“Beyond Vietnam” (April 4th 1967) is a speech Martin Luther King, Jr gave at the Riverside Church in New York exactly one year before he was shot dead. He came out against the Vietnam War, calling it immoral. It burned his bridges with the president. The Washington Post said it “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”
King could no longer remain silent – as a minister of Jesus Christ, as one of God’s children, as an American, as a believer in non-violence, as a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. As a black man:
- How can he ask a young black man with a Molotov cocktail in his hand to put it down because violence is not the answer – when his own government thinks violence is the answer in Vietnam?
- How can he ask him to fight for freedom in Vietnam when there is no freedom in East Harlem?
- How can he ask him to fight alongside a white man in Vietnam when he cannot live alongside him on the same block in Chicago?
- How can he ask him to fight in a war where he is more likely to die than a white man?
Every bomb America drops on Vietnam destroys not just Vietnam, it destroys America:
- It destroys its fight against poverty.
- It destroys its good name.
- It destroys its moral values.
The American government says it is fighting for freedom and democracy against communism, yet:
- only a fourth of the people it is fighting are communists;
- America repeatedly undermines any serious chance of true democracy.
America is fighting for a cruel government no one likes except rich landowners who fear the land reform true democracy would bring. America is fighting France’s lost colonial war.
Because the communists led the war of independence against the French, the Japanese, the French again and now the Americans they will have to be part of any peace, of any lasting government.
American violence will only bring more of the same: cruel governments, military bases, prostitution, poverty, concentration camps, yet more physical destruction of the country, yet more millions dead.
America needs to stop the war, make the best and most just peace it can and help Vietnam get back on its feet.
America no longer stands for freedom and democracy. The Vietnam War makes that crystal clear to most of the world. Instead it stands for profits and property rights, for machines and computers, for racism, materialism and militarism. It needs to offer mankind a better hope than that to fight communism.
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America is morally sick. Unless America has a revolution of values there will be more counterrevolutionary wars. Unless it puts people over profits, peace over war:
we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
See also:
- “Beyond Vietnam” – read the speech
- YouTube: Beyond Vietnam – listen to the full speech (57 minutes)
- Martin Luther King Jr
- Vietnam War
- military-industrial complex
- The three pillars of US racism
- Solzhenitsyn at Harvard
- Jeremiah Wright: Confusing God and Government
and that was when the government thought it would be better for him to be dead. they had king so well tracked , watched and bugged i believe it was that moment he outlived any usefulness they may have thought he had.
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Weird thing is this: this speech should have been repeated in 2002, or 2003,4,5,6,7,8,9…
Just like Vietnam ruined US economy, so did the war in Irak. And once again it was big business for Haliburton and the others.
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@kal:
Big politicians never liked him, not really. He was too much a man of principle to be corrupted all the way. He also stood up against the organized crime which was at its peak around this time. Lethal combination indeed.
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The communists murdered over 100 million people in the 20th century. Every time they overthrew a government it was the same. A bunch of wealthy psychopaths started spouting class warfare propaganda. Compassionate idiots fell for it while their hired thugs engaged in terrorism and assassination of opposition politicians and business leaders. Then they’d try to overthrow the government and set up a ruthless dictatorship to maintain power through imprisonment, torture and murder.
It was part of the Cold War strategy for the US and Soviets/Chicoms to fund insurrections against governments friendly to the other side. That played a role in the wars in SE Asia, Africa & S America during the Cold War. It’s still common practice for foreign governments to secretly fund opposition groups in other countries to destabilize them.
That was largely responsible for the tensions and riots of the 50’s and 60’s & 70’s. Hippy groups, anti war movement and civil rights were all funded by communists who couldn’t care less. Communists were just trying to undermine the US. That doesn’t mean everyone who participated in those movements was a communist. Most of them were just stupid.
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– The communists weren’t ‘freedom fighters’
– The Viet Minh’s (who fought off the French) complete name is ‘League for the Independence of Vietnam’. Meaning it was a group made up of many different political parties many of whom weren’t communists.
– Ho Chi Minh took credit for many of the writings of “Nguyễn Ái Quốc” (Nguyen Patriot) which was a pseudonym for many Vietnamese nationalists/writers.
A few reasons why they weren’t ‘freedom fighters’.
– Massacre at Hue of 1968
– Dak Son Massacre
– My Canh Restaurant Bombing
– Reeducation Camps (death camps) after Fall of Saigon.
– New Economic Zones, where many civilians were sent to forced labour.
– The millions of fleeing refugees after Communist takeover (first of North Vietnam and second of South Vietnam)
– The Sino-Vietnamese War
The U.S. were ‘morally sick’, but so were the North Vietnamese (Communist) government. The communists were power grabbers.
What gets me angry about the ‘lefty’ movement in the U.S. during the Vietnam War was their inability to understand what was happening in Vietnam (Indochina) from their ‘cushy’ lives and position of privilege. Many Vietnamese/Cambodian/Laotian civilians didn’t have the luxury of ‘making peace’ with the Communists who were threatening to take their homes and countries.
A great documentary to watch is “Frontline” with Neil Davis, you get a understanding of what the U.S. military did (or rather did not) do during the Vietnam War.
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@Ann
Why did the US have to get involved?
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It’s seems nothing has changed in 2012 now 2013. We are still involved in war and killing except it’s a different nation.
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“Why did the US have to get involved?” Anne
I explained that in my previous comment. The Soviets and Chicoms weren’t taking on the US directly. That’s what the cold war was about. They were trying to tilt the balance of power by toppling 3rd world governments and replacing them with communist dictators under their umbrella. It was strategic. The US couldn’t sit back and let the communists conquer the whole world. Because after they conquered all the little countries the US would be isolated and outnumbered.
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@ Churchs
Right, so most of the black people who wanted equal rights were either stupid or paid by communists.
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@ Churchs
Americans do that too: Diem, the Shah, Saddam Hussein, Somoza, Pinochet, etc. And then there is Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo…
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@churchs:
“Compassionate idiots fell for it while their hired thugs engaged in terrorism and assassination of opposition politicians and business leaders. Then they’d try to overthrow the government and set up a ruthless dictatorship to maintain power through imprisonment, torture and murder.”
Which is pretty much what USA has been doing since 1945 in many parts of the world.
“It’s still common practice for foreign governments to secretly fund opposition groups in other countries to destabilize them.”
Yes it is, mainly by USA and its allies.
“Hippy groups, anti war movement and civil rights were all funded by communists who couldn’t care less.”
And this has been proven where? I seriously wonder if pot smoking acid dropping barefeet peacenicks in Monterey Park 1967 were the front line troops of communism in USA?
@ann:
What happened in Vietnam was a civil war into which USA got involved. If the Viet Cong and Hanoi government were just power grabbing bunch whom everyone in the south hated, I wonder why VC got so much support for 11 really long years in the south?
I wonder where all thoise local guerillas came from? I know that any one coming from the north would have been litterally like a fish out of water in the Ca Mau peninsula or Iron Triangle and not that effective fighter, nor too long living.
Fact is that in SV there was dictatorships supported by USA and in the north there was a communist dictatorship supported by the communist block. These went to war. As a result of the SV governments weak position, the USA got involved, first by eliminating the Diem regime and then getting directly involved to the fighting. After that things got a bit trickier.
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Speaking of Vietnam. I just recently found out that there is a video of that horrible napalm drop that burned the clothes from Kim Phuc.
The video is embedded at the bottom of my post here
http://communityvillageus.blogspot.com/2012/04/burning-people.html
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Ann
The U.S. were ‘morally sick’, but so were the North Vietnamese (Communist) government. The communists were power grabbers.
What gets me angry about the ‘lefty’ movement in the U.S. during the Vietnam War was their inability to understand what was happening in Vietnam (Indochina) from their ‘cushy’ lives and position of privilege. Many Vietnamese/Cambodian/Laotian civilians didn’t have the luxury of ‘making peace’ with the Communists who were threatening to take their homes and countries.
A great documentary to watch is “Frontline” with Neil Davis, you get a understanding of what the U.S. military did (or rather did not) do during the Vietnam War.
Correction, the U.S. IS morally sick. And if this nation hopes to get anywhere in the next decade or so, it must own up to its sicknesses of militarism, materialism and racism. Period. Sure, we can point out the troubles of another nation’s government and see it as our “duty” to save the “helpless” people, but in the end it’s nothing more than blatant imperialism and hypocrisy that does no one any good, especially the U.S.
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[…] “Beyond Vietnam” (1967) is a speech Martin Luther King, Jr gave at the Riverside Church in New York exactly one year before he was shot dead." – MORE – […]
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@ Ann
This is the very same sort of argument used to excuse killing children with drones, buying slaves from Africa, and so on. By commenters right on this very blog! The only time people do NOT use this nauseating argument is when they talk about Hitler. Or the communists. Or the Taliban. Why is that?
In other words, our enemies are evil but we never are. How odd. Even though WE DO THE VERY SAME THING. In the case of Abu Ghraib Americans even used the same damn prison.
The Americans are power grabbers too. They overthrow governments, even democratically elected ones. They trained Latin American governments in torture, sold them helicopters to gun down defenceless peasants and all the rest.
Martin Luther King, to his credit, did not hold America to the low moral standards of its enemies, but to the standard of what it could become, should become.
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“Right, so most of the black people who wanted equal rights were either stupid or paid by communists.”
The “equal rights” schtick is a bit overplayed. But, yes, someone would have to be stupid not to realize they were being played by the communists,
“Americans do that too: Diem, the Shah, Saddam Hussein, Somoza, Pinochet, etc. And then there is Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo…”
I said that. Can’t you read?
“Which is pretty much what USA has been doing since 1945 in many parts of the world.”
You can’t read either eh?
Yes it is, mainly by USA and its allies.”
No. Not “mainly by USA and its allies” but every world power. Interesting how desperate you are to shift that entirely to the US.
“And this has been proven where? I seriously wonder if pot smoking acid dropping barefeet peacenicks in Monterey Park 1967 were the front line troops of communism in USA?”
You’re saying you know the east and west both engaged in subversion in toppling regimes around the world throughout the entire cold war. But you think that at the height of the cold war when there were riots and student protests that communists stayed out of it and didn’t do anything to egg it on? Interesting.
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@ Churchs
No one is shifting the blame ENTIRELY on the U.S. And it is hardly desperate.
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@churchs
That still doesn’t explain why the US had to get involved. It only explains that there was a perceived threat to a group that was in power.
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“No one is shifting the blame ENTIRELY on the U.S. abagond
Don’t play word games. sam said “mainly”. The historical record doesn’t support that.
That still doesn’t explain why the US had to get involved. anne
Yes. It does. If you aren’t capable of seeing that then no explanation from me is going to fix that.
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Why is it that when people don’t get the response they want they always resort to passive aggressive behavior? I guess it’s because of a perceived threat to power? Yes? No? I don’t know.
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@churchs:
“You’re saying you know the east and west both engaged in subversion in toppling regimes around the world throughout the entire cold war. But you think that at the height of the cold war when there were riots and student protests that communists stayed out of it and didn’t do anything to egg it on? Interesting.”
How old are you? I just ask this because it seems to me that your are either pretty ignorant or young, or both, or just naive.
You said that hippies were funded by those flaming die hard reds. I said I doubt that pot smoking hippie was a first draft choice for hard core communists. You claim that rioters and subveries, like you and J. Edgar like to call them, were funded by communists. No they were not. In the west and particulary in the USA they were funded by their moms and dads. Or in few cases by stipends. The only commies in USA who actually got any money from the Kremlin was the Communist Party of USA. That is a fact. Just ask from the FBI. They know it.
Lets just say that I know something about how super powers acted during the height of the cold war and how they operated from the first hand experience. I lived right next the one you are still affraid.
“No. Not “mainly by USA and its allies” but every world power. Interesting how desperate you are to shift that entirely to the US.”
I don’t have to shift that anywhere. USA and its allies have been behind in absolutely most of the interventions, military coups, civil wars instigated from outside, destabilizing foreign governments etc. They still are. So-called Orange revolution in Ukraine was US lead, consulted and funded operation from the get go. American “consultants” provided the education, stargies, operational guidelines etc.
Did USSR do anything like that? Yes they tried and usually failed miserably. They also had less money and know how. The chinese? They have just entered this game. USA has been at it since 1945 on and on and on. And, yes, is still at it all over the world, from EU to Afganistan, Syria, China, North Korea, Greece, Italy etc.
PS. Just so that you know too: the communism you are so much affraid of died more than 20 years ago. Perhaps it is time to move on with the times.
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@Abagond, The U.S. WAS/IS EVIL. I’m not denying that, but it’s not what I’m arguing.
I hate the U.S. (and Kissinger) for doing what it did in Vietnam. They should have continued to supply military aid (weapons, machinery) but they needed to stay out of the war (fighting). The war started years before they joined, and it took years after they left to end.
It is frustrating when other people who aren’t Vietnamese try to ‘splain’ the Vietnam War to someone who is Vietnamese like me. Just as it is frustrating to have white people ‘splain’ to POC about our own lived experiences and understanding of racism.
How come no one ever makes the comparison with what happened with South Korea and U.S. involvement? You and I both know, no one wants to live in N. Korea.
Colonialism left Vietnam/Indochina (and many parts of the world) unable to defend themselves. But the Communist block weren’t the ‘freedom fighters’ as depicted by so many on the U.S. Left.
People suffer from dichotomous thinking when it comes to the Vietnam War. Just because the U.S. is evil doesn’t mean that the other side is good. They both were evil.
“They must be committed to either picking up arms for other people (and only firing when the people tell them so), dying for other people, or just getting out of the way. In short, they must be willing to do what the people most affected and marginalized by a situation tell them to do.” from “The White Anti-Racist is an Oxymoron” by Kil Ja Kim.
This applies to the Vietnam War quite well. South Vietnamese/Cambodians and Laotian needed U.S. military aid to fight against impending northern invasion. The Hippies and white suburbia weren’t willing to send their kids off to die. They didn’t really care about ‘making love, not war’ – All the anti-war talk was just another manifestation of white racism.
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@Sam
The VC were Hanoi operatives. This is documented history. The VC weren’t effective fighters, proven by how successful the South was during the Tet Offensive. The war wasn’t lost on the ground it was lost in the Oval office.
You have to understand the history of China and Vietnam. Vietnam was also where MANY Chinese refugees came to live to escape Mao’s regime. Vietnam’s long history with China’s domination meant that many Viets were never going to support the communist block.
@Sam
You are correct. That’s exactly what happened. And unfortunately that’s what happens in a white supremacist world.
But I don’t agree with your ‘Diem regime’, that was U.S. propaganda to get involved in the war.
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@ann:
I assume you have some knowledge about the Vietnam war, perhaps trough relatives who lived trough that period?
How ever, your anti-communist stance makes you a bit blind or ignorant somehow.
“The VC were Hanoi operatives. This is documented history. The VC weren’t effective fighters, proven by how successful the South was during the Tet Offensive. The war wasn’t lost on the ground it was lost in the Oval office.”
First of all, it is extremely well documented that the VC were mostly from the south. Supported and armed by north, absolutely, but most of them were residents of the south, south vietnamese from top government officials down to those small farmes and prostitutes who were VC. Any one from the north would have been spotted in the south because fo the dialect, as you propably know. To use comparison: a guy from the Bayou would notice at once if a guy from Boston would try to pass as a cajun.
Tet was a disaster for the SVA. South Vietnamese army could not do anything without americans. It was the american forces whio saved the day during the Tet. With heavy price too.
The very reason why american troops were involved in the war was the weakness and impotence of south vietnamese military. South vietnamese army simply could not win the war at all. There are some indications that some of the very high ranking SVA officers were actually VC themselves.
When SVA took the responsibilty of the war, it fell in couple of years. Period. It was no match at all to the NVA. It never could defeat VC. US army did it during the Tet.
“But I don’t agree with your ‘Diem regime’, that was U.S. propaganda to get involved in the war.”
The history of Diem regime is extremely well documented too. It was a corrupt dictatorship owning its position first from clandestine assistance by the french and then by the CIA. When mrs Diem was joking about burning monks on US television and media, and when her husband started to imagine that he actually calls the shots in his country, CIA orchestarted the coup and elimination of the Diems.
At this point USA was still thinking that South Vietnam will handle the situation but it became evident very fast that they can not even defend their capital, not to mention the country. Thus the Tonkin Gulf charade.
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@Sam
You’re getting this information from mainstream U.S. text and sources (or maybe even the victors the VC). Have you considered the bias in it? It’s like reading text about racism just from white people. All you would hear is denial, ‘reverse racism’, ‘post-racial’. Rarely do you get the whole picture or the truth. On the rare occasion you might get white people who have heard from POC and will reiterate.
Consider getting some information from these South Vietnamese you’re slamming.
Or watch Frontline with Neil Davis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMwOiruMrj4 (you should get the DVD);
or read this:
http://www.buinhuhung.com/English/heroic_allies.htm
which is also a great piece on racism.
They’re the few sources from USAmericans about the Vietnam war told from the side of the SVN.
Neil Davis “Because it was THEIR war, it meant a great deal to them.”
I don’t have time to get into this debate with you, as I already have with many other internet people. Though one has come back saying they couldn’t believe how much propaganda and false history was written by the U.S. and NVN/VC.
On another note, this post by Abagond suddenly made me feel like this blog wasn’t a safe place for me as a person of Viet descent and I haven’t been back much since then. As much as we talk about white supremacy we forget how much of that is upheld by U.S-centricity. Because there’s this thing called American privilege (which is even posted about on this blog!) you are oblivious to.
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Ann, thanks for your views on this subject…there is nothing in your views that supports the horrible things America did in Viet Nam, you have stated you hate what they did there…so you are not supporting USA policy, but you have brought in the truth
And I respect what you said about the Korrean war very much, and that point is important.
Please dont think that just because a group of people start to cluster around a beleif, on this blog, that it can represent the whole truth, and please dont think that everyone on here reading and commenting agrees with any one cluster of bloggers on a beleif
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@Ann:
I understand your point. I am not entirely relying on the media. I have received some information from some vietnamese refugees who escaped from the communist dictatorship in the 70’s and whose families are from South Vietnam, and whose families were involved in that war, on both sides. So perhaps when they talk about the corruption and brutality of the government of SV there is some personal experiences which they are based upon. And naturally, that war, just like any wars, was not an black/white thing but a very complex and muddled series of events.
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How many broken people came back from the Vietnam? I mean half of my friends parents were screwed up from it, my father would never talk about his time there.
Then what is worst after asking those indivisuals to betray the “Thou shall not kill” they are usually the homeless, imprisoned, and mentally sick. War is stupid it is a good way of thinning young potential.
For each person we get that dies much more than just that person dies you kill a potential job creator, medical break through scientist, and line of descendant. War is the biggest stupid act of man when his brain has farted and cannot exercise reason it relies on war. I am for protecting your own country but going out to another country to redden the soils with our youth angers me. I guess I have been a teacher and a coach too long. I hate to think I am going to lose any of my students to that wretched sharp tooth face.
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Gulf of Tonkin Incident (which was a non-incident)
A made up incident used as a pretext to ramp up war against Vietnam. My understanding is that America was not in open warfare against North Vietnam yet. They needed to be able to make war openly and open their war resources openly but you need a justification to do that. I suppose setting fire to Congress and blaming it on the Vietnamese would have been too unbelievable. As they say in the opening the same lying style has been used by the U.S., as justification for some other American military engagements since.
(http://youtu.be/PfLzpmnBXFw?list=UUrmm_7RDZJeQzq2-wvmjueg)
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Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Riverside speech.
It is amazing that we are still grappling with the same issues Dr. King laid out in that speech.
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This speech was given 50 years ago today.
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Not a whole lot of grappling going on. Most of us seem quite amenable to war, seeing the nonchalance with which we view the insane Russia saber rattling, with its potential for the most horrifying kind of war of all.. The anti war movement died with Obama. He killed it. We have been more supporters of war than protesters of it. We have fulfilled King’s predictive warnings.
We are now being dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors King warned us about, having followed behind the antithesis of what Dr King stood for. Now is that time King warned of, a time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Woe to the downpressor.
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“Feel the Bern.”
maybe on domestic issues. but on war, drones and Israel – not feeling it.
To paraphrase:
‘Every bomb America drops on Iraq/Afghanistan/Libya/Syria/Pakistan destroys not just them, it destroys America:
It destroys its fight against poverty.
It destroys its good name.
It destroys its moral values.’
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@ Afrofem
You beat me to it. It is staggering how little has changed.
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@ Abagond
Sorry. I jumped the gun. April 4th is a day etched in my memory.
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