Truest statement of the week

For several years Dr. King and his work were lauded and praised to the skies by the US corporate media, he was awarded a Nobel Prize, and enjoyed friendly access to the White House. This was because US ruling circles endorsed the dismantling of southern Jim Crow as necessary to America’s image around the world and its conflict with the Soviet Union, which was actively aiding liberation movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America. But in April 1967 Dr. King directly, explicitly and unmistakably confronted and denounced the current genocidal US war in Vietnam, which would eventually kill 3 million Vietnamese.
King accurately predicted further US colonial wars in Asia, Africa and the Americas in the coming decades, and observed that economic and social justice inside the US were unobtainable amid the wars needed to preserve US global empire. Instantly the entire apparatus of US media turned upon him, and from one of the most admired Americans he became one of the most despised. As Cornel West observes, most of the institutions and people writing checks and commemorating his death this week would not allow the Dr. King of his final year, or a Dr. King of today at their podiums, their pulpits or on their airwaves.

-- Bruce A. Dixon, "Another MLK Anniversary, Another Gaza Massacre Ignored by the Black Political Class" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).