Since I've suspended a lot of my Pop Culture posts for this weekend, in light of the circumstances and ongoing story in Tucson, I thought I would play one of the lectures delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King over CBC Radio in Canada in 1967. Part of the Massey Lecture series, this one is the third of five lectures Dr. King made on the subjects of Civil Rights, non-violence and the atmosphere of alienation that permeated the 1960's.

Dr. Martin Luther King: “Nothing in our glittering technology can raise man to new heights, because material growth has been made an end in itself. And in the absence of moral purpose, man himself becomes smaller as the works of man become bigger. Another distortion in the technological revolution is that, instead of strengthening democracy at home it has helped to eviscerate it. Gargantuan industry and government, woven into an intricate computerized mechanism leaves a person outside. The sense of participation is lost, the feeling that ordinary individuals influence important decisions vanishes and man becomes separated and diminished when an individual is no longer a true participant, when he no longer feels a sense of responsibility to his society, the content of democracy is emptied. When culture is degraded and vulgarity enthroned, when the social system does not build security but induces peril, inexorably the individual is impelled to pull away from a soulless society. This process produces alienation.”

In light of all that's gone in the past 24 hours, one would imagine those circumstances and that atmosphere still pervade. And so does the voice of Conscience.

As it did then, as it does now.

It's interesting to realize David Duke has been around for a while, at least the past thirty years. Since his recent affiliations with the Tea Party movement, many in that movement, have been quick to deny there has ever been anything racist or anti-Semitic about him or anything he stands for. In fact some quick research gets you some very glossed over phrases like "white national" when used to describe his ideology.

On January 9, 1974 then National Information Director of the KKK David Duke agreed to an interview with talk show host Michael Jackson for Los Angeles radio station KABC. The twenty minute interview blows a few myths.

Michael Jackson: “Do you find anything admirable in Nazism?”

David Duke: “Oh I think that they had a couple points there that were right on.”

Jackson: “Really?”

Duke: “Certainly they were. There are very few things on this earth that are totally wrong . .

Jackson: “What is wrong?”

Duke: “ I think they were right about race.”

Jackson: “And they had the final solution?”

Duke: “I don’t agree with that kind of a statement.”

Jackson: “But they were right about race you said.”

Duke: “I think that they were.”

Jackson: “And they had the final solution, they had ovens.”

Duke: “Well I don’t agree with that. I don’t think . .I don’t think genocide is an answer. I think race mixing is a genocide of the races.”

And there's rumors he's investigating a try for President in 2012.

(Beneath the posture - afraid of shadows, most living things, life in general)

Note: In lieu of the events surround today's tragic shooting, I have suspended my usual weekend posts and am re-posting this entry from August 2009. It only seems logical. Gordon.

With all the talk, all the hate all the posturing going on - not only about the current Health Care debate, but our current state of life and society in general, I was wondering if this was anything new, some new direction our society had suddenly and dangerously taken.

Regrettably, no. As is evidenced in this documentary, part of the Second Sunday series produced for NBC Radio on March 3, 1969 - we've been a country fed on fear, hate and paranoia for a very long time. It appears to have cropped up in our DNA.

Frank McGee (Narrator): “Have we had time to become, or do we care to become something other than a collection of irresponsible individuals, having in common little more than a toleration, if not an endorsement of violence?”

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. “We are today the most frightening people on this planet. The ghastly things we do to our own people, the ghastly things we do to other people, these must at least compel us to look searchingly at ourselves and our society before hatred and violence rushes on to more evil, and finally tear our nation apart. . . . we cannot blame the epidemic of murder at home on deranged and solitary individuals, separate from the rest of us. For these individuals are plainly weak and suggestible men stamped by our society with a birth rite of hatred and a compulsion toward violence. We must recognize, I believe that the evil is in us, that it springs from some dark intolerable tension in our history and our institutions. It is almost as though some primal curse had been fixed on our nation. We are a violent people with a violent history, and the instinct for violence has seeped into the bloodstream of our national life.”

And considering 1969 was a comparatively good year in retrospect.

Forty years on it's only gotten stranger - or maybe the microscope is looking more closely.

In any event . . .

(Robert Shelton - Imperial Wizard of the KKK - life of the party)

With the current wave of hatespeak flooding the air and cable, I noticed a striking similarity in all of it; that strange desire to take half-truths, outright lies and fabrications and somehow weave them into plausible, factual events and speak about them with an air of honest-to-God authority.

So I stumbled across an interview done by Marsha Tompkins at WBAI in New York with Imperial Wizard of the KKK Robert Shelton on December 23, 1969, conducted at his home in Tuscaloosa Alabama.

Shelton makes no bones about the fact that he's anti just about everything and every one on the planet. Tompkins makes no bones about being intimidated and doesn't question any of his logic. Which, in retrospect was probably a good thing, because it allowed him to spew and continue spewing in a way that would have ground any other interview to a screaming halt. In this context, Shelton is seen for the person he really was; petty, vindictive, ignorant, arrogant and terrified.

Pick which wingnut personality he most closely resembles today. Without too much trouble you'll probably find a lot. The common denominators are hate and ignorance and an overwhelming fear.

(They would have you believe they are as American as Apple Streudel!)

(All for the sake of dignity and a sandwich)

Hard to imagine that only 48 years ago today, a group of people, black and white, got on buses and rode South, attempting to bring an end to segregation in bus station waiting rooms and lunch counters. In 1961 it was illegal to mix races in social settings in the south - there were separate bathrooms, restaurants, hotels, waiting rooms, beaches. If you grew up during the end of Apartheid in South Africa, and were witness to the sweeping change that took place in the 1990's there, realize that pretty much the same atmosphere prevailed in the South in America in the 1960's. It was a horrific struggle in Alabama and Mississippi in 1961, but it was the turning point in race relations in America. When the first Freedom Riders went into Alabama, they were not greeted as liberators. Rather as agitators, communist inspired - part of some evil plot as the KKK, White Citizens Council, American Nazi Party and countless other hate groups would like to say. Buses were stoned and burned - Freedom Riders were pulled from buses and clubbed, beaten or tossed in jail on a myriad of trumped-up charges.

In response, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sent Federal Marshals to enforce Civil Rights laws, ensuring safety of the protesters. It drew national attention and continued a struggle that began in the 1950's when the Supreme Court ruled Segregation of Public Schools was illegal. Slowly things began to change, but it was certainly not overnight. 1961 began a new era in the Civil Rights movement and it would be met with waves of violence from hate groups, bent on preserving a society where racism was the norm, a society run on fear and hate, a society doomed to implode on its own ignorance.

A segment of our society which sadly, still exists today.

Here is an NBC News Special recapping the events in Alabama in May 1961 called "Alabama USA" as well as some local (Montgomery Alabama) news reports, all as it was happening.

(Fear and Ignorance: Priceless)