[lbo-talk] Check your privilege: Rise of the Post-New Left political vocabulary

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu Feb 6 07:43:27 PST 2014


Bill Bartlett: "Everyone is familiar with the strategic non-violence adopted by people such as Ghandi and MLK, so I'm not sure which part you don't understand."

The Movements of the '60s were not led by MLK; he was just a _major_ leader of _one_ of the many Movements that made up that Movement. When he took his target to Chicago, Mayor Daley defeated him badly -- practically drove him out of town.

One of his last major speeches (not well known) was in praise of W.E.B. DuBois. And his belief in peaceful means did NOT prevent him from declaring solidarity with Movements that embodied violence.

And we now know that the struggle in the South was _not_ wholly non-violent. I know personally a retired sociologist who as a young man was part of an effort to register Black voters in Georgia. He was brutally attacked by an ex-state legislator who blamed his defeat on that effort. He was hauled away (possibly saving his life) by a black man who took him to his house, where the man kept a shot gun! He was ready to use it. Gandhi's strategic decisions in India have had serous critics. "He" (The People of India) actually lost that struggle since it led to the Balkanization of the Indian sub-continent, with much subsequent loss of life and weakening of Indian resistance to imperialist forces.

Carrol



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