@amerpie Radical in the sense that he believed in the redistribution of economic and political power. He challenged America’s class system and its racial caste system. He was a strong ally of the nation’s labor union movement. He was assassinated in April 1968 in Memphis, where he had gone to support a sanitation workers’ strike. He opposed U.S. militarism and imperialism, especially the country’s misadventure in Vietnam.

@DirtyAnCom @amerpie As is the case for many of these types of killings, it is fully possible for authorities to be responsible at the same time as they are not actively contracting a murder.

I know far too little about this specific case, but a very plausible hypothesis in general is that authorities lets someone be killed through inaction, stokes antipathy towards the person, or even provides resources to violent people.

There’s a whole spectrum of this, and all could be called ”killed him”.

@Ultraverified @amerpie very true!

@amerpie

And it did not change since then… high time we did that now…

@amerpie Many young people are so angry at the excesses of capitalism that they want to tear the whole thing down. But somehow they fail to appreciate that the right-wing politicians tearing things down are agents of capitalism.

@amerpie I hate this holiday because the hypocrisy is palpable. While alive the government did their level best to literally and figuratively destroy this man. And now that he's dead, they've co-opted and watered down his messages to a kindergarten-level "we should all get along" thing.

@Ultraverified @amerpie In an indecent, uncaring, and thoughtless society, that is radical.

@ahltorp @amerpie What we do have confirmation of is that the FBI sent him a threatening letter demanding that he kill himself or else they would release evidence of his affair (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_letter).

The Trump Regime released thousands of files related to his assassination (as part of the "flood the zone" strategy to distract from everything else), but as far as I know, there's nothing that explicitly admits they were responsible for his assassination, beyond that they saw him as a dangerous adversary. (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-administration-releases-fbi-records-on-mlk-jr-despite-his-familys-opposition)

I just firmly believe they were responsible, whether directly or by proxy, like you say.

@squirrel @amerpie back in those days, to criticize or even question capitalism made you by default a Communist. Which is one excuse Hoover had to hound Dr. King. Furthermore, many centrist whites called King "uppity". I was born in 1950 so I speak from lived experience.

@humourmetom @amerpie
If you step back further you realize that the communist elites and the capitalist elites are identical apart from their costumes and fairy tales they speak out loud.

The only way out of the lies os to realize both systems must coexist for durable peace. Either "ism" one on its own can only end in tears.

@amerpie https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mlk-capitalism-flow/

@amerpie Wait, what is so radical about it? Sounds to me like pure common-sense.

@amerpie Can someone recommend a good biography of Dr. King that provides info like this? Something that goes beyond the useless, superficial education I got about him in grade school?

@Ultraverified @violetmadder @amerpie being and staying kind and loving in a society built on aggression is by us very definition a radical act in and of itself.