On this day 77 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)

 “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 seven 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.

Mohandas K. Gandhi and his assassin Nathuram Godse.

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.”

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

 

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 Class Essence of Gandhism" by S.M. Vakar critiques Gandhi

 

 

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 were means of 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 gave a more precise understanding of Gandhi's social theory and method of struggle which he described as follows.

'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 professional revolutionaries that carry out the changes 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."  

 

This did not change once the Bolsheviks took power in 1917.

 

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."

According to Lenin, "To speak the truth is a petite-bourgeois habit. To lie, on the contrary, is often justified by the lie's aim."

 

This doctrine embraces both the lie and hatred of the class enemy as necessities to achieve revolution. Gandhian Satyagraha is its philosophical anti-thesis.

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 2025 and offers an alternative to the conflagrations suffered in the past 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.

Others have embraced nonviolence based in adherence to the truth. They have achieved much, but in too many cases paid with their lives.

Like Gandhi, they also rejected communist ideology. 

 

One was a Southern Baptist minister who transformed the United States, but did not live to see his 40th birthday. He was assassinated by a white racist in 1968. A radical critique of American society was held by Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. He consistently pushed for reforms to end segregation and guarantee African Americans' right to vote through democratic norms and nonviolent action, and he urged the United States to live up to its own aspirational ideals. 

The best way to characterize Reverend King's political philosophy is as belonging to what is known as Christian democracy. This political school is centered on a Christian understanding of humanity, where "every individual is considered unique and must be treated with dignity." It includes both center-left and center-right parties. 

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. sought to end racial segregation in the United States, and build the beloved community. However, he rejected communism as the means to achieve it.

"Since for the Communist there is no divine government, no absolute moral order, there are no fixed, immutable principles; consequently almost anything—force, violence, murder, lying—is a justifiable means to the “millennial” end.⁵ This type of relativism was abhorrent to me." - Martin Luther King Jr. Stride to Freedom (1958)

 "Constructive ends can never give absolute moral justification to destructive means, because in the final analysis the end is pre-existent in the mean."  - Martin Luther King Jr. Stride to Freedom (1958)

Another was an engineer, and a Catholic layman who founded the Christian Liberation Movement, and nonviolently changed Cuba, but did no live to see his 61st birthday. He was assassinated by Cuban government agents, together with his movement's youth leader Harold Cepero in 2012.

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas presented a radical critique of the communist dictatorship, and sought nonviolent means within the existing system to achieve a transition to democracy in Cuba based in the rule of law. In the two years prior to his untimely death, Oswaldo worked on the book "The Night is Not Eternal" in which he gave an assessment of the fraudulent change of the Cuban dictatorship that, while recognizing class differences, rejected class hatred.

"Let us remember that the Revolution here was made in the name of the poor, but after using them to suppress the rich and leave everyone who had something with nothing, the right of expression was taken away from everyone and from the poor themselves, who long ago lost their voice and cannot even say that they are poor. In this current situation of inequality sustained by oppression, if these changes are implemented, inequality will only deepen. We have always said this without class hatred or hatred of any kind, but everything indicates that this re-conversion of privilege is not implemented in a transition but in an inheritance in which the oligarchy leaves its successors with other styles and other content of inequality."

In 2002, when Oswaldo received the European Union's Sakharov Prize, and addressed the EU parliament in Brussels he spoke of the dangers of globalization, in terms that both Gandhi, and King would have appreciated and shared.

"The talk today is of globalization, but we must state that unless there is global solidarity, not only human rights but also the right to remain human will be jeopardized. If there is no solidarity between people we will be unable to preserve a fair world in which it is possible to continue living as human beings." 

The critique made by Payá, King and Gandhi is against a "thing-oriented" society or a government as a "soulless machine" that looks to the person or the individual as an "economic automaton", or " the masses" that constitute an economic class because either is a dystopian system. They argue that the focus should be on the human person and policies that recognize and respect the uniqueness of each human being and their fundamental dignity.

 

Let us initiate a season of nonviolence, and examine these and other nonviolent thinkers, and exemplars, on January 30th, following up on April 4th, and July 22nd to coincide with the death anniversaries of these three nonviolent icons.

 

We are living in times where their example is more needed than ever to inspire truth and firmness in defiance of evil practices.

Remembering Cuban martyr and dissident Harold Cepero on what would have been his 45th birthday

"Whoever destroys a single life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed the whole world, and whoever saves a single life is considered by Scripture to have saved the whole world." - Mishnah  (1135-1204)

Harold Cepero Escalante (1980 - 2012)

 

Harold Cepero Escalante was born in Ciego de Avila on January 29, 1980 and was murdered by the Cuban dictatorship together with Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas in Bayamo, Granma on July 22, 2012. This was confirmed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on June 12, 2023. 

Harold was a member of the Christian Liberation Movement and a youth leader. Harold understood that those who engaged in repression were also not free stating: "Those who remove and crush freedom are the real slaves."

Harold Cepero nació el 29 de enero 1980.
Hoy cumple 45 años.
Asesinado por el régimen de Fidel y Raúl Castro, junto a Oswaldo Payá, el 22 de julio de 2012.

"Nos sigue la comunista" ( así llamaba él a la Gestapo cubana) le dijo a Ángel Carromero momentos antes del crimen. (1) pic.twitter.com/xGYVXNVoQ5

— Luis Michel (@LMichelCespedes) January 29, 2025

Today would have been his 45th birthday, but due to the actions of the Castro regime's secret police his life was ended 13 years ago at the age of 32.

Clare Short, a former Labor member of parliament addressing the topic of forgiveness and justice raises two important points that underline reconciliation within an ongoing injustice and repression:

"Is anger about injustice one of the forces that drives historical progress and important social reform? Is there an important difference between the bitterness,hatred and quest for vengeance that can be so damaging to those who have been hurt or wronged, and the anger that thirsts after justice?" ... "I also agree that the quest for vengeance is also wrong because it so often inflicts harm on people who share an identity with the original perpetrator but have no guilt,and it means the evil of the original harm is recreated in the actions of the person who has been wronged. But all this said, there is such a thing as just anger and those who are subject to continuing oppression can get strength from that anger in order to join with others to liberate themselves. And so I wish to conclude by celebrating forgiveness and reconciliation but also by reminding us that reconciliation can not be the answer when there is a continuing wrong or continuing oppression."

In the Cuban context, Antonio "Tony" Ramón Díaz Sánchez, a former prisoner of conscience and secretary general of the Christian Liberation Movement, rejects hatred while at the same time forgiving past injustices but refuses to forgive those that are ongoing or that will be carried out in the future. 

Because to forgive ongoing and future evils raises the danger of one becoming morally complicit in them or as Tony puts it:

"Because what I do not forgive is that the year has started with the same repression that ended last year. What I can not forgive is that in my country, those who govern, do not recognize the need to change to democracy and allow the people to decide in free and pluralistic elections. I can not and do not want to forgive that right now, at this instant, there are political prisoners in Cuba and that the existing laws guarantee their imprisonment or perhaps the firing squad for others. I do not forgive that young people are living without life projects, while a group in power live as billionaires. Nor do I forgive the complicity of many interests that seek capital now in Cuba without wanting to find out today what is happening there. I do not forgive out of hate. No, no but because forgiving a present and a future of injustice and totalitarianism for your country, is not mercy but complicity with the evil of others."

The perils of speaking truth to power in Cuba were and still are understood by Tony Díaz Sánchez. Long years in prison and forced exile were the price he paid. 

Harold also understood the dangers of advocating for freedom in Cuba under the Castro dictatorship. In 2012, shortly before his death he explained the cost of resistance.

"Christians and non-Christians who have the courage and the freedom to consider the peaceful political option for their lives, know they are exposing themselves to slightly less than absolute solitude, to work exclusion, to persecution, to prison or death."

This courageous young man is remembered and the demand for justice continues.  The petition demanding an international investigation into the circumstances of Harold and Oswaldo's killing on July 22, 2012 has crossed 16,500 signatures. 

Defending memory by pursuing truth and maintaining the call for justice is an ever present opportunity for the other to repent and embrace justice and actual forgiveness. The antithesis of this is "forgiving and forgetting" while injustices are ongoing  and new ones being compounded not only harms the victims but also condemns the perpetrator to continue committing evil acts and is described as a "false reconciliation."

In the spirit of defending truth and memory, this video of a 2002 interview with Harold Cepero provided by the Christian Liberation Movement on their Youtube channel is being shared.

José Julián Martí Pérez at 172: The heirs of José Martí and those who repress them now

 "I think they kill my child every time they deprive a person of their right to think." - José Martí

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and José Martí

José Martí was a poet, journalist, and Cuban independence leader. He had also endured prison for writings critical of the Spanish government. He organized a war of independence, but did so without resorting to dehumanizing his adversary or appealing to hatred. He was also a fierce advocate for civil liberties and especially freedom of thought and expression. Today, January 28 marks 172 years since the day José Julián Martí Pérez was born.

Four horseman: Ventura, Valdés, Castro, and Díaz-Canel

On the evening of January 27th the Cuban dictatorship held its torch march on the eve of  José Martí's birth anniversary. Leading the march were José Ramón Machado Ventura, Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, Raúl  Castro Ruz, and Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez.

The communist dictatorship in Cuba claims José Martí as its own, but their ideology and actions are in stark contrast to his values.

Over a thousand sons and daughters of Cuba are arbitrarily and unjustly imprisoned today for exercising their right to free thought and expression in calling for freedom. Eleven thousand are jailed for pre-crime in Cuba. The regime jails them for what they might potentially do in the future.  

Millions of Cubans have gone into exile, and many are barred from returning home by the Castro regime. 

The dictatorship continues to kill Cubans for standing up for liberty or attempting to flee Cuba to live in freedom.  It has criminalized free speech, and jailed artists and independent journalists for exercising their profession.

José Martí with shirt of stars by Camila Ramírez Lobón

Ideas cited below by José Martí are in conflict with Castroism, but are in accord with the democratic Cuba that helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and struggled for a more just and democratic order, but was damaged by Fulgencio Batista after 1952, then systematically destroyed by the Castro brothers after 1959. 

"Man loves liberty, even if he does not know that he loves it. He is driven by it and flees from where it does not exist."

"Freedoms, like privileges, prevail or are imperiled together You cannot harm or strive to achieve one without harming or furthering all."

"Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy."

"It is the duty of man to raise up man. One is guilty of all abjection that one does not help to relieve. Only those who spread treachery, fire, and death out of hatred for the prosperity of others are undeserving of pity."  

 Martí also criticized the writings of Karl Marx, observing they were antithetical to his own values. If one considers that he wrote, "It is the duty of man to raise up man. One is guilty of all abjection that one does not help to relieve. Only those who spread treachery, fire, and death out of hatred for the prosperity of others are undeserving of pity." He was a contemporary of Marx who had written in 1849, "We are ruthless and ask no quarter from you. When our turn comes we shall not disguise our terrorism." Martí recognized the dangers of Socialism and its doctrine of envy, observing: 

"Socialist ideology, like so many others, has two main dangers. One stems from confused and incomplete readings of foreign texts, and the other from the arrogance and hidden rage of those who, in order to climb up in the world, pretend to be frantic defenders of the helpless so as to have shoulders on which to stand." 

The observation of José Martí that “A revolution is still necessary: the one that does not make its caudillo president, the revolution against revolutions, the uprising of all peaceful men, once soldiers, so that neither they nor anyone will ever be so again,” is a damning indictment of the 64 year dictatorship of the Castro brothers, but also relevant to free Cubans.  

Martí wrote this before nonviolence was recognized as a powerful force to be used to achieve change. He led the effort to initiate Cuba's second war of independence and was killed in action during an early skirmish in that war in 1895. 

However, the idea of an uprising of nonviolent men and women to carry out a "revolution against revolutions"  that will usher in a democracy, and not another dictator, is precisely what many Cubans want. 

Today also marks seven years since nonviolence scholar Gene Sharp died. He taught generations that there was an alternative to bloody conflict and that it was non-violent armed conflict. Professor Sharp practiced nonviolence as a conscientious objector during the Korean War, and studied the examples of Mohandas Gandhi, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and many other nonviolent practitioners. He demonstrated that nonviolent resistance was anything but passive, and that success in a struggle required strategy as well.

Gene Sharp: January 21, 1928 – January 28, 2018

 Gene Sharp presented his case succinctly at the National Conference on Nonviolent Sanctions and Defense in Boston in 1990. 

"I say nonviolent struggle is armed struggle. And we have to take back that term from those advocates of violence who seek to justify with pretty words that kind of combat. Only with this type of struggle one fights with psychological weapons, social weapons, economic weapons and political weapons. And that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence."

Cubans of all ideological stripes claim him as their own, but objectively who has maintained the spirit of his words and ideals? 

 Castroism is the antithesis of all that José Martí represented. 

There is a movement that seeks to restore human rights and liberties using nonviolent means that uphold his values. These are courageous men and women who risk all standing up to the Cuban dictatorship. Many have been jailed, some have been killed, and their families targeted for reprisals in this struggle for freedom.

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas addresses the EU parliament (2002)

Looking for these values leads one to Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, who in a speech to the European Parliament on December 17, 2002 stated:

 "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.’"

This founder of the Christian Liberation Movement was murdered by agents of the Cuban government on July 11, 2012 together with the movement's youth leader Harold Cepero. Like  José Martí they too are martyrs for Cuba's freedom.

 

#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.

Tomorrow, January 27, 2025 is recognized by the United Nations as International Holocaust Remembrance Day and is observed around the world.  

We must never forget what happened,  six 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.   

One year, three months and twenty 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. 

Six 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 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 also important to remember and honor the martyrs and heroes who resisted the Nazis.  One of these heroes was Raoul Wallenberg, who saved over 100,000 Jewish people, and was disappeared by the Soviets in January 1945. 

 They are exemplars in moral courage that are much needed today. Let us continue the fight.

"How We Must Continue to Fight Antisemitism 80 Years After the Liberation of Auschwitz"

The latest piece for @TIME magazine by our Founder and International Chair, @IrwinCotler and the Chair of our Board @JayRosenzweig:https://t.co/kL93gQEMXk

"The Holocaust revealed the…

— Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights (@TheRWCHR) January 26, 2025

50 years ago today, Havana-backed Puerto Rican terrorists, the FALN, bombed the Fraunces Tavern killing four, and wounding over 50 in New York City. The bomb maker still harbored in Cuba.

On this day in 1975 in New York City: Havana-backed Puerto Rican terrorists, the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN), placed a bomb in Fraunces Tavern and exploded it at 1:29pm killing four, and wounding over 50 at the historic tavern. 

The four men murdered in the FALN terror bombing at the Fraunces Tavern were Alejandro Berger, Frank Connor, James Gezork, and Harold H. Sherburne.

Despite this, both Presidents Bill Clinton, in 1999, and Barack Obama, in 2017 freed a number of FALN terrorists.

The Clinton Administration in August 1999 commuted the sentences of 16 FALN terrorists.  

The Obama Administrations commuted the sentence of unapologetic FALN terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera in January 2017.

It is important to place these terrorist actions, the response by the Clinton and Obama Administrations in context, and the role of the dictatorship in Cuba.

In November 2017, recently freed Puerto Rican terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera traveled to Cuba where he was honored by the dictatorship. 

In the audience where members of the WASP network, including Gerardo Hernandez, who had been convicted of murder conspiracy for his role in the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down, and had his sentence commuted by Obama in 2014. 

One of the men responsible for this terrorist bombing eluded, and still eludes justice, harbored by the communist dictatorship in Cuba.

The FALN bomb maker, William Morales, fled U.S. custody, following a shoot out in Mexico, he ended up in Cuba where he continues to be harbored by the dictatorship today, a fugitive from American justice.

Bearing witness. Survivors, family members of victims of 1975 Fraunces Tavern FALN bombing, and law enforcement that pursued terrorists gather to continue to seek & demand justice. pic.twitter.com/8qdYzUy8Bw

— John Suarez ن (@johnjsuarez) January 24, 2025

Today bore witness as survivors, family members of the victims of the 1975 Fraunces Tavern FALN bombing, and law enforcement that pursued terrorists gathered to continue to seek and demand justice.  

Family, friends, and law enforcement gathered at Fraunces Tavern

They gathered together in the space in the Fraunces Tavern where the bomb had exploded killing Alejandro, Frank, James, and Harold, and injured over 50 others.

At 1:29pm they held a moment of silence outside of the Fraunces Tavern, and held a press conference demanding justice for the victims.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s Radical Anticommunism: Selected quotes on Communism (1956 - 1967)

"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." - Mohandas Gandhi, Gandhi's interview with Nirmal Kumar Bose, November 9 - 10, 1934

Photo of a drawing at the King Center in Atlanta, GA. Matt Lemmon 2008

Today, over social media, the debates and exchanges with different sides attempting to claim Martin Luther King Jr. as their own. Yet, when he died on April 4, 1968 he was being targeted by all sides. Today, as in 1968, the words communist and socialist get thrown around a lot.

However, the truth is more complicated. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. drew inspiration from the nonviolent Indian nationalist leader Mohandas Gandhi. Gandhi, although a Hindu and not a Christian, drew inspiration from the Sermon on the Mount. Reverend King traveled to India in 1959, and at the airport he told a group of reporters:“To other countries I may go as a tourist, but to India I come as a pilgrim.”

Both Gandhi and King were radical critics of communism.   

Martin Luther King, Jr. beside a picture of Gandhi. © Bob Fitch.

Many are aware of Reverend King's radical criticisms of Capitalism, but how many remember his radical criticisms of Communism?  Radical is defined here as going to the roots. Below are some of the key statements made by Reverend King on communism over the decade he was most politically active. 

"You cannot solve the problem by turning to communism, for communism is based on an ethical relativism and a metaphysical materialism that no Christian can accept. You can work within the framework of democracy to bring about a better distribution of wealth." - Martin Luther King Jr. Paul's Letter to American Christians (1956)

"Communism, avowedly secularistic and materialistic, has no place for God.⁴ This I could never accept, for as a Christian I believe that there is a creative personal power in this universe who is the ground and essence of all reality—a power that cannot be explained in materialistic terms. History is ultimately guided by spirit, not matter." - Martin Luther King Jr. Stride to Freedom (1958)

"Since for the Communist there is no divine government, no absolute moral order, there are no fixed, immutable principles; consequently almost anything—force, violence, murder, lying—is a justifiable means to the “millennial” end.⁵ This type of relativism was abhorrent to me." - Martin Luther King Jr. Stride to Freedom (1958)

 "Constructive ends can never give absolute moral justification to destructive means, because in the final analysis the end is pre-existent in the mean."  - Martin Luther King Jr. Stride to Freedom (1958)

"In communism the individual ends up in subjection to the state. True, the Marxist would argue that the state is an “interim” reality which is to be eliminated when the classless society emerges; but the state is the end while it lasts, and man only a means to that end. And if any man’s so-called rights or liberties stand in the way of that end, they are simply swept aside."  - Martin Luther King Jr. Stride to Freedom (1958)

"His liberties of expression, his freedom to vote, his freedom to listen to what news he likes or to choose his books are all restricted. Man becomes hardly more, in communism, than a depersonalized cog in the turning wheel of the state." - Martin Luther King Jr. Stride to Freedom (1958)

"Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man. To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person. Man must never be treated as a means to the end of the state, but always as an end within himself." - Martin Luther King Jr. Stride to Freedom (1958)

"Listen to Lenin as he says 'Lying, deceit, violence, concealing and withholding the truth are all justifiable means to bring about the end of the classless society.'  This is the great weakness and tragedy of communism and any other system that argues that the end justifies the means, for in a real sense, the end is pre-existent in the means; the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process. In the long run of history, immoral means cannot bring about moral ends. Destructive means cannot bring about constructive goals." - Martin Luther King Jr. Address to Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa (1962)

“If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws.” - MLK Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)

"This is the faith I commend to you Christians here in Berlin. A living, active, massive faith that affirms the victory of Jesus Christ over the world, whether it be an Eastern world or a Western world." - Martin Luther King Jr. East or West – God’s Children (1964)

 "There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.  This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism." - Martin Luther King Jr. Beyond Vietnam (1967)

"We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy [applause], realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice." - Martin Luther King Jr. Beyond Vietnam (1967)

"We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops." - Martin Luther King Jr. Beyond Vietnam (1967)

"As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems."- Martin Luther King Jr. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (1967) 

 Martin Luther King Jr had a radical critique of American society. He repeatedly challenged the United States to live up to its own aspired ideals and sought through nonviolent action and democratic norms, reforms to end segregation and ensure voting rights for African Americans.  Reverend King's political outlook could best be described as falling within what is called Christian Democracy. This political school occupies the center with parties on the center left and the center right, but like Reverend King are based on a Christian view of humanity in which "every individual is considered unique and must be treated with dignity."

Mohandas Gandhi, who greatly influenced King, also spoke of social responsibility and trusteeship. He also warned that the state was a "soulless machine" that did not look out for the poor. Gandhi, a self-described socialist, was not an enthusiastic proponent of an expanded social-welfare state. Reverend King spoke of social democracy with an emphasis on democracy, but he also spoke of the need to shift "from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society."

The critique made by both King and Gandhi of a "thing-oriented" society or the state as a "soulless machine" looks to the person or the individual not an economic mechanism  or economic class.  The focus is on the human person and polices that recognize and respect the uniqueness of each human being and their dignity.

The Konrad Adenauer Foundation in their publication Christian Democracy: Principles and Policy Making offers a vision of this made reality in what is known as the social market economy.  This is a departure from a strict market economy, focused on individuals as economic units and one that is arrived at through a process of reforms, not revolution.

Many know of the FBI wiretapping Martin Luther King Jr., monitoring of the Civil Rights Movement, and active measures against the civil rights leader but fewer know of the campaign waged against him by Soviet intelligence, also known as the KGB. The reality is that he challenged both systems.

This was a challenge to the existing order of both the United States and the Soviet Union, but one that rejected communism, violent class struggle, and that was rooted in the Christian tradition. 

Perhaps, this is what scared so many powerful people.

Why do you think both the FBI and the KGB targeted Martin Luther King Jr.? 

Agree or disagree, please leave a comment below.