U.S. Conservatives Try to Hijack the Legacy of Civil Rights' Movement

[Kiev Communard]

I am not an American but I feel infuriated that such reactionary and backward characters try to somehow associate their own ramblings with the legacy of 1960s Civil Rights' Movement, which I consider, despite all its deficiencies, to be one of the greatest emancipatory events of XX century. The Tea Party hypocrisy is mind-boggling.




Anger as US conservatives rally in Washington

Tens of thousands of people have attended a controversial rally in Washington DC organised by conservative talk show host Glenn Beck.

Civil rights leaders criticised Mr Beck for holding the rally at the Lincoln Memorial, the place where Martin Luther King Jr made his "I Have a Dream" speech 47 years ago to the day.

Former US vice-presidential hopeful Sarah Palin also spoke at the rally.

Civil rights campaigners held a counter-rally nearby.

'Restoring honour'

Addressing the conservative rally, Mr Beck - a presenter for Fox News - said the US had "wandered in darkness" for too long.

"America today begins to turn back to God," he said.

He told the crowd the timing of the "Restoring Honour" rally was coincidence but also divine providence.

Mrs Palin compared those at the rally with the civil rights activists who marched on Washington in 1963 to hear Dr King's speech.

The same spirit that helped civil rights activists overcome oppression and violence would help this group as well, she said.

"You have the same steel spine and the moral courage of Washington and Lincoln and Martin Luther King," Mrs Palin said. "It is in you. It will sustain you as it sustained them."

Our correspondent in Washington DC, Paul Adams, says those in attendance were there to reaffirm their patriotism and share their conviction that the country had lost its way.

The crowd was good-natured, our correspondent says, but the people there believed their freedoms were being taken away from them by an overweening government.

A counter-rally organised by the civil rights leader Rev Al Sharpton took place at the same time.

Participants marched to the site of a proposed memorial to Dr King, not far from the Lincoln Memorial.

Civil rights leaders say Mr Beck's message runs counter to that of Dr King.

"It's an affront to what the civil rights movement stood for," Georgia Congressman John Lewis, who spoke at the 1963 March on Washington, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

"We didn't do anything in anger and never tried to divide people. Glenn Beck is a very divisive force."

The 1963 march was a pivotal moment in the US civil rights movement. Dr King's "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial that day foresaw a united nation, free from racial discrimination. It is one of the most celebrated works of American oratory.

Mr Beck is a prominent voice in the anti-establishment Tea Party movement. Last year he accused President Barack Obama of racism, saying he had a "deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture".

He said when he was planning the rally in the US capital he was unaware that Saturday 28 August would be the anniversary of the 1963 march.

"It's not the date, it's the message," he said on his television show on Thursday.

"I've heard it over and over again in the media that because of this event, on the date of this event, I'm somehow or another hijacking Dr Martin Luther King's speech. I'm not big enough to do that. No-one is."

The Tea Party movement has galvanised conservatives opposed to taxes and government intervention.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11114172

[heiss93]

Beck wants to "reclaim" MLK JR. You just know if he had been around in the 60s he'd have his cute little blackboard up showing you how SLC and MLK JR were connected to the CPUSA. My prediction is that 10 years from now conservatives will be trying to claim that the diastorous teabagger movement was actually leftist, the same way Beck does with Hitler's National "socialism".

In fact it has already begun-
http://www.halfsigma.com/2010/08/the-tea-party-is-a-marxist-movement.html

[Jimmie Higgins]

This is also an example of how the politics of Liberal politicians and establishment people doesn't lead to the left, but leads to the right.

Liberals have been politically de-fanging MLK since his death by emphasizing his collaboration with Democrat and Liberal politicians while obscuring his later increased radicalism (as well as how Liberals turned their backs on him when he took on economic issues and the Vietnam war).

If it wasn't for the liberal "whitewashing" and rewriting of the history of the civil rights movement, then there would be no way for Beck to make these claims.

Edit: Speaking of liberals obscuring history:


"The structural breakdown of a strong national government, which is what they're [Beck's group] calling for, is something that does not serve the interests of the nation and it's something that Dr. King and others fought against," Sharpton told C-SPAN on Saturday. It could almost be accurate if instead he said: "State's-rights, what Beck calls for, was used by the segregationsists as a tool to preserve inequality and racism and it is still used for this purpose today!"

Damn Liberal politicians can be stupid sometimes: at a time when trust in the national government is at a low, he's making MLK's legacy the defense of the state? Why not say that MLK loved bankers, stock traders, and sheriffs that carry out evictions too?

[Rusty Shackleford]

Beck wants to "reclaim" MLK JR. You just know if he had been around in the 60s he'd have his cute little blackboard up showing you how SLC and MLK JR were connected to the CPUSA. My prediction is that 10 years from now conservatives will be trying to claim that the diastorous teabagger movement was actually leftist, the same way Beck does with Hitler's National "socialism".

In fact it has already begun-
http://www.halfsigma.com/2010/08/the-tea-party-is-a-marxist-movement.html

jesus fucking christ that writer is an idiot.

on another note. check this line out


Reporting from Washington —
Conservative radio and television commentator Glenn Beck (http://www.latimes.com/topic/arts-culture/mass-media/news-media/glenn-beck-PECLB00177647.topic) urged thousands of supporters gathered Saturday on the National Mall to renew their faith both in God and in the nation because the country faces a choice of whether to "advance or perish."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-beck-rally-20100829,0,3925348.story

the real impact of this rally will probably develop over the next week. then well know how they will act over the next few months.

also, is there any kind of left wing "tea party watch" type website? one that views them as fascistic or proto-fascistic(and not just as a slanderous term but scientifically)?

[NGNM85]

Martin Luther King is rolling in his grave. First, they co-opted the American revolutionaries, (Who have about as much ideological commonality with the Beckites as MLK, which is, to say, virtually none.) now this. I'd say; 'Have they no shame?' However, clearly, they do not.

[Jimmie Higgins]

What seems to be good is that the "tea-party" is having increasingly diminishing returns. The permit for this Beck rally was for 300,000 (strange since he claimed millions came to his last rally of maybe 200,000 people in reality) but then, earlier this week, Beck started saying that he expected 100,000 people to come.

The associated press said that "tens of thousands" were at the mall, but that would include (on a 3 day weekend) tourists and possibly counter-protesters from Al Sharpton's competing rally.

At the rally, Beck said "the media" claims 100,000-300,000 people so "God knows how many of us there really are".

In related news, the Tea-Party rented a convention hall for a 4th of July convention, then had to downgrade to a smaller hall when they weren't pre-selling tickets, then they cancelled claiming that July in Las Vegas was too hot for people to want to come... except for the hundreds of millions of tourists that come to Las Vegas in July, I guess:rolleyes:.

[chegitz guevara]

This is what the right aways does. In fact, Lenin wrote about it himself, how they tried to do the same to Marx.