lenin and Stalin throughout. He held leadership positions in the Soviet Union from the 1920s until 1961, when he was expelled from the Communist Party for opposing Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy. Molotov could assess both Lenin and Stalin's ruthlessness. 

The Library of Congress has communications between Lenin and Molotov. For example in a letter dated March 19, 1922, from Lenin via Molotov to members of the Politburo, he outlined "a brutal plan of action against the 'Black Hundreds' clergy and their followers, who were defying the government decree to remove church valuables (purported by the government to be used to fund famine relief). Lenin proposed the arrest and quick trial of the insurrectionists in Shuia, followed by a ruthless campaign to shoot a large number of the reactionary clergy and bourgeoisie and urged that removal of valuables from the richest churches and monasteries be finished quickly."

Lenin and the Bolsheviks did not depose the Czar.  They overthrew the social democrats who had forced the Czar to abdicate and placed him under house arrest, and were navigating power through democratic processes that were unprepared for the terror and conspiracies of the Bolsheviks.

Lenin's body count

From November 1917 until his death in January 1924, the publication Counting Stars provided a summary of the victims of Leninism which is reproduced below.

The figures of victims of Leninism, from November 1917 to January 1924

• More than a million people murdered for political or religious reasons.
• Between 300,000 and 500,000 Cossacks killed.
• Hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants killed for striking.
• 240,000 killed in the suppression of the Tambov rebellion.
• More than 50,000 white prisoners of war executed.
• Between 3.9 million and 7.75 million deaths from famines among Russians, Kazakhs and Tatars." 
  

 A communist coup d'etat that aborted democracy in Russia

Lenin at a rally on March 18, 1918.

To demystify Lenin one must first break other myths. The most basic is that when the Bolshevik coup d'etat broke out on November 7, 1917, the communists did not overthrow the Tsar - which no longer reigned - but aborted the incipient democracy in Russia, taking advantage of the crisis that arose between conservatives and socialists. After the violent assault on power by the communists, a civil war broke out that lasted five years, and in which - already in power - the Bolsheviks - who were victorious - faced all their rivals. It was the beginning of a bloody dictatorship that would last more than 70 years, until the disappearance of the USSR in 1991."

Ideas have consequences 

The body count amassed by Vladimir Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks was not an accident, but the result of the ideas that animated them, and continue to animate the Cuban communists today.

On October 2, 1920, the first leader of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, stated in a speech to Russian communist youth: 

 "The class struggle is continuing and it is our task to subordinate all interests to that struggle. Our communist morality is also subordinated to that task. We say: morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all the working people around the proletariat, which is building up a new, communist society." 

This is at the heart of communist morality, the ends justify the means, a profound immorality and a pillar of international communism. It also leads to the doctrine of the "big lie." According to Lenin, "To speak the truth is a petit-bourgeois habit. To lie, on the contrary, is often justified by the lie's aim." 

The Third International was founded by Lenin in 1915 and held its first of seven world congresses on March 2, 1919 and was also known as the Communist International, and was known by its abbreviated form the Comintern. It was an international communist organization that advocated world communism. The International intended to fight "by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State".  

The Soviet State was never abolished, but a new class created, "the nomenklatura" that spent decades ruling over the proletariat with a ruthlessness that led workers in communist regimes, to prefer a return to market systems and democracy. It is a historical irony that Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was brought to an end by the rise of an independent trade union movement in Poland. 

Castroism's Leninist continuity 

The Castro regime took a country with one of the largest middle classes in Latin America, in part due to a strong labor movement that had existed and grown more powerful for over 50 years. The Batista dictatorship was unable to crush it, but Castro's communist dictatorship over a couple of years crushed this workers movement, and 64 years later the nomenklatura lives with great wealth and privileges while the rest of the Cuban populace is immiserated. 

Fidel Castro, and the rest of the Cuban communists embraced Lenin's "communist morality" and "the big lie." Consider the late dictator's own words on the subject.

Fidel Castro on December 2, 1961 in a moment of frankness confessed: "If we had paused to tell the people that we were Marxist-Leninists while we were on Pico Turquino and not yet strong, it is possible that we would never have been able to descend to the plains."  He was able to "confess" that he had always been a communist because he had consolidated power and killed or imprisoned all his enemies, and shut down all independent media. He had imposed a totalitarian dictatorship on Cubans.

Years later on March 26, 1964, Fidel Castro explained: "I conceive the truth in terms of a just and noble end, and that is when the truth is truly true. If it does not serve a just, noble and positive end, truth, as an abstract entity, philosophical category, in my opinion, does not exist."  

Mr. Castro's philosophy is not original, but Leninism with tropical flair, and the speaking style of Benito Mussolini.

Cuban scholar and Christian Democrat Jose Ignacio Rasco, who knew Fidel Castro from primary school and onward, concluded that the Cuban revolutionary had been a committed communist by 1950.

Terrorism and Communism

Author and Journalist Claire Sterling in her March 1, 1981 article in The New York Times,  TERRORISM  TRACING THE INTERNATIONAL NETWORK touched on terrorism's links to international communism beginning with Lenin, but moved on to the pivotal role played by the Castro regime in Cuba.

"Lenin's definition -- 'the purpose of terror is to terrorize' -- is a useful beginning. The terrorist uses violence not to punish the victim but to intimidate the audience, to impose his political will by force when he cannot achieve it by democratic means".

The Castro regime fully embraced terrorism as a global strategy and built an international terrorist network.

..."Fidel Castro had been operating his own schools for guerrillas since 1961, starting with recruits from Latin America and Africa. By 1964, Palestinians and Europeans had joined the ranks." ..."The roots of the terrorist network can be traced directly to the Tricontinental Congress held in Havana in January 1966. More than 500 delegates passed resolutions emphasizing the need for close collaboration between 'Socialist countries' --i.e., the Soviet Union and its satellites -- and national liberation movements." ...  "It was, unmistakably, a call for a Guerrilla International. And the call was heeded. Ten months later, a new cluster of more than a dozen training camps for guerilla fighters from all over the world was opened in Cuba." 

Bombing campaigns were carried out in the United States, and innocents were murdered.  Some of these terrorists were captured, placed on trial, but then broke out of prison and ended up being harbored by the Castro regime. They continue to advocate terrorism, and justify their violence. Worse yet, communist networks claim these killers are "political prisoners."

Lenin died 100 years ago today. The tragedy is that he was able to cause so much harm in his 53 years of life. He is the intellectual author of the Soviet Union,  a system correctly described as anti-human by British conservative Peter Hitchens.

Diaz- Canel is part of a regime that is a continuity of the system created by Lenin.

The Cuban communist channeled Lenin on July 11, 2021 when tens of thousands of Cubans took to the streets nonviolently across Cuba demanding freedom: 

"The order to fight has been given — into the street, revolutionaries! ...They will have to walk right over our corpses. We are ready to do anything if they want to confront the revolution."

Díaz-Canel's call to violence had deadly consequences for Cubans. Regime agents went out into residential neighborhoods firing on protesters. Cuban protester Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, (age 36) was shot in the back and killed on July 12, 2021 by police.

The Cuban president's honoring of Lenin, a mass murdering psychopath, conforms to the actions he has taken since being handpicked for the post by Raul Castro in 2018. Dr. Maya Angelou once said, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time,” and Cuba watchers should believe Diaz-Canel is a Leninist.

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr was born 95 years ago today

 "Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals." - Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1964

Martin Luther King Jr. January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia 95 years ago today, but he never lived to see his 40th birthday because he was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

A little more than a year before his untimely death, the nonviolent icon delivered an important speech at Stanford University that is well worth hearing and studying.

"Let me say as I've always said, and I will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating. I'm still convinced that nonviolence is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom and justice. I feel that violence will only create more social problems than they will solve." 

Dr. King's message is still relevant today, and his family works at The King Center to teach new generations about nonviolence and to share his writings and speeches.

The Drum Major for Justice#MLK #MLKDay2024 #MLK95 #MLKDay pic.twitter.com/uXUP5Biaqr

— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center (@TheKingCenter) January 15, 2024

King's radical critique of the United States

Martin Luther King Jr. was an outspoken critic of American society. He repeatedly challenged the United States to live up to its own lofty ideals, seeking reforms to end segregation and ensure voting rights for African Americans through nonviolent action and democratic norms.  He was also a radical critic of communism.

Reverend King's political philosophy is best described as Christian Democracy. This school of thought, which includes parties on the center left and center right, is based, like Reverend King, on a Christian view of humanity in which "every individual is considered unique and must be treated with dignity." In his April 4, 1967 speech, Beyond Vietnam gave full expression to this outlook:

"We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see than an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. "

Mohandas Gandhi, a major influence on King, advocated for social responsibility and trusteeship. Gandhi,  a self-described socialist, was not an enthusiastic supporter of an expanded social-welfare state, arguing:

"The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence. Hence I prefer the doctrine of trusteeship. [...] What I would personally prefer would be not centralization of power in the hands of the State, but an extension of the sense of trusteeship, as, in my opinion, the violence of private ownership is less injurious than the violence of the State. However, if it is unavoidable, I would support a minimum of State-ownership."

Furthermore, both King and Gandhi's critique of a "thing-oriented" society or the state as a "soulless machine" focuses on the person or the individual rather than an economic mechanism or economic class. The emphasis is on the human person and policies that recognize and respect the uniqueness and dignity of each human being. 

King was targeted by both the FBI and the KGB

KGB targeted Martin Luther King Jr. for active measures.

When he was alive, the civil rights leader was a divisive figure. The FBI in the United States wiretapped Martin Luther King Jr., monitored the Civil Rights Movement, and took active measures against him.
Many people are aware of this, but few are aware of the other campaign launched against the civil rights leader by Soviet intelligence, also known as the KGB. It is also important to remember that Russian intelligence operatives have previously attempted to sow discord, division, and hatred among citizens in the United States. 

A high-ranking Russian intelligence officer defected to the United Kingdom in 1992, bringing with him notes and transcripts compiled over the previous thirty years as he relocated entire foreign intelligence archives to a new headquarters just outside of Moscow. Vasili Mitrokhin was the Russian intelligence officer whose information became known as The Mitrokhin Archive. 

In Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin's 1999 book The Sword and the The Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, details were obtained from the Mitrokhin Archive on Soviet efforts to replace Martin Luther King Jr. with a "more radical and malleable leader" such as Stokeley Carmichael in order to incite a race war in the United States.

The following excerpts from The Sword and the Shield detail elements of the Soviet intelligence campaign and the active measures arrayed against the civil rights leader:

“In August 1967 the Centre approved an operational plan by the deputy head of Service A, Yuri Modin, former controller of the Magnificent Five, to discredit King and his chief lieutenants by placing articles in the African press, which could then be reprinted in American newspapers, portraying King as an “Uncle Tom” who was secretly receiving government subsidies to tame the civil rights movement and prevent it threatening the Johnson administration." 

[...]  

"King’s assassination on April 4, 1968 was quickly followed by the violence and rioting which the KGB had earlier blamed King for trying to prevent. Within a week riots erupted in over a hundred cities, forty-six people had been killed, 3,500 injured and 20,000 arrested. To “Deke” DeLoach, it seemed that, “The nation was teetering on the brink of anarchy.”86 Henceforth, instead of dismissing King as an Uncle Tom, Service A portrayed him as a martyr of the black liberation movement and spread conspiracy theories alleging that his murder had been planned by white racists with the connivance of the authorities."

On September 28, 1999, University of Cambridge professor Christopher Andrew, who coauthored The Sword and the Shield with Vasili Mitrokhin, was interviewed by Charlie Rose on PBS about the book and, near the end of the interview, discussed how the Soviets celebrated the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. by James Earl Ray. The Russians rejoiced because they did not want an independent African American leader over whom they had no control and who practiced principled nonviolence.

Taylor Branch wrote about the Reverend's views on the militant call to armed struggle in the streets of the United States in January 1968 in the third book of his trilogy on Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, At Canaan's Edge.

 “Riots just don’t pay off,” said King. He pronounced them an objective failure beyond morals or faith. “For if we say that power is the ability to effect change, or the ability to achieve purpose,” he said, “then it is not powerful to engage in an act that does not do that–no matter how loud you are, and no matter how much you burn.” Likewise, he exhorted the staff to combat the “romantic illusion” of guerrilla warfare in the style of Che Guevara. No “black” version of the Cuban revolution could succeed without widespread political sympathy, he asserted, and only a handful of the black minority itself favored insurrection. King extolled the discipline of civil disobedience instead, which he defined not as a right but a personal homage to untapped democratic energy. The staff must “bring to bear all of the power of nonviolence on the economic problem,” he urged, even though nothing in the Constitution promised a roof or a meal. “I say all of these things because I want us to know the hardness of the task,” King concluded, breaking off with his most basic plea: “We must not be intimidated by those who are laughing at nonviolence now.”

These words are as true today as they were over a half-century ago. Reverend King's legacy continues to inspire activists worldwide. This Baptist minister who risked everything for the freedom of all African Americans and the redemption of the United States by fulfilling the creed that all men are created equal.

95 years ago today, a King was born.

He was a dreamer…and so much more.

A defender of those being oppressed and a challenger of oppressors.

A student of the human condition and a strategist for humane change.

A teacher, a thinker, a truth teller.

King.#MLKDay #MLK95 #MLK pic.twitter.com/77aZxduv2l

— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center (@TheKingCenter) January 15, 2024

Unlike others who were funded and supported by the Soviet Union, Martin Luther King Jr. was targeted by both American and Russian intelligence agencies because he was his own man, with no one controlling him except his conscience. He did not advocate or engage in violence while changing the United States and the world for the better.

King's living legacy

2024 Beloved Community Commemorative Service #MLKDay2024 #MLKDay #MLK95 #MLK #ShiftTheCulturehttps://t.co/5b4b763Ban

— Be A King (@BerniceKing) January 15, 2024

Bernice King, Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter, is hosting the aforementioned Beloved Community Global Summit and carrying on her father's work to advance nonviolence.

Today, on what would have been his 95th birthday, let us remember him and renew our commitment to continuing his work "to shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society."  

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service, 2024https://t.co/jt9AuPqpUR pic.twitter.com/LnyAtbc8Eq

— CaribbeanNewsGlobal (@GlobalCaribbean) January 15, 2024

Let us participate in the King Center's day of service today, and if you are in the Atlanta area, please join the King family in carrying on Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s mission.

His legacy transcends borders, and ideologies. The Glenn Show explored it, and engaged in dialogue on what MLK Day is supposed to mean, and posted it today.