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I
This makes the pretty powerfully incorrect assumption that MLK wasn't inspired by socialism and religion.
It's more than a little odd that I said, "MLK was incorrect in his criticism of Capitalism. He was incorrect in his promotion of Socialism," and you answered with the underlined sentence above. Obviously, I agreed he was inspired by socialism.
We, as a society that holds MLK in honor, overlook his transgression of advocating socialism. That's my point. It's not that we are not aware of it - it's that we will remove it from our literature because it was a DOWNFALL of MLK.
That was my point, it's politically expedient for Democrat and Republican corporate media to talk about how religion influenced MLK (Actually, it's slightly worse than that, they act like Christian religion was the sole influence, when in fact Hindu/Jain beliefs on ahimsa played an extremely important role and was the sole motivator in his "nonviolent protest" worldview). It's not so politically expedient to remind the public the role that his socialist beliefs --and the socialist beliefs of his followers and helpers, both white allies (who were almost without exception democratic socialists or communists, then the only anti-establishment group to see the condition of blacks for what it was --morally repellent and against their human rights) and black leaders (e.g. Bayard Rustin)-- played in the advancement of Civil Rights.
What you think of as being "wrong," is instead very helpful.
History white-washes its heroes, as it's done here with MLK. And, for good reason -- so we do not promote the worst in our heroes, but rather, the best.
That's why our children's history books are not full of stories about George Washington or Thomas Jefferson and their many slaves. We know they owned slaves - we CHOOSE to forgive them their transgressions in spite of that.
Same with MLK. We know he was influenced by socialism, he screwed around, and no one really gives a **** whether or not he followed other religions, we CHOOSE to forgive him those transgressions. In the thread title, you get it right -- we "sanitize" his memory.
That is as it should be. That is the prudent thing to do. All heroes are sanitized. It's isn't about them, after all, it's about society and the lessons we collectively choose to impart.
If, by any chance, those who truly want to expose the negatives about MLK are successful in doing so - the nation will quietly remove him as one of our heroes and replace him with another white-washed version.
It's what we do. If you care a lick about MLK, you'll follow suit.