Wasn’t all of that based on FBI notes that were in turn based on an audio surveillance tape? I don’t think the FBI – which was certainly hostile to MLK – should be totally trusted to be presenting fairly what’s on the tape. On the other hand, the UK article you linked says the tape is under seal till 2027. So perhaps at that point people will be able to judge for themselves.

Alleged journalists and others, including self-styled “conservatives” claim that King “watched and laughed” or “was present at” a rape. No, he was guilty of a violent rape.

When a powerful man, the head of an organization, orders an underling to commit a crime, they are both guilty of the crime. When John Gotti ordered Sammy “Bull” Gravano to murder 18 men, they were both guilty of 18 murders. Gotti didn’t get to push off the guilt on Gravano.

When you refuse to submit to a powerful, black preacher, bad things happen to you. My hunch is that the lady in question was pretty and relatively light-skinned, but had refused to sleep with King.

King opened the occasion by addressing his victim, saying that they (the men present) were going to commit acts, natural and unnatural, upon her person. And then one of his preachers, Baltimore’s Logan Kearse, proceeded to rape her, over her objections and physical resistance.

But at least Kearse’s parishioner (presumably) lived, unlike rev./cong. Floyd Flake’s beautiful mistress, Velma, and men who worked for “dr.”/”rev.” Jeremiah T. Wright, who were murdered, when they complained.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/martin-luther-king-rape-fbi-tapes-video-mlk-laugh-files-a8932206.html

https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/the-sordid-legacy-of-dr-king/

https://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/2019/03/sex-lies-and-murder-barack-obama.html

Kate on January 16, 2024 at 4:52 pm said:
DNW, don’t know at whom that is directed, but “worshipful” does not reflect my view of MLK Jr.”

Yeah sure. But some descriptions of him are so extravagant, some refrences to him so awed and reverential, that they verge on, if not cross over into, a form of secular worship.

I think it here might be worth pulling up a definition of “worship” to remind us – I needed to do it for myself a couple years back – of what part of religious practice and profession is constituted by “worship” per se.

“1 ….. 2. : to regard with great or extravagant respect, honor, or devotion. a celebrity worshipped by her fans. “

That expression of emotional devotion then would be distinguished from broader but included elements of: ritualistic practice, the recounting of sacred text, formulaic incantations, public recitations and professions of personal fidelity as a good person, and so forth.

In this case we might also derive some benefit by looking up the definition of “religion”, and its etymology.

“Middle English (originally in the sense ‘life under monastic vows’): from Old French, or from Latin religio(n- ) ‘obligation, bond, reverence’, perhaps based on Latin religare ‘to bind’.”

Putting together some of the elements in no particular order we have an extravagant respect or homage paid to an individual, accompanied by certain taboos with regard to his mention, and which demand a public profession as a sign of inclusion within the system of ties that bind.

This is familiar to us all from a movement spawned generations ago with the Deweyite description of “Democracy” as ” our secular” or public, “religion”.

You will also recall the explicitly “religious” aspect of the original secular humanism and the first secular humanist manifesto.

In the case of King it includes:
The ‘Dr. Reverend’ formula required for uttering his name, the posture of reverence and awe which it is assumed must accompany it, the expected professions of unconditional appreciation, and the expectation that this due reverence will be professed by one and all as a token of their inclusion within the sacred circle. These, are all elements which fit the religious paradigm and a worshipful stance.

Now, how much of this is based on fear of breaking taboos and how much the result of heartfelt feelings of authentic veneration is anyone’s guess.

I suspect it is a mixed bag.

‘We should embrace and emphasize “no racial quotas and no racial restrictions” as foundational principles”

Sure, if you adhere to an intrinsic value theory of humanity, and accept that what we call “race” , i.e., a genetic inheritance or membership in a lineage, is completely disconnected from behavioral dispositions, it naturally follows.

That is quite a different thing from adopting a worshipful posture toward a particular man.

And for believing Christians who are aghast at not so much his infidelities and his whoring – which can be shrugged off – as his reported blasphemies, and an instrumental use of their faith, it should be quite a different matter indeed.

” I do not idolize Dr. King, and never did. He was flawed”

Leaving the moral character of King himself aside for just a moment, I’ll expand on the point of my initial comment.

In a society where spiritual faith has been hollowed out, become instrumental, and “for show”, the desire to elevate a man (or an ideology or human institution) to the status of and substitute for the now vanished divine, which will then inaugurate the new kingdom on earth, is particularly notable.

This is not to say that emotional types who are prone to deifying others don”t exist in ordinary circumstances too. But the worshipful madness of teenaged girls over a pop “idol” [ and the common word recognizes the psychological phenomenon] has less direct impact on all people sharing a geographic location and political system than does the apotheosis of a social movement leader.

The peculiar reverance with which the name of Martin Luther King is uttered always with the [perhaps undeserved or arguably fraudulent] honorific attached parallels to some lesser degree the way devout Christians used to refer to the person and name of Jesus Christ, with a slight Catholic bow of the head, or a Protestant appending of ” our Lord and Savior”.

Returning to King, himself.

Now the fact that King was not only the leader of a social movement but ostensibly a Christian minister of the Gospel complicates matters. For therein lies the point at which by means of his own public profession, his private behavior thereby becomes public and is rightly seen as a test of his own sincerity and conversion; versus some instrumental employment of the institutional outcroppings of Christianity in order to buttress a vocabulary of “rights” and a to utilize a borrowed moral force as per Rules for radicals #4.

It is at this point one might turn the proposition direcred at me around, and ask: “Who’s the cynic?”

As I wrote earlier:

” .. considering he was a minister of the Gospel …”

“On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name? ‘ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness”
”