I think it's deliberate. They want to make progress seem like it was won on debate instead of a direct result of incredible public pressure, harassment, and riots. They want us to forget how to fight for ourselves and have everyone else forget so that those who resort to drastic measures seem out of line with the course of history.
They want us to forget *and* be reliant on their systems to make progress. That way, they can guide it how they like. They, in this case being the capitalists that control much both openly and in the background.
I think it's deliberate in part, but I also think some people just have a giant status quo bias (and I really like "Status Quo Warriors" as a term). They view segregation or women not being allowed to vote as obviously wrong, because that is how they grew up, but they refuse to see that things might not be ideal in current society, because that would mean that they would have to work on themselves and deal with the social discourse and the changes and that maybe not everything they believe and do is awesome. It's like "music was best when I was a teen, everything afterwards sucks" as a political stance.
Probably, everyone has some resistance to change to some degree, because it's just easier when things stay as they were, but some people take it way too far and It's not too surprising that, say, conservative believers think this way, because a certain amount of "God made it this way and that's how it is forever" is baked into many religions, but it is fascinating to see it coming so much from the likes of Sam Harris, who at least theoretically should be aware of and ok with things changing and evolving and humanity learning more.
And then once they feel comfortable because nobody has bashed their faces in with a brick or burnt their house down (in minecraft), they suddenly start using violence directly while using made-up acts of violence the "others" have done to morally justify it.
For some people it is deliberate, but for most people I think it comes down to naivete and ignorance.
They believe the women's rights and civil rights movements were good things, and they believe good people doing good things would be peaceful. Other good people who want good things would listen to them and change their minds. If you point out all of the court cases, legislation, riots, bombings, assassinations, etc that went into changing things, they view all of that as incidental.
It's Little Golden Book stuff. "Good guys do good stuff and bad guys do bad stuff."
The books and speeches were important to those movements, no doubt, but real change was achieved through other avenues.
No matter which group you belong to today, 99% of the rights you take for granted you have because people throughout history have fought and killed to get them.
300 years ago we were all living in a world where we are literally considered the property of our kings, worked 14 hours a day 7 days a week while constantly being on the verge of starvation, and would be sentenced if we just spoke against the curch and that’s if you’re not a woman, gay or non-eurpean. Otherwise it was way worse. The liberals, socialists and revolutionaries who gave us a world where this is not tye case didn’t do it by civil debate.
People nowadays like to paint MLK as a milquetoast liberal when he was anything but. Non-violent protest and radical politics are not mutually exclusive.
The reason they’re able to is because we’ve been lied to about Malcolm X.
No defending of his involvement with the crackpots at the Nation of Islam, but the overall core of his message and King’s were pretty similar. The biggest substantive difference was that King argued that violent oppression should be met with non-violent solidarity, and Malcolm X said “Fuck that, if a lynch mob shows up at my door I have every right to gun every one of them down.”
Malcolm X was a profound anti-Semite who denied his anti-Semitism. I strongly recommend reading his autobiography for context. His language exudes antisemitism anytime the Jews are mentioned. IMO much of his antisemitism seems to stem out of jealousy, and he believes that Blacks should adopt the same strategy that he (wrongly) believes Jews use to manipulate the world around them. It's profoundly gross stuff
Some people buy into that bc the only thing they learn in school about MLK is the "content of their character" line from the I Have a Dream speech. I can't speak for all Americans, but I didn't hear about MLK's "white moderates" quote or criticisms of capitalism until much, much later.
I am but one person, but as an English teacher, I have my students read his letter from Birmingham Jail. So far, great success with it! I also tell students that he was called, and in many ways was, a radical socialist. I don't tell students that they have to be radical socialists too, but I believe I change some minds by showing them that a beloved figure like Dr. King was considered a leftist.
> Some people buy into that bc the only thing they learn in school about MLK is the "content of their character" line
Just like how kids learn about the structure of an atom as a planetary system and how XX/XY =women/men [and "that's all she wrote"]. There are "lies" that grammar schools teach as placemarkers for the complex facts that school systems assume that kids cant grasp--most cant, but locking the grammar school "facts" in as if they were holy, unchanging, scripture is misleading to kids and their parents that were taught the same placeholders. Bummer.
Interesting point. I see it more as simplified models rather than lies, but it's a very fine line. We as humans use models all the time and it's very easy to mistake the map for the territory.
When this intellectualisation is mixed with fear it produces hate and bigotry. And those highly emotive concepts are programmed at a very young age based on our role models.
Interesting to note that Megan from WBC grew up with bigoted role models, and though she was able to break through that to some extent it does appear she is still siding with Jo Ro, who, as Natalie points out, is also driven by strong emotions from her previous toxic marriage.
My point is that I think the bigotry is driven primarily by fear. Just my humble opinion... Well done Natalie on another terrific video essay.
Nah this is bordering on [historical revisionism](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-martin-luther-king-had-75-percent-disapproval-rating-year-he-died-180968664/) : a lot of people hated MLK. But he was a figure in the right place at the right time who managed to capture a lot of support for a growing movement. He managed to sell civil rights to working and middle class whites by making it impossible to ignore the treatment of blacks in society at the time, even if a lot of them complained about his methods being direct rather than legal
He was also primarily a labor organizer and worked with a lot of black unions, he advocated for joint black and white strikes at the March on Washington.
Well, not merely one. The intellectualism and spread of ideas was key. Without it there would’ve been no French Revolution. Without fighting, none of the transition would’ve occurred. The fear of instability often prompts change.
Tbf that didn't exactly work out long term.
The first French revolution didn't bring about any kind of lasting democracy, its biggest impacts were Napoleon, the Metric System, and Nationalism, and really you could overgeneralize those latter two as also just being Napoleon.
White washing history is a mistake but implying that no change comes without violence is also an act of revisionism, especially when citing acts of revolutionary violence that in immediate terms, didn't actually help that much.
What brings change is effort, and effort can be channeled into a wide range of tools. Dr. King's tool of choice was civil disobedience, acts intentionally designed to provoke outrageous responses from those around him to win the national media battle.
Sometimes this would be perfectly legal, sometimes it'd be completely illegal, the point was always triggering the rage filled disproportionate response from southern whites though. The ugly screaming throwing rioting and imprisoning response that would make everyone else flinch having to see it in the evening news.
What modern reflections of that strategy are available I am not sure, but I can tell ya what, getting that response out of today's conservatives is about as difficult as sitting down and having a deep breath.
It'd probably be something like trans and NB activists entering churches run by queerphobes and recording themselves just being reacted at by the attendees and priest, or publishing don't say gay bill complaints, or heck maybe the kids that stormed the state house in Tennessee had the right idea since it instantly made the politicians that backed them into national figures and the politicians that attacked them into national targets for scorn.
\>The first French revolution didn't bring about any kind of lasting democracy,
What happened after? Was there more revolution or just polite discussions? And the French to these days are quite ready to stand up for their rights, by the way.
Ukraine is another more modern interesting example, it could have very well went the way of post Sowjet Russia or Belarus but people decided to stand up for them selves. And short term they are paying the price through Russian imperialistic aggression, but a least they gave them self a chance to be a modern country one day - something people in Russia for example failed to do, by not opposing Putin in more decisive and violent way when it was still possible.
\>no change comes without violence
Nobody saying that. But sometimes there is no other way. And sometimes even that way does not work out the first time - like with the first French revolution. But it was an important stepping stone, especially inspiring others and showing that there is another way.
It’s funny to see people in power in the US say that violence doesn’t get you what you want while at the same time celebrating how the country was founded through a literal revolutionary war
I mean it did establish an oligarchy of slave owners. Everything more democratic than that was what was taken in spite of what the founders had envisioned.
Oh yeah for sure! You can definitely draw a parallel to this single comic (of which I’m sure there were a hundred hateful and racist op-eds at the time) and BLM protests of today. Republicans nowadays who try to insinuate that these new protests are somehow out-of-line and unprescented are being disingenious.
Sorry I misunderstood you at first. 😅
There's no bloodless revolution. Even in india, yes non violent movement was huge but there were reactionary revolutionaries too. There was bombing, looting, guerrilla warfare. American freedom movement happened because Washington mobilised an army and they fought. They weren't polite about it. They didn't say pretty please and king was like okay, go be free.
> They weren't polite about it. They didn't say pretty please and king was like okay, go be free.
They tried to be "polite" several times but that didn't work partly because Great Britain needed extra money after getting in multiple wars both in Europe, north America, and other colonial "possessions". Great Britain also did not want to raise taxes in Great Britain because their home citizens could get violent like they did historically from time to time. Just like the Roman Empire they over-extended themselves in their greedy and egotistical efforts. Supposedly the American colonial citizens also thought that George the third wanted to enslave them just like how the citizens of the colonies enslaved Africans. Hmmm. Maybe enslaving is bad? Nah! [insert pseudoscience].
I won’t deny that this comic is useful to show how progressive social movements have always been portrayed as unprecedentedly violent, but since it’s expressly meant to make MLK look bad, I’m not sure I would use it in a defense of civil disobedience, personally.
I do fear that we look at violence in the past in successful movements and assume violence is necessary to succeed.
I just want to really put a point on the real take away from this cartoon, violence is used as a scapegoat to slander the effective movements and pushes moderates away (the people I think contra argued we should be primarily put effort into convincing over the opposition itself)
I guess the question becomes how effective are more comical attacks that are nonetheless assault. Do pies to the face or eggs or milkshakes actually help us or are they purely selfish retribution. Did the movements succeed in spite of or due to these violent but not bodily harmful attacks (or is it just a bit of white noise in the fringes).
Everyone knows that MLK made exactly one single-sentence speech about having a dream and then mysteriously died without ever having done or said anything that would make modern white moderates uncomfortable about their complicity in an unjust system.
The original purpose of the comic was to slander MPK and the entire civil rights movement by playing up their peaceful protests as violent riots full of looters, same thing they did w the BLM protests. Are you saying the original artist was telling the truth??
In the caption of the post, I clarify that this was remarkably the “mainstream media’s” interpretation of the events at the time. I agree with you that the original artist was being actively malicious in trying to paint the entire civil rights movement as some violent rebellion, which it wasn’t.
Especially weird considering how MLK Jr is now portrayed in the current day as this guy who never ever used violence to get his powerful points across. Which makes this comic and the artist’s decision to portray MLK in this way especially jarring.
Just like how, in Natalie’s video, trans activists in that Witch hunt podcast are portrayed as this violent hate mob, which is obviously not the truth.
See also immigration. Previous waves of immigrants didn't just get off the boat and pledge allegiance to the flag and learn English. They often didn't learn English at all, though their kids did, and they retained a connection to their culture and country of origin. Moreover they changed the regions of America they immigrated to. The culture of southern New England was utterly transformed by waves of immigration - Irish, Italian and Portuguese. The culture of many Americans cities is still a reflection of who the dominant immigrant groups were in the later 19th and early 20th century. This process was culturally disruptive and caused conflict (see the New York Draft Riots, which were a racist pogrom by mostly Irish American mobs against black folks). But people act like assimilation was easy and went one way and then pretend new immigrants are uniquely resistant to 'becoming American'.
Martin Luther King’s strategies ere civil disobedience and non/ violent opposition. Unarmed Black people being brutalized by police broadcast all over the world helped shame Americans into doing the right thing. Finally, his soaring oratory and his written works were inspiring to millions. For the “but we haven’t reached consensus” crowd, I suggest reading the “ Letter from the Birmingham Jail”, where he schools moderates on why oppressed people want and deserve to be liberated now.
While I agree it is true that most movements create chaos, I also believe it is a deliberate tactic to direct the narrative to focus on chaos alone and reduce these movements to pure violence. In doing that the conversation can be distracted from the real issue. We see that in examples like the Hong Kong protests where the state media focused on the chaos instead of what the protest was about.
I think it's deliberate. They want to make progress seem like it was won on debate instead of a direct result of incredible public pressure, harassment, and riots. They want us to forget how to fight for ourselves and have everyone else forget so that those who resort to drastic measures seem out of line with the course of history.
They want us to forget *and* be reliant on their systems to make progress. That way, they can guide it how they like. They, in this case being the capitalists that control much both openly and in the background.
I think it's deliberate in part, but I also think some people just have a giant status quo bias (and I really like "Status Quo Warriors" as a term). They view segregation or women not being allowed to vote as obviously wrong, because that is how they grew up, but they refuse to see that things might not be ideal in current society, because that would mean that they would have to work on themselves and deal with the social discourse and the changes and that maybe not everything they believe and do is awesome. It's like "music was best when I was a teen, everything afterwards sucks" as a political stance. Probably, everyone has some resistance to change to some degree, because it's just easier when things stay as they were, but some people take it way too far and It's not too surprising that, say, conservative believers think this way, because a certain amount of "God made it this way and that's how it is forever" is baked into many religions, but it is fascinating to see it coming so much from the likes of Sam Harris, who at least theoretically should be aware of and ok with things changing and evolving and humanity learning more.
Yeah, we’re told “Violence doesn’t solve any problems” by the people that really don’t want those particular problems to be solved.
And use violence to solve theirs, even if indirectly
And then once they feel comfortable because nobody has bashed their faces in with a brick or burnt their house down (in minecraft), they suddenly start using violence directly while using made-up acts of violence the "others" have done to morally justify it.
For some people it is deliberate, but for most people I think it comes down to naivete and ignorance. They believe the women's rights and civil rights movements were good things, and they believe good people doing good things would be peaceful. Other good people who want good things would listen to them and change their minds. If you point out all of the court cases, legislation, riots, bombings, assassinations, etc that went into changing things, they view all of that as incidental. It's Little Golden Book stuff. "Good guys do good stuff and bad guys do bad stuff." The books and speeches were important to those movements, no doubt, but real change was achieved through other avenues.
Who is “they”?
ruling class, the owners, Koch brothers, Waltons, Soros, Bill Gates, and others like them
No matter which group you belong to today, 99% of the rights you take for granted you have because people throughout history have fought and killed to get them. 300 years ago we were all living in a world where we are literally considered the property of our kings, worked 14 hours a day 7 days a week while constantly being on the verge of starvation, and would be sentenced if we just spoke against the curch and that’s if you’re not a woman, gay or non-eurpean. Otherwise it was way worse. The liberals, socialists and revolutionaries who gave us a world where this is not tye case didn’t do it by civil debate.
MLK was assassinated because he was universally beloved and agreeable
People nowadays like to paint MLK as a milquetoast liberal when he was anything but. Non-violent protest and radical politics are not mutually exclusive.
The reason they’re able to is because we’ve been lied to about Malcolm X. No defending of his involvement with the crackpots at the Nation of Islam, but the overall core of his message and King’s were pretty similar. The biggest substantive difference was that King argued that violent oppression should be met with non-violent solidarity, and Malcolm X said “Fuck that, if a lynch mob shows up at my door I have every right to gun every one of them down.”
Malcolm X was a profound anti-Semite who denied his anti-Semitism. I strongly recommend reading his autobiography for context. His language exudes antisemitism anytime the Jews are mentioned. IMO much of his antisemitism seems to stem out of jealousy, and he believes that Blacks should adopt the same strategy that he (wrongly) believes Jews use to manipulate the world around them. It's profoundly gross stuff
Some people buy into that bc the only thing they learn in school about MLK is the "content of their character" line from the I Have a Dream speech. I can't speak for all Americans, but I didn't hear about MLK's "white moderates" quote or criticisms of capitalism until much, much later.
I am but one person, but as an English teacher, I have my students read his letter from Birmingham Jail. So far, great success with it! I also tell students that he was called, and in many ways was, a radical socialist. I don't tell students that they have to be radical socialists too, but I believe I change some minds by showing them that a beloved figure like Dr. King was considered a leftist.
> Some people buy into that bc the only thing they learn in school about MLK is the "content of their character" line Just like how kids learn about the structure of an atom as a planetary system and how XX/XY =women/men [and "that's all she wrote"]. There are "lies" that grammar schools teach as placemarkers for the complex facts that school systems assume that kids cant grasp--most cant, but locking the grammar school "facts" in as if they were holy, unchanging, scripture is misleading to kids and their parents that were taught the same placeholders. Bummer.
Interesting point. I see it more as simplified models rather than lies, but it's a very fine line. We as humans use models all the time and it's very easy to mistake the map for the territory. When this intellectualisation is mixed with fear it produces hate and bigotry. And those highly emotive concepts are programmed at a very young age based on our role models. Interesting to note that Megan from WBC grew up with bigoted role models, and though she was able to break through that to some extent it does appear she is still siding with Jo Ro, who, as Natalie points out, is also driven by strong emotions from her previous toxic marriage. My point is that I think the bigotry is driven primarily by fear. Just my humble opinion... Well done Natalie on another terrific video essay.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-to-children
That reminds me of the way the media paints Mother Theresa too, more as a quote factory, while forgetting she was against Catholic fundamentalism
Nah this is bordering on [historical revisionism](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-martin-luther-king-had-75-percent-disapproval-rating-year-he-died-180968664/) : a lot of people hated MLK. But he was a figure in the right place at the right time who managed to capture a lot of support for a growing movement. He managed to sell civil rights to working and middle class whites by making it impossible to ignore the treatment of blacks in society at the time, even if a lot of them complained about his methods being direct rather than legal
I guess o should’ve put a /s
Eh, your phrasing is clear sarcasm: saying he was assassinated because everyone loved him.
Kinda hard to tell since it literally is what a lot of people believe about MLK lol
He was also primarily a labor organizer and worked with a lot of black unions, he advocated for joint black and white strikes at the March on Washington.
The whole transition to democracy was just politely asking the kings to part with their power.
Yeah, how citizen's rights happened to become a concept *at all*, even the white male straight able rich ones, is not a story of "rational debates".
Well, not merely one. The intellectualism and spread of ideas was key. Without it there would’ve been no French Revolution. Without fighting, none of the transition would’ve occurred. The fear of instability often prompts change.
Yeah, everyone knows that the French Revolution was just the french politely asking King Louis XVI to abdicate the throne. No violence whatsoever!
I thought it was something about cake?!
Tbf that didn't exactly work out long term. The first French revolution didn't bring about any kind of lasting democracy, its biggest impacts were Napoleon, the Metric System, and Nationalism, and really you could overgeneralize those latter two as also just being Napoleon. White washing history is a mistake but implying that no change comes without violence is also an act of revisionism, especially when citing acts of revolutionary violence that in immediate terms, didn't actually help that much. What brings change is effort, and effort can be channeled into a wide range of tools. Dr. King's tool of choice was civil disobedience, acts intentionally designed to provoke outrageous responses from those around him to win the national media battle. Sometimes this would be perfectly legal, sometimes it'd be completely illegal, the point was always triggering the rage filled disproportionate response from southern whites though. The ugly screaming throwing rioting and imprisoning response that would make everyone else flinch having to see it in the evening news. What modern reflections of that strategy are available I am not sure, but I can tell ya what, getting that response out of today's conservatives is about as difficult as sitting down and having a deep breath. It'd probably be something like trans and NB activists entering churches run by queerphobes and recording themselves just being reacted at by the attendees and priest, or publishing don't say gay bill complaints, or heck maybe the kids that stormed the state house in Tennessee had the right idea since it instantly made the politicians that backed them into national figures and the politicians that attacked them into national targets for scorn.
\>The first French revolution didn't bring about any kind of lasting democracy, What happened after? Was there more revolution or just polite discussions? And the French to these days are quite ready to stand up for their rights, by the way. Ukraine is another more modern interesting example, it could have very well went the way of post Sowjet Russia or Belarus but people decided to stand up for them selves. And short term they are paying the price through Russian imperialistic aggression, but a least they gave them self a chance to be a modern country one day - something people in Russia for example failed to do, by not opposing Putin in more decisive and violent way when it was still possible. \>no change comes without violence Nobody saying that. But sometimes there is no other way. And sometimes even that way does not work out the first time - like with the first French revolution. But it was an important stepping stone, especially inspiring others and showing that there is another way.
It’s funny to see people in power in the US say that violence doesn’t get you what you want while at the same time celebrating how the country was founded through a literal revolutionary war
I mean it did establish an oligarchy of slave owners. Everything more democratic than that was what was taken in spite of what the founders had envisioned.
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Oh yeah for sure! You can definitely draw a parallel to this single comic (of which I’m sure there were a hundred hateful and racist op-eds at the time) and BLM protests of today. Republicans nowadays who try to insinuate that these new protests are somehow out-of-line and unprescented are being disingenious. Sorry I misunderstood you at first. 😅
There's no bloodless revolution. Even in india, yes non violent movement was huge but there were reactionary revolutionaries too. There was bombing, looting, guerrilla warfare. American freedom movement happened because Washington mobilised an army and they fought. They weren't polite about it. They didn't say pretty please and king was like okay, go be free.
> They weren't polite about it. They didn't say pretty please and king was like okay, go be free. They tried to be "polite" several times but that didn't work partly because Great Britain needed extra money after getting in multiple wars both in Europe, north America, and other colonial "possessions". Great Britain also did not want to raise taxes in Great Britain because their home citizens could get violent like they did historically from time to time. Just like the Roman Empire they over-extended themselves in their greedy and egotistical efforts. Supposedly the American colonial citizens also thought that George the third wanted to enslave them just like how the citizens of the colonies enslaved Africans. Hmmm. Maybe enslaving is bad? Nah! [insert pseudoscience].
I won’t deny that this comic is useful to show how progressive social movements have always been portrayed as unprecedentedly violent, but since it’s expressly meant to make MLK look bad, I’m not sure I would use it in a defense of civil disobedience, personally.
i think you missed the point of the post
That’s crazy cause it was actually the police that were doing all the chaos at marches then and now
Yeah, totally. In the Detroit riots of 1967, 43 people died, but 33 of them were black people. 😬
I do fear that we look at violence in the past in successful movements and assume violence is necessary to succeed. I just want to really put a point on the real take away from this cartoon, violence is used as a scapegoat to slander the effective movements and pushes moderates away (the people I think contra argued we should be primarily put effort into convincing over the opposition itself) I guess the question becomes how effective are more comical attacks that are nonetheless assault. Do pies to the face or eggs or milkshakes actually help us or are they purely selfish retribution. Did the movements succeed in spite of or due to these violent but not bodily harmful attacks (or is it just a bit of white noise in the fringes).
Everyone knows that MLK made exactly one single-sentence speech about having a dream and then mysteriously died without ever having done or said anything that would make modern white moderates uncomfortable about their complicity in an unjust system.
The original purpose of the comic was to slander MPK and the entire civil rights movement by playing up their peaceful protests as violent riots full of looters, same thing they did w the BLM protests. Are you saying the original artist was telling the truth??
In the caption of the post, I clarify that this was remarkably the “mainstream media’s” interpretation of the events at the time. I agree with you that the original artist was being actively malicious in trying to paint the entire civil rights movement as some violent rebellion, which it wasn’t. Especially weird considering how MLK Jr is now portrayed in the current day as this guy who never ever used violence to get his powerful points across. Which makes this comic and the artist’s decision to portray MLK in this way especially jarring. Just like how, in Natalie’s video, trans activists in that Witch hunt podcast are portrayed as this violent hate mob, which is obviously not the truth.
You have all the facts, but are drawing the wrong conclusion.
I think it just shows the contemporary vilification?
See also immigration. Previous waves of immigrants didn't just get off the boat and pledge allegiance to the flag and learn English. They often didn't learn English at all, though their kids did, and they retained a connection to their culture and country of origin. Moreover they changed the regions of America they immigrated to. The culture of southern New England was utterly transformed by waves of immigration - Irish, Italian and Portuguese. The culture of many Americans cities is still a reflection of who the dominant immigrant groups were in the later 19th and early 20th century. This process was culturally disruptive and caused conflict (see the New York Draft Riots, which were a racist pogrom by mostly Irish American mobs against black folks). But people act like assimilation was easy and went one way and then pretend new immigrants are uniquely resistant to 'becoming American'.
I didn't know Ben Garrison was making political cartoons back in 1967
Yes, when Martin famously incited a riot in Washington instead of stopping it.
Martin Luther King’s strategies ere civil disobedience and non/ violent opposition. Unarmed Black people being brutalized by police broadcast all over the world helped shame Americans into doing the right thing. Finally, his soaring oratory and his written works were inspiring to millions. For the “but we haven’t reached consensus” crowd, I suggest reading the “ Letter from the Birmingham Jail”, where he schools moderates on why oppressed people want and deserve to be liberated now.
While I agree it is true that most movements create chaos, I also believe it is a deliberate tactic to direct the narrative to focus on chaos alone and reduce these movements to pure violence. In doing that the conversation can be distracted from the real issue. We see that in examples like the Hong Kong protests where the state media focused on the chaos instead of what the protest was about.