For the past eight years, each January for the Federal holiday celebrating Martin Luther King (whose birth date is January 15), I send out a cautionary essay that I first began researching back in 2016. What I have been attempting to do, with increasing urgency, was remind readers, specifically so-called “conservatives,” that King and his holiday are emblematic of the ongoing radical transformation of the American republic: the mindless canonization and glorification of King, especially by the conservative movement, only advances this demonic project.

Each year I update and edit the essay, but almost always it remains similar to what I wrote back in 2016. I fully recognize that this effort on my part is akin to repeatedly standing in the middle of a super-highway and attempting to stop a large transfer truck barreling down the road at 80 miles an hour, in my direction. But that in no way diminishes my—or our—obligation to raise critical questions about this exercise in national groveling and self-abasement before the Baal-like image of “an Emperor who has no clothes” (recall the familiar Hans Christian Andersen parable).

Like the disastrous Civil Rights and Voting Rights bills of the 1960s, the establishment of the King Holiday is a watershed event in American history, symbolic of what had happened to this country and a predictor of what was to happen… and is occurring now.

The fact that most Republicans and “conservatives” buy into it illustrates their puerility and abject surrender to a Leftist agenda (just tune into Fox News to hear their unctuous blather). The resulting revolutionary destruction of the United States, our traditions, and our history cannot be overstated. For in placing King and his legacy on a pedestal alongside George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, conservatives—whether they intend to or not—buy into that radical agenda. You simply cannot create a legitimate opposition to the madness that currently afflicts us by accepting the essential principles and foundation of our enemies.

Thus, the destruction and dismemberment of monuments to Robert E. Lee, Fr. Junipero Serra, Thomas Jefferson, and other significant Americans, and the wiping clean of much of our essential history, are logical progressions of this grisly process. If so-called “conservatives” cannot or will not see this, then they need to step aside and cede their positions of opposition to those who do.

King is now the salutary, untouchable, indeed, indisputably holy and magical American talisman whose legacy cannot and must not be questioned. To do so means you are by definition a “racist,” a “white supremacist,” and probably a “fascist,” as well. And from the usual Progressivist voices to almost the entirety of the pundits in the Establishment conservative media, King is the newest Founding Father who confirms the imposed narrative that “America was founded on the ‘proposition’ of Equality’.” The problem, however, is that this historical template is false, undone by a serious and thorough examination of history and the documentation available, as distinguished historians and political scientists Willmoore Kendall and George Carey, in their volume The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition (1970); Mel Bradford, in his meticulous study, Original Intentions: On the Making and Ratification of the Constitution (1993); and most notably Barry Alan Shain, in his authoritative The Declaration of Independence in Historical Context: American State Papers, Proclamations, and Letters from the Age of Revolution (2014/2015) have accomplished.

Yet that template it is used by both the Progressivists AND the “Movement Conservative” advocates to advance an agenda that in the end leads irreversibly Left…and the destruction of our Western civilization.

And so, once again, I offer my thoughts for consideration. The history that is recounted has not changed, but perhaps we can see now and understand better where it has led us.

*****

Once more on the third Monday of January, Federal and state offices and many businesses either close or go on limited schedules due to Martin Luther King Day. We are awash with public observances, parades, prayer breakfasts, stepped-up school projects for our unwary and intellectually-abused children, and gobs of over-the-top television “specials” and movies, all geared to tell us—to shout it in our faces, if we don’t pay strict attention—just how absolutely wonderful and saintly King was.

It may seem to do no good to issue a demurrer to the veritably religious “cult of Dr. King.” Indeed, we are duly and solemnly informed that King was some sort of superhuman, semi-divine civil rights leader who brought the promise of equality to millions of Americans, a kind of modern St. John the Baptist ushering in the Millennium. And that he stands just below Jesus Christ in the pantheon of revered and adored historical personages…and in some ways, perhaps above Jesus Christ in the minds of many of his present-day devotees and epigones. There are, indeed, numerous “Christian” churches that now “celebrate” this day just as if it were a major feast in the Christian calendar. In short, Martin Luther King has received de facto canonization religiously and in the public mind as no other person in American history.

Mention the fact that King probably plagiarized as much as 40 % of his Boston University Ph.D. dissertation [cf. Theodore Pappas, Plagiarism and the Culture War: The Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr, and Other Prominent Americans, 1998 and Martin Luther King Jr Plagiarism Story, 1994], or that he worked closely with known Communists throughout his life, or that he advocated American defeat in Vietnam while praising Ho Chi Minh, or that he implicitly countenanced violence and Marxism, especially later in his life [cf., Congressional Record, 129, no. 130 (October 3, 1983): S13452-S13461]—mention any of these accusations confirmed begrudgingly by his establishment hagiographers David Garrow and Taylor Branch, or mention his even by current standards violent “rough sex” escapades which apparently involved even under-agers (cf., Cooper Sterling, VDare.com, January 13, 2018), and you immediately get condemned by not just the zealous King flame-keepers on the Left, but by such “racially acceptable” Neoconservatives as Brian Kilmeade and Dinesh D’Souza who supposedly are on the Right.

Indeed, in some ways Establishment “conservatives” such as Kilmeade, Rich Lowry (National Review), D’Souza, Glenn Beck, the talking heads on Fox, and many others, not only eagerly buy into this narrative, they now have converted King into a full-fledged, card-carrying member of “Conservatism Inc.”—the (contemporary) “conservative movement”—a “plaster saint” iconized as literally no one else in our history.

Celebrating King becomes a means for these ersatz conservatives to demonstrate their “civil rights” and “egalitarian” bona fides. King Day has become for the Conservative Movement an opportunity for it to beat its chest, brag about its commitment to civil rights and the American “dream,” the unrealized idea of equality (that is, to distort and re-write the history of the American Founding which was emphatically not about establishing “equal rights”), and to protect its left flank against the ever increasing charges that it could be, just might be, maybe is—“racist” or “white supremacist.”

And for the “farther Left,” King Day—just as the “cult for the martyred George Floyd”—has become as a major ideological blitzkrieg, a weaponized cudgel used to strike down and silence anyone, anywhere, who might offer the slightest dissent to the latest barbarity and latest “advance” in civil rights, now expanded to include not just everything “racial,” but also same sex marriage, transgenderism and abortion on demand. Martin Luther King–that deeply and irredeemably flawed and fraudulent figure imposed upon us and our consciousness—has become a totem who serves in death the purposes of continuing Revolution.

The well documented literature detailing the real Martin Luther King is abundant and remains uncontroverted and basically uncontested. During the debates over establishing a national “King Day” in the mid-1980s, Senators Jesse Helms and John East (both North Carolinians) led the opposition, supplying the Congress and the nation, and anyone with eyes to read, full accounts of the “King legacy,” from his close association and collaboration with the Communist Party USA to his advocacy of violence and support for the Communists in North Vietnam, to implicit support for Marxist revolution domestically. Ironically, it was Robert Woodson, a noted black Republican, who highlighted in a lecture given to honor the “conservative virtues” of King at the Heritage Foundation on November 5, 1993, the difficulties in getting black advocates of the older generation to respect King’s role as a Civil Rights leader. According to Woodson, as quoted in an excellent essay by Paul Gottfried,

“…when Dr. King tried to bring the Civil Rights movement together with the [Marxist] peace movement, it was Carl Rowan who characterized King as a Communist, not Ronald Reagan. I remember being on the dais of the NAACP banquet in Darby, Pennsylvania when Roy Wilkins soundly castigated King for this position.” [Paul Gottfried, “The Cult of St. Martin Luther King – A Loyalty Test for Careerist Conservatives?” January 16, 2012]

Indeed, as reported by The Washington Post, at a celebration of the life of W.E.B. Du Bois at Carnegie Hall in February 1968, King, while praising the co-founder of the NAACP who became a Communist in his later years, declared that America was possessed of an “irrational obsessive anti-communism.”

But not only that, behind the scenes there were voluminous secretly-made FBI recordings and accounts of King’s violent sexual escapades, often times with more than two or three others involved in such “rough sex” trysts; and of his near total hypocrisy when discussing civil rights and other prominent civil rights leaders. It is, to put it mildly, a sorry record, scandalous even by today’s standards.…Indeed, King makes Jeffrey Epstein (or Hunter Biden) look like a meek choirboy in comparison.

But you won’t hear any of that mentioned by the falling-all-over-itself Mainstream Media or the media mavens on Fox. In fact, such comments will get you exiled to the frozen wastes of Greenland and labeled a “racist,” quicker that my cocker spaniel gobbles down his kibble.

Rather than rehash and restate all the various accusations, let me cite several fundamental sources which back up with overwhelming documentation King’s activities and the history of MLK Day. Almost all the material is now available and accessible online, including material from the Congressional Record.

First, essential to understanding the background of just how we got King Day, the late Dr. Samuel Francis’s account is critical. Originally written to preface the publication of voluminous testimony and documentation placed in the Congressional Record by Senator Helms, Francis’s essay and the Helms’ dossier were eventually published in book form. A few years back Dr. Francis’s introduction and his detailed background essay and the lengthy Congressional Record material (which he prepared for Helms) were put online. For a complete understanding of King’s association and cooperation with American Communists and his endorsement of Vietnamese Communism, as well as his putative endorsement of Marxism here in the United States while condemning the free enterprise system, these two items are essential reading:

Dr. Samuel Francis, “The King Holiday and Its Meaning,” February 26, 2015.

Dr. Samuel Francis, “Remarks of Senator Jesse Helms. Congressional Quarterly,” February 26, 2005.

To fully understand the serious plagiarism charges leveled against King and the academic and politically-correct skullduggery that surrounded Boston University’s decision not to rescind his doctoral degree, Theodore Pappas’s two detailed studies, cited above, offer fascinating and scandalously revealing details. But other writers, also, upon cursory examination, have found numerous other instances of his plagiarism.

Remember the “I Have a Dream” speech? Well, as Jim Goad wrote in Takimag back in 2012:

“…the immortalized in MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech in the part where he beseeches God…to “Let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia.” King stole that passage about Stone Mountain from a 1952 oratory delivered by another black preacher at the Republican National Convention. He also allegedly plagiarized parts of the first public sermon he ever delivered back in 1947.” [Jim Goad, “I’m So Bored with MLK,” Takimag, January 16, 2012]

But, say the scribblers at National Review and the pundits on Fox, wasn’t King really a conservative at heart, an old-fashioned black Baptist who believed in the tenets of traditional Christianity? Shouldn’t we simply overlook these all-too-human foibles?

To answer that I should mention VDare editor Peter Brimelow’s superb essay which offers additional insight on the King Day holiday and which summarizes much of the information, ideological uses, and controversy surrounding him and his holiday. It was originally published in 2015, but he has republished it each year to coincide with this annual national paroxysm: “ ‘Time To Rethink Martin Luther King Day’–The 2017 Edition.”

Lastly, I can think of no better summation of the real meaning of King Day and its bare-knuckled ideological use to deconstruct, dissolve and obliterate American traditions and heritage than to cite, again, Sam Francis:

“[T]he true meaning of the holiday is that it serves to legitimize the radical social and political agenda that King himself favored and to delegitimize traditional American social and cultural institutions—not simply those that supported racial segregation but also those that support a free market economy, an anti-communist foreign policy, and a constitutional system that restrains the power of the state rather than one that centralizes and expands power for the reconstruction of society and the redistribution of wealth. In this sense, the campaign to enact the legal public holiday in honor of Martin Luther King was a small first step on the long march to revolution, a charter by which that revolution is justified as the true and ultimate meaning of the American identity. In this sense, and also in King’s own sense, as he defined it in his speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, the Declaration of Independence becomes a “promissory note” by which the state is authorized to pursue social and economic egalitarianism as its mission, and all institutions and values that fail to reflect the dominance of equality—racial, cultural, national, economic, political, and social—must be overcome and discarded.

“By placing King—and therefore his own radical ideology of social transformation and reconstruction—into the central pantheon of American history, the King holiday provides a green light by which the revolutionary process of transformation and reconstruction can charge full speed ahead. Moreover, by placing King at the center of the American national pantheon, the holiday also serves to undermine any argument against the revolutionary political agenda that it has come to symbolize. Having promoted or accepted the symbol of the new dogma as a defining—perhaps the defining—icon of the American political order, those who oppose the revolutionary agenda the symbol represents have little ground to resist that agenda.” [January 16, 2006]

Once again my pledge: I will not be celebrating this day; rather, it is for me a mournful reminder of what has happened and is happening to this country.