Communism and the Civil Rights Movement

[HondurasKeiser]

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.

Boot, I am curious to see your response to the content of PeterC's claims instead of dismissing them out-of-hand as conspiratorial and contra the building of the Kingdom of God. You and Ken both seem to be saying "what's the point of all of this? Why bring this up 50 years after the fact?" Perhaps the question of "Was King an erstwhile Marxist?" is a little passée but the broader question of Marxian influence in the Civil Rights Movement is, I think, of great importance and sheds quite a bit of light on our current moment and indeed has great import for the Church and its conception of what is and is not the Gospel. So please, humor me and respond to Mr. C's analysis.

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.

[Bootstrap]

Boot, I am curious to see your response to the content of PeterC's claims instead of dismissing them out-of-hand as conspiratorial and contra the building of the Kingdom of God.

The claims are given without any evidence, and the discussion has brought in the Rothschilds and all kinds of other fixtures of long-disproven conspiracy theories. This whole "accusations are true unless proven false" spiel gets tiresome.

Perhaps the question of "Was King an erstwhile Marxist?" is a little passée but the broader question of Marxian influence in the Civil Rights Movement is, I think, of great importance and sheds quite a bit of light on our current moment and indeed has great import for the Church and its conception of what is and is not the Gospel. So please, humor me and respond to Mr. C's analysis.

But I already have. Could you perhaps respond to what I have already said?

And FWIW, this thread was spawned, I think, in response to this post, in which I addressed the main substance previously. Starting a new thread does not make it more true than it was before.

The people who opposed civil rights for blacks were flatly against basic freedoms and democracy for 12 percent of Americans. And some of them were happy to resort to propaganda to discredit the movement. Others were happy to resort to violence or lynchings.

I do not call you a Communist. But I suppose that you underestimate the intellectual influence of American Communists on American political thought, including your own political thought. Communists were a leading intellectual force in the Red Decade and practically the only intellectual force behind the Civil Rights Movement.

Well no, it's simply false to claim that people like Martin Luther King were Communists or Marxists. That was a tactic that people used to try to undermine the civil rights movement, and the emotion behind these claims is not proof that they are true.

I think this description is accurate.

Despite King’s consistent rejection of communism, in 1962 his associations with a few alleged Communists prompted the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to launch an investigation into his alleged links with the Communist Party. In 1976 the U.S. Senate committee reviewing the FBI’s investigation of King noted: “We have seen no evidence establishing that either of those Advisers attempted to exploit the civil rights movement to carry out the plans of the Communist Party” (Senate Select Committee, Book III, 85). From wiretaps initiated in 1963, the FBI fed controversial information to the White House and offered it to “friendly” reporters in an effort to discredit King. In 1964 King told an audience in Jackson, Mississippi, he was “sick and tired of people saying this movement has been infiltrated by Communists … There are as many Communists in this freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida” (Herbers, “Rights Workers”).

I think this is a fair summary of King's belief that Christianity and Communism are incompatible. But you would be right to say that King was not a free market capitalist, either. Marx learned from Adam Smith's writings, but Marx was no capitalist. King learned from Marx's writings, but King was no Marxist.

In the Cold War climate of the 1950s and 1960s, the threat of communism galvanized public attention. In 1953 Martin Luther King called communism “one of the most important issues of our day” (Papers 6:146). As King rose to prominence he frequently had to defend himself against allegations of being a Communist, though his view that “Communism and Christianity are fundamentally incompatible” did not change (King, Strength, 93). Although sympathetic to communism’s core concern with social justice, King complained that with its “cold atheism wrapped in the garments of materialism, communism provides no place for God or Christ” (Strength, 94).

King first studied communism on his own while a student at Crozer Theological Seminary in 1949. In his 1958 memoir, he reported that although he rejected communism’s central tenets, he was sympathetic to Marx’s critique of capitalism, finding the “gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty” that existed in the United States morally wrong (Stride, 94). Writing his future wife, Coretta Scott, during the first summer of their relationship, he told her that he was “more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits” (Papers 6:123; 125).

King began preaching on “Communism’s Challenge to Christianity” in 1952, repeating sermons on the same theme throughout his career and including one as a chapter in his 1963 volume of sermons, Strength to Love. Communism’s presence demanded “sober discussion,” he preached, because “Communism is the only serious rival to Christianity” (Strength, 93). King critiqued communism’s ethical relativism, which allowed evil and destructive means to justify an idealistic end. Communism, wrote King, “robs man of that quality which makes him man,” that is, being a “child of God” (Strength, 95).

[JohnHurt]

The claims are given without any evidence, and the discussion has brought in the Rothschilds and all kinds of other fixtures of long-disproven conspiracy theories.

You are mixing my statements with Peter's statements. Peter never said anything about the Rothchilds, at least not this time.

It is not a "Conspiracy Theory" when it is true. And you need to disprove it at least "once" before it can be labeled as a "long disproven conspiracy theory."

The Gore family's ties to Armand Hammer is well known here in TN. I lived in Gore's hometown of Carthage TN, and D.T. McCall (the furniture store owner and head of the Republican Party here) published the history of the Gore family on his storefront window. If it wasn't true, McCall would have been sued for slander. But you can find the same information elsewhere. Gore Senior sold himself to do the bidding of Armand Hammer.

Hammer was the link between the New York Banks and Lenin. Hammer also absconded with many of the Faberge eggs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faberg%C3 ... on_of_eggs

"Many of the eggs were sold to Armand Hammer (president of Occidental Petroleum and a personal friend of Lenin, whose father was founder of the United States Communist Party)."

Occidental Petroleum owns the zinc mine under the Gore farm, and had the mineral rights under my own house there. Gore Senior was a school teacher here in Smith County, and was so poor that he played the fiddle at weddings for extra income. Hammer bought the land for the Gores to live on, and made their family wealthy, as Gore was a corrupt politician and sold his soul to Armand Hammer. Not a theory, it is a fact. Prove it otherwise before you call it a conspiracy theory.

Classical Liberalism is more aligned with what we call Libertarianism today. Ron Paul is a good example of a Classical Liberal. But the Left has taken over the term "Liberal" and turned it into authoritarianism.

The political spectrum of "Left and Right" is from the seating arrangements of the French Revolution. Those that supported the King sat on the "right" and those that supported Robespierre and the guillotine sat on the Left.

But that is a false understanding. Classical Liberalism, like Jefferson, or perhaps Patrick Henry and the Anti-Federalists would fall on the "Less Government and More Freedom" side, while Madison and the Constitutionalist would be on the side of more government.

But we have gone a long ways towards complete government control.

Where we are now is off the charts - both Republican and Democrat are leading us into a totalitarian system. FDR lead the way, and put all 10 of the planks of the Communist Manifesto into our laws in the USA.

You don't have to be a "Communist" to impose Communism over America.

So yes, I agree with Peter, that there have been "liberty" movements, but they have all had the success of Mikhail Bakunin, or even Trotsky against those like Josef Stalin. Big Government, and the will to power that follows men like Stalin or FDR, defeats freedom if God is not involved.

My interest is to create a self sustaining community based on the Words of Christ, and that works outside any government influence, as I think a lot of this is about to fall.

You don't need the government, or the men who run it. We just need God's Laws and His Will to reign over us. Christ is our King.

Remember what the Devil told Christ:

Luke 4: (5) And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.

(6) And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.

[Josh]

For another “conspiracy theory”, I’d sure like to understand why Gates and Bezos are buying up as much farmland in America as possible.

[JohnHurt]

For another “conspiracy theory”, I’d sure like to understand why Gates and Bezos are buying up as much farmland in America as possible.

They know more than we do.

It is time to buy a tiller.

[Josh]

For another “conspiracy theory”, I’d sure like to understand why Gates and Bezos are buying up as much farmland in America as possible.

They know more than we do.

It is time to buy a tiller.

I’d say both of them know less than I do, for the rather simple fact that neither of them know Jesus. The question remains of why they think they need to own most of the farmland in America. Greed? Desire for control? Paranoia?

It is sad to think of those who die with great wealth and control, only to find it counts against them at the judgment to come, and they have packed a suitcase full of asphalt for the journey, yet never picked up a good attorney’s business card.

[temporal1]

For another “conspiracy theory”, I’d sure like to understand why Gates and Bezos are buying up as much farmland in America as possible.

They know more than we do.
It is time to buy a tiller.

I’d say both of them know less than I do, for the rather simple fact that neither of them know Jesus. The question remains of why they think they need to own most of the farmland in America. Greed? Desire for control? Paranoia?

It is sad to think of those who die with great wealth and control, only to find it counts against them at the judgment to come, and they have packed a suitcase full of asphalt for the journey, yet never picked up a good attorney’s business card.

it could just be that their brains are wired to think this way.
technology has allowed a certain type of “genius” to become wealthy and ultra-wealthy.

it does not mean their brains are balanced or healthy, nor inspired by the Holy Spirit!
it just means their type of genius, for the time being, can lead to vast wealth. they may approach everything in their lives from this neurotic insatiable PacMan sort of view.

i’m with you. i feel sorry for them. we all exist in our own type of prison on earth. we all have 1 life. no exceptions.
can you imagine the frustration that would cause such men as these?? to have everything worldly, and nothing eternal, at once.

it could drive a person mad.

[RZehr]

For another “conspiracy theory”, I’d sure like to understand why Gates and Bezos are buying up as much farmland in America as possible.

They know more than we do.

It is time to buy a tiller.

I’d say both of them know less than I do, for the rather simple fact that neither of them know Jesus. The question remains of why they think they need to own most of the farmland in America. Greed? Desire for control? Paranoia?

It is sad to think of those who die with great wealth and control, only to find it counts against them at the judgment to come, and they have packed a suitcase full of asphalt for the journey, yet never picked up a good attorney’s business card.

Same reason most investors do. They have more money to invest, so why wouldn’t their investments be bigger than other people. If you’ve been paying attention, over the last few years, grain markets have had quite the headwinds between a tariff war with China and then a pandemic. Grain commodities have been low and are rebounding nicely. Many investors are making the same bets as these two guys are. Further, do you really think these guys are in touch personally at a close enough level to make these investment decisions? Of course they aren’t. They have teams of people whose jobs are to identify and execute good investment opportunities.
https://www.agweek.com/business/markets ... missed-out

To speak further on the matter, this is simply an ongoing trend. Over the last decades, fewer and fewer acres are owned by (a) local people and (b) farmers. More and more, investment groups from NYC and Silicon Valley and insurance companies from out of state are, and have been, buying up swaths of farmland and renting it to farmers.

[Ken]

For another “conspiracy theory”, I’d sure like to understand why Gates and Bezos are buying up as much farmland in America as possible.

At least with Gates and Bezos the land is still in American hands. There are massive foreign investment funds and sovereign wealth funds from places like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia also buying up enormous tracts of American farmland as well.

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/15/saudi-a ... hwest.html
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2 ... -farm-land
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/w ... california


etc....

[Josh]

A transition to tenant farming (where farmers can barely eke a living and all profits go to distant landowners) does not bode well. No farms, no food.