Trolling Mlk

Many people write me and tell me they can get current event stories elsewhere and that what I contribute is a different perspective which is not covered by the mainstream narrative.

That is always my challenge and sometimes it isn’t all easy because I can’t just mimic another talk show host. My job is to be unique and giving a perspective seldom heard elsewhere. There are two reasons why I do what I do.

The first is that it gives me a reason to learn and grow and the second is that I am hoping others want to learn and grow with new things to think about. We all get a diet of mainstream homogenized babble and for some, that is all that they need. However, it takes a lot of courage to step out of the comfort zone and learn something more that may or may not change your views of what is truly going on in the world we live in.

I had a short conversation with my producer in Los Angeles yesterday. He knew I was going to talk about dangerous cults and mentioned that he was surprised that I wasn’t all over the topic of Martin Luther King, Jr. I told him I wanted to do a story about the conspiracy of his assassination, but I really wasn’t sure of an interesting angle that would bring clarity to the events leading to his assassination.

April 4th 1968 was the anniversary of the assassination of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King’s philosophy was that of loving your enemies. King said that a man must discover the element of good in his enemy, and every time you begin to hate that person and think of hating that person, realize there is some good there and look at those good points which will over-balance the bad points. We sure could use a little advice from Dr. King about now. Especially from those who claim to espouse his values are encouraging a racial schism that may lead to an escalated civil uprising.

It has been 48 years since the civil rights leader was gunned down. He was shot as he stood on a hotel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. Even though his legacy has been talked about and many have claimed to emulate him, including our current president, it means absolutely nothing now, because it seems that the scab of racism has been picked at in the present and blood is flowing again with the racially charged plot that has been devised in order to bait a police state in the United States.

When I used to do the Ground Zero Lounge at the local bars around Portland, I did an experiment on Martin Luther King Day. During my presentation, I would ask someone to walk outside and find a homeless person. I would pay the homeless person 20 dollars to read to my audience the “I have a dream speech.” It was familiar to my audience because it is the speech that people most remember about Dr. King. However, there is another important writing by MLK, seldom spoken of and I even wonder if it is even talked about in the public schools and that is Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” If you haven’t read it, I suggest you do and when you do you will be reacquainted with the wisdom and patience that Dr. King had.

The letter’s message is extraordinarily relevant in the year 2016. It is about the current global struggle of fighting against the criminality, corruption and oppression that we are seeing now in the political arena.

He spends much of his time in the letter outlining the distinction between “just laws” and “unjust laws,” and one of the key points he makes is that we should all keep close to our hearts and minds in these trying times is:

“We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers.”

I also think it’s important to recognize that many of his contemporaries referred to his tactics as “extremist,” very similar to how the term “terrorist” is used currently to demonize public dissent in America.

How many times has the media use the term “terrorist” to give a death sentence to those who decided to take a stand against tyranny? How many times has there been an attempt to censor those who wish to challenge the political climate in this country.

Saying anything derogatory about the political climate in this country is the equivalent of using the American flag as a welcome mat and even then disrespectful individuals in this country are doing just that.

In a year when political tensions already are running high, a group of protesters is fueling the acrimony by showing up to political rallies and events with a large American flag – and stomping on it.

The members of the self-described “F*** Your Flag Tour” most recently popped up at a Donald Trump rally last Sunday in West Allis, Wisconsin. They posted themselves next to the line of thousands of people waiting to get into Donald Trump’s event at the local high school.

They proceeded to lay the muddied flag on the ground and stand on it, triggering heated exchanges with those nearby.

One man shouted to the group, “My brother is fighting overseas for that flag, pick it up.”

He got into an argument with the protesters and tried to get close enough to pick up the flag but was blocked and shoved. Police eventually had to lead him away out of safety concerns.

The protests are just the latest sign of how raw and confrontational the political season has become. But even in a year Trump has been accused of inciting violence, and those opposing him have gone so far as to block traffic, the flag-stomping is touching a nerve.

In 1968, Congress approved the Federal Flag Desecration Law after a Vietnam War protest. The law made it illegal to “knowingly” cast “contempt” upon “any flag of the United States by publicly mutilating, defacing, defiling, burning or trampling upon it.” In some states, it is a Class A Misdemeanor.

A black man that was interviewed while “flag standing” said that the American flag was the new Swastika and that Americans do not act like there is a race problem.

In his Birmingham letter, Dr. King felt that respectful protest was needed to fight unjust laws.

I don’t think Rosa Parks ever stomped on a flag to draw attention to racism. Her protest was simple civil disobedience. Without disrespecting the flag of her country, she played a vital role in history in “getting the required changes enacted.” She just wanted to sit where she wanted to. That sent a signal — I don’t think Dr. King had to burn flags to make his point. He had to have a plan, and a direction.

He stated that:

“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained.

If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: “Get rid of your discontent.” Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist.

So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?”

Dr. King admonished us to try and understand the abuse of power and the pervasiveness of it. We are not meant to focus on our victimization, but to protest unjust laws that lead us into suffering.

It was not about blaming, it was about taking action with that which we have control. He expected us to maintain our own power to affect the future. Not engaging in self-defeating practices that do nothing to change attitudes for the positive. He knew we were capable of change and that oppression against blacks would end if all of us were to realize they we do have power in our lives.

Today however, we are losing our personal power. What is really happening is that we have become so easily manipulated into hating each other that we are no longer a cohesive group of citizens that can rally around a common goal.

We have no common goals – we have lost the dream.

We have been put into a position of either stand down or stand up – and neither is happening – we are falling to our knees and surrendering ourselves to hate and general anxiety. The preponderance of all the ugliness is building inside everyone in the world. The feelings that are being expressed in truth are being called hate speech, and everyone seems to be in the business of coddling and supporting victimization.

We are at a loss for what can be called, healthy social cohesion. We are now defining ourselves by what we are against, rather than what we stand for. We value the ability to shame people rather than to help people understand differing points of view.

The battles we seek are not really battles at all but contrarian countering of people we think have unpopular viewpoints. We see it as an act of defiance to those who we think are irrelevant in the social strata.

Our defiance is always against someone who we think is weaker than we are rather than the defying those who believe they have more power than we do.

Contra-positioning has become an overused way of thinking whereby, there is an easy and intellectual answer to everything – and that if someone has a new idea it can always be rejected because someone sees fit to counter it using spurious methodology.

Sure, you can say that you have your freedom of speech, but what does negativity do to help matters? Is bullying, and threatening violence useful in gaining support for your cause? You may think that stomping on a flag is a freedom of expression, but what it does is lowers the spirits of people, it destroys hope – it can be called the lowest form of trolling. Many of us fall victim to anonymous hate, meaning, threatening, demeaning and often times, aggressive communications via Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr messages.

Dr. King found himself in the same position as we all are now. We know that he didn’t have the internet but he was the victim of what can be called trolling.

Last year, a letter sent to Martin Luther King, Jr. made the rounds on the internet. Typed on a single sheet of yellowed paper with clunky misspelled words, one could almost draw parallels to the modern-day internet trolls who blast their hatred into your inbox. The letter itself, replete with blatant defamation, reads like the comments section of a website.

The letter appeared to or eluded to being written by a supporter of King’s that decided that he was a fraud and a deceiver. The final paragraph told him bluntly that he should consider killing himself. The letter was not from a supporter – it was actually a sick letter sent to him from J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI.

For those who know their history it is no surprise that J. Edgar Hoover didn’t like MLK. In fact, he was very vocal about the fact that he thought Dr. King should die. He is quoted as having called MLK “the most dangerous negro of the future of this nation.”

The Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) at the FBI was basically Hoover’s personal troll squad from the years of 1957 to 1971, and really only came to a close after a group of vigilantes broke into a Pennsylvania field office, stole some dossiers and revealed their contents to the public.

COINTELPRO’s initial public purpose was simple: expose, disrupt, misdirect, or otherwise neutralize groups that the FBI believed to be subversive.

Field agents working for COINTELPRO were essentially tasked with stirring up trouble among these groups in order to encourage them to disband, or, in the case of individuals, soil their image. It was, in many ways, an exercise in psychological torture: the aim was to make groups, or individuals, so miserable that they would either stop protesting disband their groups, be assassinated or murdered or, take their own lives.

COINTELPRO’s covert involvement often encouraged violence in the hopes that key members and leaders of the opposing groups would be injured or killed or, at the very least, stop protesting. Some think this strategy of tension, creating violent rifts among activist circles is what led to Malcolm X’s 1965 assassination by members of the Nation of Islam.

This type of trolling and covert operative disruption could have also been the catalyst for Dr. King’s assassination.

Dr. King tried to break the circle of non-violence and all races began to listen until his demonstration in Memphis, Tennessee on March 28th 1968, which degenerated into rioting and looting caused by black agitators called, “the Invaders.” They were later revealed to be connected with COINTELPRO. King narrowly escaped injury and was determined to return to Memphis on April 4th 1968 to conduct the demonstration again with no violence.

Memphis newspapers mocked King’s hasty exit and criticized him for staying at a white-owned Holiday Inn and not the fine Motel Lorraine owned by Negroes. The entire newspaper column was written verbatim from an FBI Press release. The tactic worked.

King booked a room at the seedy Motel Lorraine when he returned.

On April 2nd 1968, a man identifying himself as an “Advanced Security Man” showed up at the Motel Lorraine. Booking the room at the Motel Lorriane was a security risk. The new room was accessible only by an exposed second floor balcony in the rear fully vulnerable to sniper fire.

On the morning of April 4th 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King said “We all think about death, every now and then I think about my own funeral.”

At six o’clock that evening gun shots were heard and Dr. King was shot dead on the second floor balcony of the Motel Lorraine.

Conveniently placed individuals immediately pointed to the bathroom window of Bessie Brewer’s boarding house. Those individuals who claimed the shot had been fired from a hedge next to the building were ignored and ridiculed. James Earl Ray was arrested, urged to confess by his lawyer, and then retracted his confession.

James Earl Ray was effectively exonerated of the assassination of MLK, Jr. by Dr. William F. Pepper in a trial at The Circuit Court of Shelby County, Tennessee, 30th Judicial District at Memphis, in 1999.

There were no headlines and no fanfare, no acknowledgement by the mainstream press.

The trial was covered in its entirety by one independent journalist, and one reporter from outside of the country. About the only thing the American public heard about the trial was some filtered coverage through CourtTV.

Corretta Scott King, the wife of Dr. King said this about the trial:

“There is abundant evidence of a major high level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. And the civil court’s unanimous verdict has validated our belief. I wholeheartedly applaud the verdict of the jury and I feel that justice has been well served in their deliberations.”

This verdict is not only a great victory for my family, but also a great victory for America. It is a great victory for truth itself. It is important to know that this was a SWIFT verdict, delivered after about an hour of jury deliberation. The jury was clearly convinced by the extensive evidence that was presented during the trial that, in addition to Mr. Jowers, the conspiracy of the Mafia, local, state and federal government agencies, were deeply involved in the assassination of my husband. The jury also affirmed overwhelming evidence that identified someone else, not James Earl Ray, as the shooter, and that Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame.

I want to make it clear that my family has no interest in retribution. Instead, our sole concern has been that the full truth of the assassination has been revealed and adjudicated in a court of law.

Governmental agencies were complicit in the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination.

They caused this whole thing to happen. And they then proceeded with the powerful means at their disposal to cover this case up. This is not conspiracy theory – this is the harsh reality of how trolling by a government level can trigger violence.

The government lied. The government lies. The government uses its intelligence agencies and assorted assets to enact agendas that may or may not be in your best interest. Can there be any doubt that murdering Dr. King was not in the interest of Black Americans, or the poor, who he was beginning to see as the oppressed in the entire world?

Dr. King was murdered after he became a vociferous opponent to the Vietnam War and had plans to march on Washington DC and stay there with a virtual city of poor people until there was some change. How well do you think that idea went over in the halls of power and influence?

Ever wonder if the establishment is still in the background creating problems for those who wish to change the direction of the country?

Have you ever wondered why certain people who seem to be favored by the people are being persecuted, and how unconventional methods of violence all of a sudden spark out of nowhere to malign certain people in politics?

Have you ever worried for the lives of certain journalists? Artists, songwriters? Presidential candidates? Religious leaders? Even the President?

Have you ever wondered if trolls are paid by the government in order to create discouragement and to suppress people from expressing dissent in social media?

Cass Sunstein, who was the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, co-authored a paper in 2008 entitled “Conspiracy Theories Causes and Cures.”

He states that because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a crippled epistemology, in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups.

Sunstein is in a position of power and the frightening thing is that no one has pointed out the obvious about this stupid and extremist plan. Cognitive infiltration is flawed because it is nothing more than a means to create an elaborate conspiracy to infiltrate groups of people who believe in conspiracy theories, this is supposed to help them eliminate any idea that there are conspiracies being carried out by our governments.

We will come to point where no one will smell the excrement until their noses are rubbed in it at gunpoint.

That might sound extreme to some, and many people won’t see or even feel the effects of the paranoid government trying to confuse you or trying to recruit you into believing your neighbor is a terrorist.

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Text – Check out Ground Zero Radio with Clyde Lewis Live Nightly @ http://www.groundzeromedia.org