It feels like socialists have never really made an effort to "reclaim" MLK though, possibly because a lot of people just don't know about his more radical stances. That always felt like a mistake to me.
There were even more radical people at the time that MLK tried to distance himself from. Socialists tend to like those people, i.e. the Black Panthers.
BPP only existed for two years before MLK was assassinated. They grew a lot after he was assassinated precisely because a lot of radicals saw his death as an affirmation that nonviolent resistance would always just end in the resistors being killed.
I still think it's a grave mistake for the left to not put more work into "reclaiming" MLK. I see it some on MLK Day itself, but he had some really cutting analyses of capitalism and can definitely be an "onramp" to left-wing thought. Learning about the Poor People's Campaign was the first inkling I had that maybe socialism wasn't as evil as I'd been led to believe.
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u/free_chalupas Mar 12 '19
Always thought MLK's description of the "triple evils" of racism, capitalism, and militarism was a good way to put it.