More importantly, I'm not gonna go back in time and tell the actual Holocaust survivors who were there in 1958 they were wrong to be upset, that you've got to separate art from the artist, that these cultural issues are downstream of real politics What kind of an asshole would
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Jfc You try to invoke MLK to make your point and turn him into this caricature of a class-forster, like he'd scoff at "cultural issues" mattering But at the same time he was radicalizing re: economic issues he was ALSO radicalizing on "cultural issues"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @nberlat
There's nothing radical about anything you've said about culture or any of this. You're mouthing modern day mainstream Democratic party liberalism
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It's a fools errand, but I don't see the MLK increasingly aware of the economic basis of racism and of racism among liberals and moderates as a guy who would support the author of the crime bill and call it anti-racism.
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Replying to @findfredhampton @nberlat
MLK famously never endorsed any political candidate and never affiliated with the Democratic Party But he damn well ANTI-endorsed Barry Goldwater in 1964 In fact he put everything else on hold prior to that election for a massive GotV drive for LBJ
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And I think it's fair to say that LBJ, especially LBJ in 1964, was worse on pretty much every measure than Joe Biden in 2020, while Goldwater was significantly LESS bad than Donald Trump
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Replying to @arthur_affect @nberlat
On what level? What did LBJ do that was worse for more black people than the Crime or Bankruptcy bills that Biden was instrumental in passing?
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Replying to @findfredhampton @nberlat
Uhhh okay LBJ was a Southern Democrat from Texas, and in his younger days in the House in the 1930s and 40s he was a reliable pro-segregation vote en bloc with the "Southern wing" of the Democratic Party
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He helped kill bills to abolish poll tax and literacy tests blatantly designed to stop Black people from voting He stonewalled anti-lynching legislation After ascending to the Senate and becoming Majority Leader, he was responsible for sabotaging the 1957 Civil Rights Act
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Eisenhower had insisted on such a bill being passed as a way to quell tensions after Brown v. BoE and after he'd ordered troops to protect the Little Rock Nine LBJ undermined Ike and the GOP by using that procedural genius he was known for, adding a "poison pill clause"
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On "states' rights" grounds, stipulating that anyone prosecuted under the 1957 CRA would be tried in state rather than federal court, which meant in the South they'd face an all-white jury determined to acquit Not as dramatic as Strom Thurmond's filibuster but more effective
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That's just the stuff focused on Black Americans He was a huge Saber-rattler in 1947 after the war, demanding the US pursue aggressive colonial policies in Japan, Korea and the Philippines Telling Truman not to "give an inch to the teeming hordes of godless yellow dwarves"
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I mean you consider yourself a labor historian right His VP nomination was opposed by the whole "labor wing" of the Dems, AFL-CIO President George Meany called him "the arch-foe of labor", he spent his whole early career trying to expand Taft-Hartley
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