For me it has to be Malcom X, I’m not American, but I read his autobiography when I was young and it left a life long impression on me about justice and resiliency. He grew up in an extremely oppressive society, his dad was murdered and his mother was sent to the loony bin and he was clearly lost and traumatized. When he went to jail he was smart enough to be like what the hell, why am I here? Educating himself and channeling his energy into caring about others and justice transformed him into one of the most powerful and well respected leaders of his time.
He is often denigrated by Americans as violent and contrasted with King Jr. but by all accounts whenever he was in a position to project violence he chose de-escalation like during the Harlem riots and saved lives as there were people in the US in positions of military power who would have loved an excuse to do to them what they did to the indigenous across the entire country.
He was angry but principled and really set a template for me about how to be a leader and help me process my own anger and channel it into something more positive.
King was largely reviled in his time. The almost universally loved King of today is a sanitized, defanged, ahistorical version. Mandela is another example, but there are many.
V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution:
I was hoping you would expound on the King bits about being sanitized.
It’s been done by those more knowledgeable than me.
I dunno know what the Marx quite has to do with King. Very different kinds of revolution, the main one being non violent.
Furthermore is kind of tragic what happened with Lenin’s legacy, his thought being blunted similarly into stalinist autocracy.
MLK Jr.'s march was more violent than the BLM protests were, and MLK Jr. was the moderate option compared to the Black Panthers and Malcolm X. MLK Jr.'s radicalism is intentionally blunted and obscured.
It was more Kruschev onward where the Soviet system started to meaningfully diverge from Lenin.
Lemmitors would’ve called King a tankie
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Tankie was originally a Trotskyist term for the people that supported tolling tanks into Hungary in the 50s.
Of course, the term “authoritarian bootlicker” is a funny one, as its purveyors have a habit of recycling and promulgating the propaganda pushes of the US State Department and opposition to that tendency is often what gets one labelled a tankie. Like when MLK spoke positively of Castro’s revolution or a Vietnam united under Ho Chi Minh rather than targeted for bombing by the US. Though I am being generous: so many people using the term are so politically illiterate that they apply it to basically anything vaguely left that they disagree with.
I think you’d be calling him a tankie.
You’re correct about the definition of “tankie,” but you’re taking MLK way the Hell out of context to falsely accuse him of being one.
That’s twice in a row you’ve just made something up on my behalf rather than criticize what I actually said. The first was that I allegedly say tankie means communist (I obviously disagree) and now you say I am calling MLK a tankie, lmao.
For your benefit, I will remind you that I said you would have called him one, as in back when he was alive and organizing. This is for the reasons I already stated and that you have not responded to in any way.
As soon as Liberals stop using it to mean Communist.