Monday, June 01, 2020

So this has been making the rounds on Twitter:





...not to brag, but yours truly (history geek that I am) was pointing this out way back in 2006.
To quote myself:
King’s philosophy of non-violence was always based on the violent reaction of the police. This is a detail that has frequently been overlooked, but a close reading of civil rights movement in the 1960s reveals that even the non-violent demonstrations were deliberately designed to provoke violent reactions of the police, which was then captured by the media and broadcast to the nation. King himself was frequently criticized by moderate clergy who, rightly, realized that his philosophy of non-violent confrontation was in fact based on violence. This was why King’s demonstrations were a tactical success in the South, but was a failure in Chicago when Mayor Daley went out of his way to be accommodating to King.
But then I go on to make the following point:
The strength of King’s movement was that it was disciplined. The evening news showed the demonstrators as only the recipients of police violence, and produced overwhelming sympathy for the civil rights cause.
In Seattle, and subsequent anti-globalization protests, this formula has been turned on its head. The Police inflict violence on demonstrators, the media captures this but then blames the violence on the demonstrators themselves, and where ever possible footage shows footage of anarchists violently resisting police. Even if one is aware, as the resulting news reports made clear, that the violence was overwhelmingly from the police, the sympathy for the demonstrators is not as strong if a fraction of them can be shown to have participated in the violence themselves.
 ...or in other words:
Yes, it is true that Dr. King's protests were criticized by conservatives in the 1960s for relying on violence.  King's protests were deliberately designed to provoke the police to violence, and then that police violence was used to get national sympathy for the civil rights cause. But despite this objection, King's strategy worked.
But this strategy could only work when the movement was disciplined enough that the protesters themselves didn't get violent or respond to provocations.  If the media can show the protesters being violent, even if it's a small percentage of them, than that will become the narrative, regardless of whatever violence the police commit.

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