In Memory Of Martin Luther King— What If?
By A D Hemming and Bati Ahmed
24 June, 2015
Countercurrents.org
“Power to the people!” Thomas Paine
“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” Thomas Jefferson.
What if Martin Luther King Jr assassinated in Memphis in 1968 as
he was coming to the aid of sanitation workers there had known
about this when he gave his 1967 “beyond Vietnam” speech breaking
completely out of the all too tight frame virtually lilly white US media
him in and Clive Ponting’s revelations in 1994 “Churchill, his biography
evealing an obsession with Communism tied to his anti Semitism,
racism, imperialism, and classism as well as sexism of the worst types
and the most reactionary of tendencies for any British politician given the
inspiration for the Cold War generated by his “Iron Curtain” speech,” or
the revelations in 2000 of David Carlton’s in “Churchill and the Soviet Union,”
a monograph he presented a paper on to the Royal Historical Soceity on
Churchills dogmatic obsession with Russian Communism taking up
his entire life.
Ponting’s book shows Churchill with his undying allegiance to racism
revealed by his comments on the Boer War about his “irritation” at “Cape
boys” (blacks) in Soutfh Africa having British government sanction to shoot
at “white men” in what he saw as “properly being a “white man’s war,” as well
his questions to Franklin D Roosevelt in the Second World War about
the number of black US troops coming over to Churchill’s country given
the role of the Churchill “Iron Curtain” speech inspiring the “grand
crusade” against Russian Communists? What about Churchill’s
loyalty to the empire based in London over all to the point of being
all out imperialism? Then we have what the British National Archives
revealed in 1998 was Operation Unthinkable which was Churchill’s secret plan
to wage another World War starting in July 1945 on Russia, the country which
had beat the Nazi war machine into dust bin of history using part of the Nazi army,
nuclear weapons which the USA had at the time along with a big part of Uncle
Sam’s army as well as the British one with one good estimate of 3,000,000
dead just for the USA. What a “wonderful idea!” But the top officer in the British
army thought the prime minister had lost his mind. Such was Churchill’s dogmatic
obsession with Communism even with the only Communist country at the
time the real reason for the defeat of Adolph Hitler as revealed in the documentary
and book by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, “The Untold History of the United
States.”
For those who might have had some idea that Churchill’s racism might have faded with
age and his rise to the highest British governmental office the questions Churchill posed
to FDR during the Second World War on the number of black US troops coming over
to the then prime minister’s country should put that to rest once and for all. But to put
a bit of icing on that cake Operation Unthinkable does show that in Churchill’s willingness
to align his fellow Britons and the Americans with part of the army of the worst and most
brutal racist regime in all history his complete non challenge about racism to make
a sneak attack on their Russian allies making these crucial allies enemies due to
Churchill’s concern about the Russian army being in the middle of Europe. But
where were those saintly armies of Uncle Sam and the British Lion? Why might
that be? Geography! Germany with its huge land mass is right smack in the middle
of Europe. Case closed on Churchill’s “concerns”! Whatever else anyone else someone
can say about the British, that top British army general’s was nobody’s fool.
Operation Unthinkable along with other references Ponting make about Churchill’s
love of uniforms make the case for his mad militarism as well.
In his book “Churchil and the Soviet Union” David Carlton refers to Churchill’s
remarks linking Jewish internationalists to “Bolshevism” he referred to Communism
during this time of Russian civl war between the Bolsheviks and the Czarists
with the following in reference to the Russia of that time being a “Communist
state under Jewish domination” and commenting in this context on “the
international Soviet of the Russian and Polish Jew.” Anti Semitism and the
dogmatic obsession with Communism went well together.
Add to this the fact that in Greece with its reputation as being the birthplace of
democracy, Churchill approved the British military smashing the anti Nazi
resistance deporting some to the Middle East and incarcerating others while
installing a far right military dictatorship in December 1944 before the Russian
Communists are even accused of doing anything wrong on forcing anyone
on governments in Eastern Europe. Similar action by this prime minister showed
his anti democratic as well as his dogmatic obsession with Communism or
that he perceived as such in Belgium in 1944 with the British military forcing the
anti Nazi resistance out of the way and then putting in a government friendly to
the British empire, and much the same in Italy except going through the top
commander who was British with him putting in the stooge Churchill wanted
to be the top dog in that kennel. In the case of Greece, the action was so insulting
that FDR repudiated Churchill outright. This comes out in Ponting’s biography
of Churchill.
His classism is also well documented in Ponting’s biography already cited with
reference to Churchill’s notion that being descended from the Duke of Marlborough
made him the most special of people with Churchill always seeing that as English
nobility he had no equal among those of lower social rank and even that such weren’t
even fit to be senior officers in the navy as he put it while he was at the Admiralty.
He never saw those outside the nobility as equal. Such classism as this which Ponting
exposes in his biography is the key to seeing how lacking in any credibility such a
politician’s advice is and most especially given his hostile attitude toward all others
with such attitudes sanctioning and actually causing poverty itself making it a self
fulfilling prophesy.
Even as late as 1955 with Dwight D Eisenhower wishing to come over to Europe at
the anniversary of VE Day in May that year to hold a four power (France, the British
Lion, the Russian Bear, and Uncle Sam) summit to try negotiations over confrontation.
Churchill opposed Ike’s move. Thus for his entire public life since the rise of the Communists
to power in Moscow Churchill had been on a “crusade” against and obsessed with the
ideology of those he once called Bolsheviks. Ponting reveals this in Churchill biography.
As to Churchill’s sexism to the extreme, he opposed women’s suffrage even though the
prime minister whose cabinet he served as war and air minister, David Lloyd George favored
it. Source— Ponting’s biography of this descendant of the Duke of Marlborough!
For being reactionary, how about favoring the use of the military to crush a strike? Churchill
was there when the worst of reactionaries wanted him. Again Ponting’s biography of
this “great statesman!”
Had Dr King had all this information at his disposal one can only wonder how thoroughly
he would have demolished not just the insane policies of the US Government in 1967
but even the most prominent of the backers of said policies.
To knock down any attacks on patriotism Dr King could have exposed this deal with the
Nazi devil at Ft Hunt had this information been available at the time. The facts on the
Nazi spy network of Rienhard Gehlen get through to the most brutal truths about
the fraud of the Cold War and all that came from it including Vietnam.
This might well bring people around to this view as shown here by the BBC.
If things went the Dr King and others seeking to get the USA “on the right side
a world revolution” as Dr King put it, then we might have a country whose spirit
might well be captured here by Paul Robeson hounded so completely by the
the US House Un American Activities Committee and exposed with this as to
just how truly un American that committee was.
This from Noam Chomsky would have come in handy in further showing how
“patriotic” were those who made that dirty deal with the Nazi devil.
With all this all could have the facts about Winston Churchill and the Nazi spy
network which inspired the Cold War down to Churchill’s silk underwear as Ponting
reveals. English nobility and all!
AD Hemming has been an activist for progressive causes
since the early 1960s, has been a researcher, poet, journalist,
historian and got his feet wet as a progressive in the civil rights
movement in US South as a teenager and who identifies as black
and provides a perspective of a person of color from the US South.
Bati Ahmed with a Ph D in Public Health has been active
in the health care field with UNICEF in the Middle East and
Africa in the field for years as well as at the top level with
UNICEF in London for seven years who is black with a British
Commonwealth background.
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