On this holiday weekend set aside to honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Freedom Struggle, Republicans and other “conservatives” will deploy their racist and white supremacist lies (as they have done for decades) to diminish the meaning of Dr. King’s struggle and sacrifice
According to their deranged worldview, Dr. King is a Reagan Republican and Christian nationalist, and a neoliberal gangster capitalist who supports deregulation, privatization and gun culture. This alternate reality version of Dr. King also stands against “wokeness” and “Black Lives Matter.” His legacy has been “stolen,” we are told, by the Democrats and the “Black establishment” as a means to “oppress” the Black community. Moreover, the Democratic Party is a “plantation,” and Dr. King’s memory and legacy are being used by Democrats, liberals and “Black elites” to keep Black Americans “mentally enslaved” and “not thinking for themselves.”
This white supremacist disinformation campaign is part of a much larger, and in fact global, fascist project meant to convince white Americans that they are the “real” victims of racism and that simultaneously they are losing “their country” — a country where they control every dominant social, political, economic and cultural institution.
As expected, the Republican fascists and their allies and agents are using Dr. King’s life and legacy as one of the newest weapons in their moral panic over “critical race theory.” The true goal of this assault on reality is to make it illegal to teach the real history of American racism and the color line.