MLK as plaster saint

Nicky Kristol has some decent advice for the Palestinians:

“On Martin Luther King Day, I wish more Palestinians would absorb the lessons of King and Gandhi and use non-violent but confrontational approaches in challenging settlements, etc. Non-violence is not only morally superior to terrorism, it’s also more effective in challenging a democracy.”

I’m not sure which is worse, Kristol’s cluelessness on how MLK’s activism was recieved back in the day (not well) or his cluelessness about the Palestinian struggle (non-violence has been tried).

But don’t be fooled in thinking this cluelessness is anything but deliberate. MLK, like Gandhi before him, has long since been turned into a plaster saint, the perfect liberal idea of what a civil rights activist or freedom fighter has to be like, with all the more …controversial… parts filed off. It’s an old tactic, also used by people like Christopher Hitches to explain why they did support the Vietcong in their struggle against an US occupation, but not the Iraqi resistance. completely ahistorical of course, and the same people glorifying MLK today would’ve been the first to denounce him had they been there at the time, but in a media climate in which ignorance is king, it’s a tactic that works well. Just look at some of the comments at the post linked above.