“Remembering” Martin Luther King, Jr., While Forgetting Who Murdered Him

Namely the CIA, and a U.S. military sniper, aided and abetted in the conspiracy by the FBI and Memphis Police, and by the U.S. corporate media, both before the fact (by hostile propaganda against King, especially after he came out publicly against the U.S.’ genocidal war in Indochina) and after the fact, by assiduously hewing to the fanciful cover story about the assassination.

Shamefully, “left-wing” media are participating in this never-ending cover-up and Bodyguard of Lies that protect the guilty institutions and individuals.  They too are silent on the assassination. Meanwhile the establishment smothers history in gauzy, kitschy, treacly sentimentality. Their murder victim has been turned into a plaster saint.

As to the murderers: some of the guilty are dead. Like the notorious FBI secret police boss J. Edgar Hoover,  Richard Helms,the CIA boss at the time, and president Lyndon Johnson, who either is guilty of ordering or permitting the murder, or if he was kept in the dark, guilty of criminal negligence and dereliction of duty for not properly overseeing and controlling the agencies which he was legally in charge of and was supposed to command.

Another thing that won’t be remembered today is how Katherine Graham’s Washington Post planted the kiss of death on King a year before his liquidation with a scathing editorial attack on him for daring to voice his opposition to the criminal Vietnam War.

By the time this pest was eliminated, King had three strikes against him. The movement against the dehumanization and vicious repression of African-Americans was despised by the U.S. ruling class. Bad enough that King was a galvanizing leader of that movement. Then he started denouncing the vicious U.S. war against Vietnam. Topping it off, King became an important voice for workers’ rights. A stirring orator, the prospect of this troublesome “rabble-rouser” bringing together three streams of opposition to establishment power (civil rights, anti-war, and labor activism) was a fearful nightmare to the reactionary rulers of America.

Little wonder that Hoover publicly branded King “the most dangerous man in America.” From the perspective of the gangster U.S. rulers, that was probably accurate. Reason enough for them to murder him. As with the disposal of the Kennedy brothers, the hit was a job for the CIA, specialists in “termination with extreme prejudice,” to quote their sinister euphemism, of major public figures, domestic and foreign.

The U.S. media and politicians and various tame house leftists also won’t be “remembering” that today.

King was in Memphis, Tennessee, supporting striking city sanitation workers (who just coincidentally were black) who were savagely exploited by the racist Southern city government when the CIA did the evil deed. Under capitalist law, the strike was “illegal,” and the workers were forbidden from unionizing. Meaning they had NO RECOURSE but to withhold their labor as leverage to get humane treatment and a half-decent wage. Even more desperate workers were hired as scabs.

King called for a general strike just weeks before assassination. No doubt this helped motivate the gangster U.S. state to kill him ASAP for this “crime” of trying to foment “class warfare.”

After bumping King off, the U.S. power system finds him useful as an icon and symbol for preaching non-violence to the victims of their repression and exploitation. Better these international gangsters should practice non-violence themselves. Their violence is a thousandfold that of their victims, inside and outside the empire’s homeland.

Notes: Tavis Smiley just wrote an illuminating book about the forces arrayed against King. [Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Final Year.] One important revelation is how hostile the black elites were to King. And 55% of blacks were anti-King before his death (75% of whites were). King was politically isolated, making him a ripe target for state assassination.

A telling bit of evidence about the assassination itself that has been buried concerns the fall-guy James Earl Ray. When Ray was captured, he had identification documents in the names of four different Canadian men who physically resembled him. The media didn’t dig much into how this petty criminal lowlife managed to obtain them. Some years later Rolling Stone spoke to the retired resident CIA officer in Canada, who related how he was given an assignment to obtain these false documents (without being told what their purpose was- compartmentalization and need to know are critical elements of deep state criminal conspiracies). More (ignored) evidence of CIA guilt that I haven’t seen mentioned again.

As for the Memphis sanitation strike, the local rulers refused the slightest concessions. Local newspapers viciously attacked the workers for voting to unionize.  The Memphis city council double-crossed the workers, after promising to hold hearings, instead voted to support the Mayor and scurried out of their meeting. The Mayor then unleashed the thugs- aka “police”- to gas and club the striking sanitationmen.

The strike was precipitated by the accidental deaths of two of the workers. With no insurance, no compensation, and no death benefits, their families were left destitute. American capitalism, especially in its racist manifestations, is nothing if not ruthless.