Last Monday, April 4 to be exact, I wanted to post something about it being the anniversary of the day Dr. King was assassinated, as I did for Malcolm X on February 21. I wanted to find a photo to post that wasn't too common, perhaps a childhood photo like the one I found for Malcolm X. In any case, I typed "Martin Luther King" into Google, and the third site on the list of thousands of sites featuring Martin Luther King, was www.martinlutherking.org.
Well I figured this had to be a good one, it ranked above the King Center (which I nevertheless tried first, but which took too long to open). Before you click on the link to check it out for yourselves, however, let me save you the trouble. The site is connected to Storm Front, the hate group. But I didn't know that. When I opened the site, there was a nice portrait of Dr. King, along with a banner inviting school children to take a quiz on Dr. King's life. To the right of his portrait were several categories about his life, which you could click on for further information, including information about sermons, etc. To the left of his portrait, however, was an alleged quote from Time Magazine, which included reference to Dr. King's taped extra-marital sexual activities.
As they say in Scotland, I had trouble getting my head around that.
I simply couldn't understand how the quiz for schoolkids, the sermons, and the quote from Time were related. So I scrolled down the page and saw a link about repealing the King Holiday, and then I was really confused. But because I'm a bit thick sometimes, I was still trying to put all of this in the context of a site owned by some King supporters and archivists. Okay, so I'm REALLY thick. Whatever. I kept scrolling and ended up at the bottom of the page where there was a link to a forum to discuss Dr. King; the forum was hosted by Storm Front. Needless to say I wasn't in the mood for doing the post after that.
So there you have it. A racist hate group owns MartinLutherKing.org.
And the only publishable thing I can think to say to that is, I hope that the Black Panthers own KKK.org...
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This is a fairly common tactic by ideological groups on the web. I've come across many purported Islamic sites that are actually published by Christian groups out to defame Islam or simply convert Muslims. Some are very sneaky, even using Arabic text and fabricated Quranic verses. Some are hateful.
ReplyDeleteIt's called the World Wide Web and I am reminded of the giant spiders of Mirkwood forest, spinning their webs and waiting for some innocent hobbit to wander off the path so they can eat him alive.
None of this surpsies me. At the risk of sounding like a prick, what Martin Luther King represents to a good number of Americans is the assuagement of guilt. The paradox for me is how the worship at the alter of MLK stands against the inability to see how incongruous it all is with the state of race relations in America.
ReplyDeleteI heard someone observe recently how fashionable it is to mention the name Nelson Mandela as a great man, especially amongst politicians. Some of the same people who were silent all those 27 years he was rotting away in a South Africa prison. Sorry to be so "cynical" but there you have it.
I have lost my sense of humour about most of this stuff.
Ciao,
Tweedie
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