In the 1960s right-wing conspiracist groups and racists attacked the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement as puppets of the communists. This was not only false, but deflected attention from the legitimate demands for racial justice and the need for laws protecting the Civil Rights already guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.
The claim was based on the guilt-by-association assertion that anyone who attended a meeting where a communist was present was either a puppet of the communist conspiracy or a dupe of the communist conspiracy.
Today, right-wing demagogues such as Glenn Beck spin conspiracy theories about a collectivist/socialist threat to the nation posed by another Black man, President Barack Obama, and his allies on the Left.
These right-wing pundits demonize specific targets that not only include groups and individuals struggling for racial justice, but also struggling for a fair economic system and peace--the same trio of issues listed by King in his 1967 speech at the Riverside Church. There, King spoke of the need to "go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism."
The section of the flyer below, titled "Martin Luther King, Jr. At Communist Training School" included a large photograph at the top showing King at the progressive Highlander Center.
Many of the anti-progressive conspiracy theories spewed by Glenn Beck previously appeared in John Birch Society publications.
The circulation by right-wing demagogues like Glenn Beck of conspiracy theories about treachery and subversion by liberals and leftists mimics the rhetoric of the Witch Hunts during the Red Scare and McCarthy Period. Some of us have started calling this destructive process the "becking" of America. I wrote about the Witch Hunt against President Obama for In These Times. Naturally, I got Red-Baited by rightists. My much longer study of the current campaign of spreading right-wing conspiracy theories to attack President Obama isin this paperpresented at a scholarly conference. (its a long pdf file)
For several years Matthew Rothschild of the Progressive Magazine has been writing McCarthyism Watch columns about the spread of histrionic claims of subversion into forms of government repression.
The "Red-Baiting" of President Obama by Glenn Beck and other right-wing demagogues reflects the same attempt to hold back the struggle for equality, economic justice, and peace that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said were the most important issues of our time.
View the front of the anti-King Flyer
View the back of the anti-King Flyer
Scroll down to see an illustrated commentary.
The Red Menace was said to be plotting a one-world-government.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was linked by rightists to Marxism, socialism, and communism.
Progressive movements in the 1960s and 1970s were frequently claimed to be part of a socialist/communist/Masonic plot.
The John Birch Society circulates book about the vast collectivist/socialist/Freemason conspiracy.
CrossPosted from Talk to Action