reSee.it Video Transcript AI Summary
Speaker 0: He delivered a speech at Riverside Church on 04/04/1967, a year to the date before he was assassinated. And that was a powerful anti war speech that he delivered.
Speaker 1: What would you say was the significance of that particular speech?
Speaker 0: The real significance was that it put him, his footprints heavily into the anti war movement for the first time. And he termed The United States the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. And so he was rising as a severe principal critic of the government in that speech. Another negative significance is that he was attacked from all sides. He was called a traitor by mainstream media. Millions of dollars were withdrawn from his organization, Southern Christian Leadership Conference. So he lost a great deal by taking that position. All of that is significant.
Speaker 1: What do think was the primary motivation behind the killing?
Speaker 0: I think assassinations, political assassinations are a last resort, as a rule. But I think in terms of The United States from what I've observed and throughout its history, and there have been assassinations other than those in the sixties, remember, I think it's a last resort. I think if they can, if a person is troublesome to them and potentially can develop a following, I think they have to stop him. Now they can do that by rendering him unemployable, by having him set up in some kind of a scandal or sexual activity that destroys his credit or her credibility. They can buy him off by giving him a job or position.
There are a variety of techniques by blacking them out in terms of the media. And so if they can't control any other way, and the person is that critical in terms of potentially mobilizing people, that's when political assassinations take place. Assassination is the last resort. Martin King was assassinated not only because he was bringing enormous thought to the whole Vietnam War effort opposing it and the corporate militarists of the society, the weapons providers, energy providers, all of that were going to lose huge fortunes of money if that war ended. So it was not only that but it was the fact that he was going to bring half a million people to Washington in the Poor People's March.
And the military believed that they would see their mission as a failure because they would go to the congress, try to get them to change the the priorities for public funding from from the military, take some money from the military, and bring it into social services programs, and they wouldn't be successful. And that would that would radicalize the group to such a point where they might have a revolution on the streets of Washington with masses they couldn't control. They didn't have the troops. Westmoreland wanted 200,000 more in Vietnam. They didn't have those.
They certainly didn't have the troops to put down that kind of revolution on the streets. So they had to kill King, make sure he didn't bring that kind of dynamic into Washington.