Today’s anti-racism repudiates the (American and Christian) values of Martin Luther King
On April 4, almost none of the mass media and social media (sometimes almost manic in reporting anniversaries relating to almost unknown characters) recalled that fifty-three years earlier, on April 4, 1968, he was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee, the one who was at the time. himself one of the protagonists of post-war American civil life and one of the most important figures of contemporary Christianity: the Baptist pastor Martin Luther King jr. It is true that in the United States it is customary to celebrate the anniversary of his birth, January 15, 1929 (a holiday established by President Ronald Reagan in 1983), but the fact remains that these "forgetfulness" in remembering the tragic end of the great champion of rights civilians of blacks are the symptom of a tendency towards a sort of "watering down" of his thought and his politico-religious preaching.
Although for now no one has yet come to the point of questioning the value of his social commitment and his ideas (but with the widespread mentality today of nihilistic rejection of the past, I would not be surprised if this happens sooner or later), many of the exponents of politically correct thinking that make anti-racism one of their flags consider its conceptions "outdated", and unsuitable for achieving the goal of a "vindictive" racial rebalancing of the past, based on a vision of Western history, and American in particular , understood as the implementation of a single criminal plan towards non-European peoples.
Fortunately, there are also more moderate and more founded positions from the historical point of view, but often on the basis of them the figure of King is vice versa almost "dissolved" (paradoxically) in the success of his battles on civil rights that led to the recognition of the same in the 'America in the' 60s and '70s and the universal appreciation of his activity: think of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. In this perspective (which is also respectable), some say not entirely wrongly that King today is remembered more as political activist who as a religious exponent, and believe that, as sometimes happens, the success of many of his civil battles has ended up "trivializing" his ideas. However, there are some contents of King's political-religious preaching which, in my opinion, represent the backbone of his claims for the civil rights of blacks and which, when the latter are trivialized (or as in politically correct positions, they are gradually degraded imperfect and "outdated" progress of the "racial struggle"), we risk losing sight, while it would be very useful even in today's reality.
Much of the ideas of Martin Luther King jr. are condensed in the famous speech given in Washington on August 28, 1963 on the occasion of the "march for work and freedom" which brought together all the organizations promoting civil rights in support of a bill by President John F. Kennedy aimed at banning racial segregation in the workplace and in those open to the public (from restaurants to buses, etc.). Project later approved in 1964 under his successor Lindon Johnson. As is well known, the speech was held in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, which was also the subject of "anti-racist" vandalism in the summer of last year, and opens with the reference to Abraham Lincoln, rightly considered one of the greatest black rights defenders (and not as a disguised racist, as many extreme activists do today). And in a subsequent passage the sentence that opens the American Declaration of Independence is cited, which affirms the faith in the "self-evident" truth that all men "were created equal", a sentence due as it is known to the "slaver" Thomas Jefferson , and to this quote King joins the hope that American society will come to live fully in conformity with this ideal. His preaching and his battles for the civil rights of blacks were therefore deeply rooted in the American tradition, which for him represented a reality to improve, indeed to bring to its full realization and certainly not to be rejected or condemned.
It is worth quoting one of the most famous passages from the Washington speech which also allows us to grasp some of the fundamental values on which King's ideas were based:
"I have a dream: that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. My Lord, I have a dream today. "
(I have a dream: that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. My Lord, today I have a dream.)
In the final part of the quoted passage, the religious reference is striking, not surprising in itself considering that King was a "professional" clergyman, but unfortunately unusual today, where too often, always due to the nihilist mentality that evaluates all the achievements in a negative way of Western history, Christian values are felt as "unilateral" and in a certain sense "detrimental" to respect for other religious or philosophical conceptions, so much so that very often Christian religious leaders themselves seem to go in search of "supporting documents ”Capable of universally“ legitimizing ”their ideas, such as the theses of theologians of other religions or the statements of environmental and / or humanitarian activists or promoters of“ responsible finance ”. King's speech with his invocation to the Lord reminds us instead that Christian values (and, I add, the Western secular values derived from them) do not need supporting documents, since they have always been addressed to individuals and to their consciences. It is significant that when, in the next part of the speech, King speaks of the universal value of equality among men, in doing so he essentially takes up a sentence written almost two thousand years earlier by Saint Paul who in the Letter to the Galatians (chap. 3 , v. 28) affirms that in Christ "there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no slave or free …".
The value of the Western Christian tradition in King's thought stands out even more if we pass to the heart of the passage we have quoted, that is to the object of the "dream", that men are judged by the content of their character. In this sentence is reported the greatest idea and the greatest achievement of our civilization: individualism that is not selfish but open to mutual comparison with others, based on common principles and values. This is a value which, despite many "deviations" and with many steps backwards, has clearly emerged in the two thousand year history of Western Christianity. A value that has its roots in the aforementioned passage from St. Paul, and was carried forward for example by St. Augustine (for whom every human being has a Trinitarian spiritual structure within himself, an image of the divine one), by the initiator of the Protestant reform Martin Luther, of which King (who, as is well known, was originally called Michael) took his name as a child on the initiative of his father, also a Baptist pastor, as well as in modern times also by "lay" thinkers linked to those values, such as the Scottish Enlightenment and the American founding fathers themselves.
An individualism that indissolubly unites the freedom of individuals with the responsibility of each one for his behavior towards others, an individualism that leads to the appreciation of differences among men thanks to respect for common rules, very different from the "identity" policy made its own by many of the politically correct supporters of human rights, who instead frame individuals in groups (blacks, women, transgenders , non-Westerners, vegans, etc.) and only the latter recognize a value, while valid rules for all they are replaced by the (more or less ambiguous) relationships of precedence in the protection between the groups themselves, for which the rights of women give way to those of transgender people ; the rights of blacks give way to those of non-Westerners and so on.
Finally, in the passage reported another term appears today almost synonymous with evil, that of "nation", and this (even if it is sometimes not easy to notice) has a parallel with what has just been said: the negation of the value of the individual corresponds in fact that of the role of the modern state, the only historical form of political society based on individuals and not on groups. Modern state which is also a derivative of Christian conceptions (in particular of medieval canon law), and which fails to assert itself in non-Western political societies, certainly respectable, but still today largely based on tribal, religious, local groups , by trade etc. to which individuals owe in fact (and often also by right) absolute obedience, and this even when in such societies there are structures formally similar to those of the Western state.
A state that some would like to "overcome" in the name of more or less "global" power groups (political and / or economic) led by financial and / or technocratic structures, by global computer networks or by more or less "humanitarian" organizations, that would end up like the traditional ones to enslave individuals to their substantially collectivist logic, perhaps dividing the rights and privileges of individuals on the basis of the degree of discrimination (established from above) of the "identities" to be protected.
We can say that Martin Luther King jr. – despite the criticism that can be leveled at some of his initiatives, such as the organized marches of children, the harsh and sometimes unjustified (even if always non-violent) attacks on opponents, as well as on representatives of US political and judicial institutions – represents one of the great points of reference of the Western spiritual and civil tradition, one of those "heroes" who undertake to improve the society in which they live, correcting the errors and injustices of the past without denying its positive aspects. Very different from those who today despise that tradition and in the name of their own alleged moral superiority would like to create a world made up of more or less "global" power groups in which both individual freedom and democracy would be extinguished or reduced to mere formality . A world in which some of the human and social aberrations carried out by the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century would end up being repeated (albeit perhaps in a less bloody, but no less devastating way), a world in which King's dream would no longer have any chance. to be fulfilled.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/lantirazzismo-di-oggi-ripudia-i-valori-americani-e-cristiani-di-martin-luther-king/ on Tue, 13 Apr 2021 03:50:00 +0000.