For me it has to be Malcom X, I’m not American, but I read his autobiography when I was young and it left a life long impression on me about justice and resiliency. He grew up in an extremely oppressive society, his dad was murdered and his mother was sent to the loony bin and he was clearly lost and traumatized. When he went to jail he was smart enough to be like what the hell, why am I here? Educating himself and channeling his energy into caring about others and justice transformed him into one of the most powerful and well respected leaders of his time.
He is often denigrated by Americans as violent and contrasted with King Jr. but by all accounts whenever he was in a position to project violence he chose de-escalation like during the Harlem riots and saved lives as there were people in the US in positions of military power who would have loved an excuse to do to them what they did to the indigenous across the entire country.
He was angry but principled and really set a template for me about how to be a leader and help me process my own anger and channel it into something more positive.
Cassius Marcellus Clay was the son of one of the wealthiest slave owners in America and grew up to be the single most influential and most dangerous abolitionist in American history. He had so many duels with slavers, and won so many of them, that he became statistically the most dangerous duelist to ever exist in North America.
When his cousin, Kentucky senator Henry Clay ran for president, Cassius wanted to come campaign for him down South. Henry vetoed this out of concerns that Cassius would come down south and duel so many slave owners to the death that it could be considered election interference.
The Fat Electrician has an excellent video on the life and times of Clay, I highly recommend it. And if you’re wondering, yes, Muhammad Ali was named after this Cassius Clay.
The Fat Electrician’s video was great but he I feel left out a couple of things that I think are important to add. First is that he used his influence in the Russian court to advocate for the end of the surf system. Slavery was his primary focus but he actively opposed all forms of indentured servitude and was involved in the freeing of more forced laborers than any other single individual in history. Also he negotiated the purchase of Alaska.
Second is Clay’s Battalion. When the Civil War began Washington DC was undefended and there was an order to evacuate because of fears that Virginia would get soldiers there before the Federal Army. Clay was in Washington to be appointed as the ambassador to Russia and, during the evacuation, he started grabbing men off the street to defend the capital. He organized about 300 defenders and occupied the White House and the Navy Yard until federal troops arrived to take over.
It sounds by all accounts like he went over to Russia and just continued being the exact same man that he was back home. And the Russians of the time loved him.
I aspire to have principles that I stick to with the gusto that Cassius Clay exhibited. I didn’t even know about Clay’s Battalion but I believe it on sight because that sounds like exactly what he would do in that situation.
King was largely reviled in his time. The almost universally loved King of today is a sanitized, defanged, ahistorical version. Mandela is another example, but there are many.
V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution:
What is now happening to Marx’s theory has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes fighting for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. Today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labor movement concur in this doctoring of Marxism. They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are now “Marxists” (don’t laugh!). And more and more frequently German bourgeois scholars, only yesterday specialists in the annihilation of Marxism, are speaking of the “national-German” Marx, who, they claim, educated the labor unions which are so splendidly organized for the purpose of waging a predatory war!
I was hoping you would expound on the King bits about being sanitized.
It’s been done by those more knowledgeable than me.
- Teen Vogue (don’t laugh—they put out some good stuff): Martin Luther King Jr. Was More Radical Than We Remember
- Hampton Institute: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Socialist Within
- Wikipedia:
I dunno know what the Marx quite has to do with King. Very different kinds of revolution, the main one being non violent.
Furthermore is kind of tragic what happened with Lenin’s legacy, his thought being blunted similarly into stalinist autocracy.
I dunno know what the Marx quite has to do with King. Very different kinds of revolution, the main one being non violent.
MLK Jr.'s march was more violent than the BLM protests were, and MLK Jr. was the moderate option compared to the Black Panthers and Malcolm X. MLK Jr.'s radicalism is intentionally blunted and obscured.
Furthermore is kind of tragic what happened with Lenin’s legacy, his thought being blunted similarly into stalinist autocracy
It was more Kruschev onward where the Soviet system started to meaningfully diverge from Lenin.
Lemmitors would’ve called King a tankie
Quit trying to pretend “tankie” means “communist” and not “authoritarian bootlicker.” MLK wasn’t even slightly a “tankie” regardless of how leftist his views were.
Quit trying to pretend “tankie” means “communist” and not “authoritarian bootlicker.”
As soon as Liberals stop using it to mean Communist.
Tankie was originally a Trotskyist term for the people that supported tolling tanks into Hungary in the 50s.
Of course, the term “authoritarian bootlicker” is a funny one, as its purveyors have a habit of recycling and promulgating the propaganda pushes of the US State Department and opposition to that tendency is often what gets one labelled a tankie. Like when MLK spoke positively of Castro’s revolution or a Vietnam united under Ho Chi Minh rather than targeted for bombing by the US. Though I am being generous: so many people using the term are so politically illiterate that they apply it to basically anything vaguely left that they disagree with.
I think you’d be calling him a tankie.
You’re correct about the definition of “tankie,” but you’re taking MLK way the Hell out of context to falsely accuse him of being one.
Feynman, taught me it’s okay to question people, people grow when they’re questioned, and it isn’t wrong to speak up when you don’t know something even if everyone else seems to know that thing, because maybe group think has everyone assuming everybody else knows what’s going on, and that’s when shit can go seriously wrong.
I love him as well. Such an inspirational guy
Alan Turing. My government did him dirty.
Those Chinese astronomers who documented a supernova from which we can now study the remnants of with precise timing.
Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins.
Thousands of generations knew the moon as a light in the sky. They went to the sky and saw the Earth.
Marquis de Lafayette
Fought in American revolution, key figure in French.
Born into aristocracy them said fuck that let’s go see what liberty is about. Tried his best even through events spun out of control. Always stuck up for the people despite his position.
Abolitionist. Tried to get Washington to free slaves as example, left Lafayette on read.
“If I had known that by fighting for America I was creating a nation of slaves, I would have never raised my sword.” - butchered to a certain degree but sentiment remains.
Guy was pretty neat, found himself in some of the most important events I’m history and stuck to his ideals his whole life. Admirable.
Martin Luther King Jr
John Brown. The man stood up for what was right, even at the cost of his own life.
Some say he was crazy, I say that it’s a normal reaction to slavery.
Abso-goddamn-lutely.
Abso-goddamn-lutely.
Richard Stallman
Who else can survive for years on eating their own foot-skin? :-P
😭 that was so weird
Fred Hampton, he showed a generation how to build dual power and properly threaten the settler colonial governments of North America. Sadly, that government saw the threat to power he actually posed because he was so effective and they murdered him for it.
Rosa Parks, full stop ❤️
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Marcus Aurelius and his reflections on stoicism.
Heroes have a way of always disappointing. There’s people like Malcom X, John Brown or Thomas Paine who I’d say were the good guys of their time, but I really try not to lionise them beyond the flawed humans they were.
