Communism and the Civil Rights Movement

[PetrChelcicky]

I do not want to debate this particular topic within a wider frame, because it needs looking for details, therefore I make it a topic of its own.
Even if MLK did indeed draw a clear line between Communism and Christianity he was insincere when he declared: "There are as many Communists in this freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida."

What's, for instance, with Jack O'Dell?
"O'Dell was a director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Because of O'Dell's past involvement with the Communist Party, King received pressure from many liberal leaders, including the Kennedy brothers John and Robert, to distance himself from O'Dell. Taylor Branch, a historian of the Civil Rights Era, remarked that it was ultimately the Kennedy administration that influenced King's decision, not a reflection of King's own feelings towards O'Dell.[5] After conferring with King, O'Dell decided to accept a less prominent post within the movement not to alienate important allies of the Civil Rights struggle, but O'Dell continued to play a decisive role in the SCLC as well as in King's move towards the political left towards the end of his life.[2] "(Wikipedia)
I cannot find, when (if at all) O'Dell left the CPUSA, but about his motives I find:
"He had been a Communist until the McCarthy-era repressions impacted the CPUSA organization and membership in the South, limiting the organization’s public presence in the region." (This, in a really friendly review, gives the impression that he had no personal qualms with the party positions but only with its political efficiency.)
Source: https://daily.jstor.org/a-new-civil-rig ... w-journal/
As for white Communist supporters of the CRM I have found accidental mentionings, but it is rather difficult to research them systematically.

I know that things are too complicated to only rely on membership. Firstly, there were some Black or Jewish members who only looked at the party as a Black- or Jew-friendly force and were never much affected by its ideology. Secondly, some people left the party merely because membership had become dangerous or useless, others because they had turned away from its ideology. (But even the former Trotskyites who became sincere anticommunists instinctively kept to the Trotskyite tradition that mankind had to be saved by a worldwide war, no more for communism, but now against communism.)

Nevertheless the Communist party members were in the middle of a maelstrom of intolerance, disdain for individualism, particularism and pluralism; incomprehension w.r.t the value of civil liberties (speech, association); rejection of the rights to criticize, to dissent, to oppose (as long as one isn't the opposer oneself) - which haunts Western politics until today. It is this tradition of ideas which interests me personally.

[Ken]

I do not want to debate this particular topic within a wider frame, because it needs looking for details, therefore I make it a topic of its own.
Even if MLK did indeed draw a clear line between Communism and Christianity he was insincere when he declared: "There are as many Communists in this freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida."

What's, for instance, with Jack O'Dell?
"O'Dell was a director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Because of O'Dell's past involvement with the Communist Party, King received pressure from many liberal leaders, including the Kennedy brothers John and Robert, to distance himself from O'Dell. Taylor Branch, a historian of the Civil Rights Era, remarked that it was ultimately the Kennedy administration that influenced King's decision, not a reflection of King's own feelings towards O'Dell.[5] After conferring with King, O'Dell decided to accept a less prominent post within the movement not to alienate important allies of the Civil Rights struggle, but O'Dell continued to play a decisive role in the SCLC as well as in King's move towards the political left towards the end of his life.[2] "(Wikipedia)
I cannot find, when (if at all) O'Dell left the CPUSA, but about his motives I find:
"He had been a Communist until the McCarthy-era repressions impacted the CPUSA organization and membership in the South, limiting the organization’s public presence in the region." (This, in a really friendly review, gives the impression that he had no personal qualms with the party positions but only with its political efficiency.)
Source: https://daily.jstor.org/a-new-civil-rig ... w-journal/
As for white Communist supporters of the CRM I have found accidental mentionings, but it is rather difficult to research them systematically.

I know that things are too complicated to only rely on membership. Firstly, there were some Black or Jewish members who only looked at the party as a Black- or Jew-friendly force and were never much affected by its ideology. Secondly, some people left the party merely because membership had become dangerous or useless, others because they had turned away from its ideology. (But even the former Trotskyites who became sincere anticommunists instinctively kept to the Trotskyite tradition that mankind had to be saved by a worldwide war, no more for communism, but now against communism.)

Nevertheless the Communist party members were in the middle of a maelstrom of intolerance, disdain for individualism, particularism and pluralism; incomprehension w.r.t the value of civil liberties (speech, association); rejection of the rights to criticize, to dissent, to oppose (as long as one isn't the opposer oneself) - which haunts Western politics until today. It is this tradition of ideas which interests me personally.

What is the point of "debating" this at this point? Most of the early civil rights leaders are now dead What they stood for, accomplished, and did not accomplish is there for all to see.

Yes there were Americans with various levels of connection to the Communist Party from the 1930s to the 1950s. In pretty much every aspect of America life. In religion, in education, in medicine, in government, in entertainment, and yes, in the civil rights movement. That doesn't in and of itself taint any of those institutions or their accomplishments. Nothing that the Civil Rights movement campaigned for was Communist in any way despite desperate attempts by their racist opponents to paint it that way.

[temporal1]

[PetrChelcicky]

Ken,
you maintain that
"Nothing that the Civil Rights movement campaigned for was Communist in any way despite desperate attempts by their racist opponents to paint it that way."
I think that just that is wrong.

To explain myself I have to digress a bit.
My main interest is actually the United Front movement (leftists and liberals are basically the same), and its adversary, the new rising "liberty movement" which started in France around 1937 (leftists and liberals are basically different), also called neo-liberal or libertarian.

Now the liberty movement was a great success after the war and reached nearly all Western institutions. The interesting point are the institutions that were not reached, or which merely were touched by the idea, but without a long time influence. These were in Germany the Protestant Church and the unions - the unions being quite normally the place of retreat for Communists who saw no short time political opportunities. (But in the U.S. if a Communist saw no opportunity in politics, he could as well turn to the Civil Rights Movement.)

So the liberty movement was extremely seductive in its time. The Communists were the only part of the population who had "sheltered" and "immunized" themselves against this seduction from the beginning, by a set of arguments, memes etc. Of course they didn't always invent them (for instance the slogan "no freedom for the enemies of freedom" stems from the Jacobins) . But the Communists as a group were inevitable to pass down anti-libertarian ideas, memes etc. from the pre-libertarian era (the Red Decade) to the post-libertarian era.(starting around 1970). Myself I have spent a lifetime observing how the seduction of liberty dwindled and the old arguments and memes against it have got the upper hand again, so it is to me an interesting matter of study..

Going back to our question. In the time of the Civil Rights Movement it was well known and often debated that a maximalisation of equality and a maximalisation of liberty are contradictory goals. The more equality is enforced the less remains of freedom of association or freedom of speech.
The thesis was partly ignored (by people who had a natural tendency to think in short time successes), partly contested (there could not be such a contradiction) and partly answered with "We will stop the equality run just in time". For example I have read that after "Brown vs. Board of Education" it was already prognosticised that this might lead to enforced bussing of white pupils to black schools and this was answered by "this cannot happen, there are laws against that". -But at least a minority in the Civil Rights Movement was long term oriented and saw that a maximalisation of equality would crush traditional civil liberties and EMBRACED that. Basically I am looking for exactly those people, but I think that a party Communist affiliation is the best first indicator to find them out.

[temporal1]

so interesting. thank you again for your perspective, observations, questions.
i hope Honduras Keiser will see this and respond.

[Bootstrap]

I do not want to debate this particular topic within a wider frame, because it needs looking for details, therefore I make it a topic of its own.
Even if MLK did indeed draw a clear line between Communism and Christianity he was insincere when he declared: "There are as many Communists in this freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida."

What's, for instance, with Jack O'Dell?

What about Teah Lord and Tahnee Lord? They are half-Inuit and live in Florida. And according to the Census, they are not alone.

But I think it would be misleading to call Florida an Eskimo State. And I think it is misleading to call Martin Luther King or the Civil Rights movement in the United States Communist.

[JohnHurt]

Going back to our question. In the time of the Civil Rights Movement it was well known and often debated that a maximalisation of equality and a maximalisation of liberty are contradictory goals. The more equality is enforced the less remains of freedom of association or freedom of speech.
The thesis was partly ignored (by people who had a natural tendency to think in short time successes), partly contested (there could not be such a contradiction) and partly answered with "We will stop the equality run just in time". For example I have read that after "Brown vs. Board of Education" it was already prognosticised that this might lead to enforced bussing of white pupils to black schools and this was answered by "this cannot happen, there are laws against that". -But at least a minority in the Civil Rights Movement was long term oriented and saw that a maximalisation of equality would crush traditional civil liberties and EMBRACED that. Basically I am looking for exactly those people, but I think that a party Communist affiliation is the best first indicator to find them out.

There is equality of opportunity, which benefits everyone, as the most talented rise to the top - and wealth is created.

And then there is equality of outcome, which is socialism, where everyone gets the same rewards - and mediocrity is created.

When they say "equality", they need to be specific if it is opportunity or outcome.

"History" is the propaganda of the winning side. If you read the papers from the 1950's and 60's, anyone who was declared a "communist" was neutralized. There was a "cold war", and the "domino theory" was a fact. Communism was about to take over the world, so it seemed.

But we are much more "socialist" now. The Communists Wiliam Ayers and Bernandine Dohrn are welcome now, even though they were Communist criminals.

Consider the "Highlander Folk School" here in Tennessee, which was closed as a training ground for supposed "communist" radicals, such as Rosa Parks and others. It was closed by the government as a hotbed of communism. Today, it is an honored institution with significant impact for the Civil Rights movement, because someone else controls the printing of school books.

Today they say that the Civil was was fought over slavery, when it was really about the tariffs. The tariffs is why the Black Confederate Soldiers fought, not for slavery. The winners of the war, or cultural war, are re-writing the history books.

J. Edgar Hoover hated Martin Luther King. Hoover was a pervert who wore women's clothes in private, never married, and was buried near his male lover. He set up a vagrant named James Earl Ray to take the fall for the murder of Dr. King, a person that had neither the motive, mobility, or money to kill King, per Jesse Jackson. So Hoover painted King as a "communist" of course.

King was a real Christian, and opposed abortion, unlike his wife, Coretta and others in his circle. Maybe that is why Hoover hated him. Hoover was Satanic, King was a Christian. Perhaps good and evil is a greater battle than any political designation.

But if you are looking for who is a communist, I think you would rely on "by their fruits ye shall know them." The Fascist are no different than the Communists - they both want Big Government, with Gulags and Concentration Camps. What is the real difference?

Sure, the Russians were trying to create racial division in the USA, just like they stole the atom bomb secrets. And did they infiltrate King's groups. I am certain they did.

But Communism has been here all along.

Here in Tennessee, We know the story behind Al Gore Jr, and Al Gore Sr. Gore Senior was put into the Senate by Dr. Armand Hammer, the man who financed Communism with Lenin and others in the 1920's. There would not be Communism without Hammer. Senior Gore defended Hammer from the House Un-American Activities Committee so that Hammer was never put on trial for his Communist activities. Hammer bought Gore Sr. and Junior a farm next to where I used to live, put a zinc mine under it, and paid them both royalties. Whenever the Gores would run for office, the zinc mine would open, when they lost a race, it would close. That is how they were financed, partially.

Communism in all of its many forms, is behind most of the Left's politics, and the Right, too. The Rothchilds finance both sides. I hold Bush to be no different than Gore or Clinton. Their policies are the same.

I would not worry about King being Communist, but about the many politicians today that are being funded by the Chinese Communist Party. (Luckily, Russia got rid of Communism, that is why the Left and Fascists hate the Russians so much.)

And yes, equality and liberty cannot exist together in a complete form. One has to be supreme over the other. You can't be free to excel if you are made equal to everyone else.

Thanks for your posts, I appreciate reading them.

[Bootstrap]

Ah, the urgency of conspiracy theories. These breathless stories really capture the imagination, don't they? They worked for Joseph McCarthy, they worked for Adolph Hitler, they galvanize people and send them looking for some authoritarian personality who can save them. These conspiracy theories are not what Christianity is about.

As Christians, I think we have two choices. We can either let God figure out what to do about government, or if we choose to discuss these things, we can slow down, be reflective, and carefully check our facts. And also check our feelings, they can help us recognize propaganda. In conspiracy theory, Communism is basically a word used to invoke fear of dark secret forces who are working together to overthrow our government and take away our freedom. In reality, Communism has a specific meaning, and George Bush is no Communist. In reality, powerful and wealthy families and corporations are not promoting Communism, which would take away their wealth and power and give it to the masses.

The Rothschilds were hugely influential and powerful in the 19th century, and Adolph Hitler created a propaganda film about them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rothschilds_(film)

You can read stories of the Rothschilds during Nazi Germany in various places:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... p/2021151/
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/ ... rothschild
https://jewishlouisville.org/rothschild ... ring-wwii/

In the 1930s, the Rothschilds were telling Americans about Hitler and what was happening in Germany, you can read about that in newspaper archives, e.g. here. And it's worth mentioning that in 1934, Nazi propaganda was being circulated in the United States as well:

Predicting the fall of the Hitler government "if other countries — like the United States — continue to remain cold toward Germany as they have in the last months," Baron Maurice de Rothschild told a group of representatives here today that Hitler propaganda was still being spread in the United States.

And it's still true. Some of the same false propaganda claims that Hitler promoted are still circulating in the United States today.

The Rothschilds are no longer as influential as they once were:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family

If you want to know who is influencing our government, follow the money. In the United States, 12 donors and their spouses are responsible for 13 percent of all political donations at the federal level, contributing $3.4 billion to federal candidates and political groups since 2009. You can find the report itself here. None of these are Rothschilds.

As Christians, we don't run the government. But if we want to weigh in on these things, I think there is wisdom in hoping for freedom and democracy, not wishing for a strongman to tear down "our enemies". If we are worried about the rich and powerful contributing to candidates, it's best to start by looking at campaign contributions and seeing who is actually doing that, or by looking at how much time politicians spend courting these contributions and thinking about how we can build in incentives for them to spend their time discussing facts and policy and figuring out how to work together to do what is right.

I think the report I mention has it right:

Congress must urgently act to restrain the growing influence of money in our politics and build a system that truly represents all Americans, not just the wealthy few.

And we need our leaders to be subject to the rule of law, audits, white collar crime, etc. We need transparent government. "Look at that Communist over there who wants to destroy your freedom!" often means "don't look at this shady stuff that I am doing to make myself richer and more powerful and to make it hard for anyone to catch or prosecute me." When we hear that kind of language, we should look for evidence in both directions.

Or not. Really, there's no particular need for Christians to pretend we run the government. We could focus on building the Kingdom of God instead. But there's little time and space to do that if we are riveted by all these conspiracy theories. And if that's what identifies us to the world around us, I don't think it makes us look like Jesus.

[temporal1]

.. The problem with talking about socialism is that they aren't out there trying to convince anyone of the truth of socialism - not in public anyway. (In an open debate they'd lose.)

They're just going about trying to implement it.
They're not trying to implement it by violent revolution, Marxist style, they're following the Antonio Gramsci program,
the "long march through the institutions."

Gramsci's idea was to undermine the cultural "hegemony" by taking control of the institutions. Personally, I think this has been under way a long time now. .. ..

They've always got plausible deniabilty.

i found this interesting, altho i’d not heard of Gramsci before. i see patterns. the patterns have been so normalized,
i no longer believe “the march” is long. the marchers seem quite public, loud+proud (to me).

they are wizards with legal language and human law. they can’t be “out-talked,” prayers must be for that which is above+beyond human reasoning, which is so vulnerable to failure.

altho the unpleasant way, pride may hold the best long term hope.

Proverbs 16:18
https://biblehub.com/proverbs/16-18.htm

17The highway of the upright leads away from evil; he who guards his way protects his life.

18Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

19It is better to be lowly in spirit among the humble than to divide the spoil with the proud.…

Hoping HK will contribute to PetrC and to this reference to Gramsci.

[Bootstrap]

.. The problem with talking about socialism is that they aren't out there trying to convince anyone of the truth of socialism - not in public anyway. (In an open debate they'd lose.)

They're just going about trying to implement it.

All modern prosperous economies combine a capitalist engine with taxes and social spending. The vast majority leave economic production in private hands, with regulation to ensure companies have limits on what they can do in pursuit of profit. There's no real debate about that model here. Both parties in the United States buy into this, we mostly argue about percents and such. How many refugees should we admit? Normally, it's not zero and it's not unlimited, there's a range that we talk about. What should the corporate tax rate be? Nobody says we should nationalize the industries, but people disagree about the optimal tax rate. Still, we often debate these things as though it were Nazis versus Communists.

And shouting "Communism" without real proof has a very dark history. That's what they did with Martin Luther King, they knew that all people should be allowed to eat in restaurants, go to college, and vote, so they would lose that argument on the merits. They raised the specter of a race war and a Communist revolution, trying to tie Martin Luther King to anything that would scare people. That did not bring democracy and freedom to black people in the United States.

That's what HItler did. Read "Mein Kampf". It did not bring democracy and freedom to Jews or to Germany's neighbors. That's what Joseph McCarthy did. And on a lesser scale, that's what a lot of rabble-rousing politicians do to win elections. Edward Murrow was right in his response to McCarthy - " we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home." But these days, it often sounds more like defending freedom at home by abandoning it:

No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men—not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

Truth matters. Spreading unproven accusations is almost a habit with some people. If you talk about other people or groups exactly the way that people who really hate them talk, hoping to inspire other people to fear and hate them, and your facts don't hold up, it really does look like spreading fear, hate, and division based on falsehood. Anyone who understands gossip or playground bullies knows how groups can build that kind of self-reinforcing enmity to other people or other groups that has nothing to do with facts. I don't think this is what Christians in the Kingdom of God should be doing.

I guess that's why Mennonites supported Hitler in Germany. I think we would be wiser to avoid doing that. Instead of tossing a lot of vivid and vague accusations around without proof, we should either (1) stay out of the debate, or (2) have an informed, prayerful discussion that considers our role as the Kingdom of God with respect to earthly kingdoms. There may be other reasonable options, but I don't know what they are.