Political Smears in U.S. Never Change:
The NYT’s 1967 Attack on MLK’s Anti-War Speech
By Glenn Greenwald
April 08, 2015 "ICH"
- "The
Intercept" - John Oliver’s Monday night
interview of Edward Snowden — which in 24 hours has been viewed by
3 million people
on YouTube alone — renewed all the standard attacks in Democratic
circles accusing Snowden of being a traitor in cahoots with the Kremlin.
What’s most striking about this — aside from the
utter lack of evidence for
any of it — is how identical it is to what
Nixon officials said to smear the last generation’s greatest
whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg (who is widely regarded by Democrats as a
hero because his leak occurred with a Republican in the White House).
As The New York Times reported
in August 1973:
.
. .
As the Freedom of the Press Foundation
recently noted: in December 1973, The NYT described
the origins of Nixon’s “Plumbers Unit” and detailed how much of it was
motivated by the innuendo spread by Henry Kissinger that Ellsberg was a
covert Soviet operative:
I defy anyone to listen to any Democratic apparatchik
insinuate that Snowden is a Russian agent and identify any differences
with how Nixon apparatchiks smeared Ellsberg (or, for that matter, how
today’s warnings from Obama officials about the grave harm coming
from leaks
differ from the warnings issued by Bush and Nixon officials). The
script for smearing never changes — it stays constant over five decades
and through the establishments of both parties — and it’s one of the
reasons Ellsberg so closely identifies with Snowden and has become one
of
his most vocal defenders.
A reader this morning
pointed me to one of the most illustrative examples of this dynamic:
an
April 1967 New York Times editorial harshly chastising
Martin Luther King for his anti-war activism. That editorial was
published three days after King’s speech on the Vietnam War at
the Riverside Church in New York City, which, as I have
written about many times, was one of the most powerful (and radical)
indictments of American militarism delivered in the 20th century.
Among other things, King denounced the U.S. government
as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,”
as well as the leading exponent of “the deadly Western arrogance that
has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long.” He said “the war
in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the
American spirit.” And he argued that no significant American
problem can be cured as long as the country remains an aggressive and
violent actor in the world: “if America’s soul becomes totally poisoned,
part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so
long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.”
The attack of the NYT editors on King for
that speech is strikingly familiar, because it’s completely identical to
how anti-war advocates in the U.S. are maligned today. It begins by
lecturing King that his condemnation of U.S. militarism is far too
simplistic: “the moral issues in Vietnam are less clear cut than he
suggests.” It accuses him of “slandering” the U.S. by comparing it to
evil regimes. And it warns him that anti-war activism could destroy the
civil rights movement, because he is guilty of overstating American
culpability and downplaying those of its enemies:
That has every element of the standard
Washington attack on contemporary anti-war advocates: condemnation of
U.S. militarism is “overly-simplistic,” ignores complexities and
nuances, “slanders” our government leaders and military officials, and
downplays or “whitewashes” the crimes of America’s enemies. It’s worth
remembering that Washington smear merchants never change their script:
they haul the same ones out regardless of the issue or who is doing the
dissenting.
Photo of King’s anti-war speech at Ebenezer
Baptist Church in Atlanta, Ga. on April 30, 1967. (AP)
