Martin Luther King: The Return of Otto von Bismarck

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. A day for maudlin celebration of a plaster saint, instead of the very real political genius who shaped, for better and worse, today's America. But just like Martin Luther King Jr. is regarded as Jesus 2.0, the new improved version, and the achievements and failures of the actual man who lived is lost, his actions continue to move America along the path he envisioned. And just like the Iron Chancellor, King's great triumph has sown the seeds of his own disaster, coming long after his death. Therefore let us examine both men as Machiavelli advises and admire them in as much as their actions and abilities are admirable.


Otto Von Bismarck created modern Germany. Basically out of whole cloth. A staunch practitioner of "Revolutionary Conservatism" in which he put power into the hands of the Kaiser and aristocratic Junker elite, fought Catholic culture and influence (the KulturKampf) to preserve Lutheran power, and instituted the Welfare State. From the situation wherein David McCullough, writing about John A. Roebling, escaping turmoil and government oppression in Prussia, noted that most Germans of the era mistrusted the various German states that drafted their sons, spent their lives like water, paid them nothing, and engaged in predatory taxes to fund extravagant lives, Bismarck produced safety, security, order, very limited wars (with easy victories), balance of power diplomacy, and instead of just taxes, checks from the Government. Bismarck produced a Germany, for the first time since perhaps Charlemagne, that worked. Worked for most men and women, most of the time.

But his success was his downfall. By focusing absolute power onto the Kaiser, Bismarck was left alone in desiring a status-quo power, preventing any alliance from forming against Germany by skillful diplomacy. Kaiser Wilhem, wanting an aggressive expansion of Germany commensurate with its power, sought alliances, particularly in the Balkans. Bismarck had once remarked that the Balkans were not worth the bones of a single Prussian Grenadier, but the Kaiser was the Kaiser. Bismarck was dismissed, Germany sought to prop up failing Austria-Hungary, and prepared for not a limited war against an isolated enemy with no friends and little ability to fight back (Denmark, Austria, and France respectively) but a combination of great powers: England, France, Italy, and Russia. With only the dubious contribution of Austria and the Ottoman Empire in return.

Bismarck created and wrote the destruction of modern Germany. He made Germany work, as a mostly honest, efficient, and productive place to live. But in preserving his vision of aristocratic Lutheran society, he left no one to check the Kaiser and the Junker Officer Corps who produced unwise expansion of German military interests and an even worse alliance (with collapsing, corrupt Austria-Hungary). And that without buying out either France or Russia or England, as Bismarck surely would have done. Perhaps all three. By the late 1890's, however, things were radically different from Bismarck's declaration:

Bulgaria, that little country between the Danube and the Balkans, is far from being an object of adequate importance... for which to plunge Europe from Moscow to the Pyrenees, and from the North Sea to Palermo, into a war whose issue no man can foresee. At the end of the conflict we should scarcely know why we had fought.
…
One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.

Bismarck's great triumph thus led to his great tragedy. Dismissed in 1890, by a Kaiser surrounded by syncophants, and clueless militarists, Germany drifted into a war it could not win, as opposed the short and easy wars under Bismarck.

Still one has to admire his political genius. He took enemies one at a time, and did not allow foreign enemies to collect in one grand alliance. He maintained as much as possible the traditional alliance of the Three Emperors of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, manipulated socialists, liberals, and nationalists to achieve political unification of Germany under Prussian terms, and produced a nation of mostly sober, not very corrupt, and able technocrats. His eyes were on the prize, of German unification and prosperity. While he switched tactics, focus, allies, and means, he never wavered from those ultimate goals.

Dr. King was much the same. A man of considerable political genius, whose signal accomplishment: Affirmative Action, also contains its downfall. Homer Plessy was a brave and able man. But his legal challenge to the laws of Segregation failed, where Martin Luther King succeeded. Although of dubious scholarship (his Phd dissertation had been partially plagiarized) and numerous infidelities, allegedly often with married White women, King was a political genius. From his time at Boston University, he knew well Whites and particularly elite Whites in the North. He understood the power of media and particularly television. He knew well too, the political weakness of the thin remaining part of the Tidewater Aristocracy in the South and the low quality of intelligence and agility on the part of White political leadership, the so-called "Ascendancy" that David Fischer ascribed to backwoods, rural Southern leadership in "Albion's Seed."

King's genius was in realizing that because the private car and TV had led many Whites to already leave urban areas with Blacks, for the privacy of their own home and living room, he could leverage the combination of distance and graphic pictures into a "moral crusade" by Northern, Puritan-Quaker elite Whites, against those they HATE HATE HATED, Southern Whites. His strategy was not to mount legal challenges, but provoke TV-friendly confrontations, and explicitly ask elite, Puritan-Quaker Whites, to join him as God's Drum Major for Justice, in a moral crusade to "save America."

When Bull Connor turned the police dogs and water hoses on peaceful marchers, he played right into King's hands. A bullying, "cruel" action against peaceful, non-threatening Black and White marchers played out across America's living rooms. They'd never seen anything like it. King made it all up, far more than Alinsky, by actually accomplishing his goals. By provoking attack after attack, and allowing Northern Puritan-Quaker Whites from the New England, Mid-Atlantic, Upper Midwest, Pacific, and some Western states, to do what they wanted to anyway: punish those wicked Southern Whites, King got his victory. The Civil Rights act rested upon the conviction, that to pass it was a basic requirement for simple morality by suburban, mostly Puritan-Quaker White America. Northern "Romney Republicans" such as Michigan Governor George Romney, father of Mitt, were those leading the way for the passage and support of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

What abolitionists, what extreme Reconstructionists, what W.E.B. Dubois, what George Washington Carver, could not accomplish, Martin Luther King Jr. did accomplish. At great personal risk, and through nothing more than publicity stunts designed to get media coverage. No one before (or really, since) had done such a thing, and as at was audacious and bold and altogether new, it deserves, like Bismarck's unification of Germany, to be admired.

But … King left within his own accomplishment, a poison which would ultimately destroy his goal as it accomplished it. Just like Bismarck.

Conservatives claim that Martin Luther King Jr. wanted a color-blind, non-racial society. It is true that King was against discrimination … against Black people. He was in favor of it when it came to White people. So say Jessie Jackson, Andrew Young, John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy, all agree, as part of King's inner circle, that his "Dream" speech where he wanted his four little children to be judged by the content of their character not the color of their skin, was boob bait for bubbas. Something King never meant, in any other way, than they should not be discriminated against for being Black. By contrast, there is ample evidence of King's commitment to Affirmative Action, or anti-White discrimination.

The exploitation of King's name, the distortion of his teachings for political gain, is an ugly development. It was Dr. King himself, as chair of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), who initiated the first, successful, national affirmative action policy in the U.S.-- "Operation Breadbasket."

In Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, among other cities, King staffers gathered disparity data on corporations doing business in black communities. King was so encouraged by early affirmative action efforts, he wrote: "At present, SCLC has Operation Breadbasket functioning in some twelve cities, and the results have been remarkable ... 800 new and upgraded jobs several covenants with major industries.''

King was well aware of arguments against affirmative action. Even in 1964, in Why We Can't Wait, he wrote: "Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic."

Dr. King -- who launched Operation Breadbasket in 12 American cities -- supported affirmative action because he never confused the dream with American reality. As he put it, "A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro" to compete on a just and equal basis.

In 1965 King compared affirmative action to the GI Bill. "Within common law we have ample precedents for special compensatory programs ... And you will remember that America adopted a policy of special treatment for her millions of veterans after the war." (Affirmative action for veterans is still in place today, and many qualified women are often passed over by male vets on the basis of "veteran preference").

King's quotes regarding Affirmative Action and Multi-racial society include:

"A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro ..."
-- Dr. King, quoted by Stephen B. Oates: Let the Trumpet Sound

"There is no separate white path to power and fulfillment short of social disaster, that does not share power with black aspirations for freedom and human dignity."
-- Dr. King, Where do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

"Integration is ... mutual sharing of power. White America must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of society. This is a multi-racial nation where all groups are dependent on each other."
-- Dr. King, Where do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? in A Testament of Hope; Essential Writings

"Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic."
-- Dr. King, Why We Can't Wait

All quotes found here.

In all practical terms, this meant 100 years or perhaps 200, or more likely forever, discrimination against White people in order to help Black ones. Expanded to include Hispanics, and perhaps other non-Whites against Whites. Just as Bismarck successfully unified Germany under a Prussian model of absolute monarchy and Junker control, so too did King end Jim Crow with discrimination against (the wrong sort of ) White people. By allying the Puritan-Quaker "Progressives" against Hillbillies, and various unpopular White people in the North. The people of South Boston in particular were made an example of, as the "wrong sort of White people." Too poor, too ethnic, and most importantly culturally not Puritan-Quaker "Progressive." Proud of being working class, contemptuous of education, and politically impotent, forced busing, block-busting, and other methods (including outright ethnic cleansing as in Detroit) made the punishment of those on the outside of the Black-Puritan-Quaker/Progressive alliance a reality. One that created permanent enemies.

Just as Bismarck's dream foundered on the incompetence of Kaiser Wilhelm, a man he himself raised to absolute power, so too King's vision founders on the inability of Blacks to create wealth, and the need for ever expanding burdens of Affirmative Action and wealth transfer from ordinary White people to pay for those who cannot survive without out it. All the while as Whites become a minority in their own country, and can look forward to treatment approximating that of a Black man who is "uppity" in Mississippi, circa 1950.

It cost Whites in the suburbs little to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Way to stick it to those evil racist White guys, beating people with batons, and using attack dogs on them. Nobody had to live around Blacks in the suburbs. And if they did, well an expanding economy and highly mobile nation, with cheap gas, meant there was always another suburb, right over the horizon. White flight in a nutshell. There was not much wealth transfer either, as welfare was limited at first, Mexicans were season workers sent home, with no rights or permanence, and limited presence at that.

But the logical outcome of King's Dream is the first Black Attorney General of the United States, appointed by the First Black President (or was it the second?) telling Congress that it was "an insult to my people" to suggest that Whites had Civil Rights. And that, furthermore, straight White guys could not be by definition, victims of a hate crime, and that hate crime legislation in no way protected them or acted to avenge them. The logical outcome of King's Dream is Detroit, controlled by Blacks, run by Blacks, after riots in 1943 and 1967 that ethnically cleansed Whites. Detroit is the culmination of King's Dream. Which in the end is a nightmare. A place where only endless amounts of White money, can prop up a people who remain 47% illiterate (and that's adults).

Just like Bismarck's Germany ultimately fell into disastrous militarism (by picking fights with multiple enemies it would be unlikely to defeat in concert), King's Dream depends on continuing White flight, continuing White wealth, continuing economic growth, and continuing domination of "the wrong sort of White people" by Puritan-Quaker-Progressive elites. The temporary had to be permanent, and that never happens.

As much as King was a tactical political genius, he was a strategic moron (like Bismarck). White guilt and status powers among a certain set of White people was powerful, but not all encompassing. As soon as mobility stopped, Blacks would make enemies. Permanent ones. Moreover, anti-White discrimination was far more hurtful, and felt directly, the more Whites declined as part of the population. Harm and hurt was spread over fewer and fewer who felt the lash harder and harder. Jobs that went to unqualified Blacks or Hispanics. Preferential admission to colleges and universities, the ticket to the good life, going to unqualified Blacks and Hispanics (that is the whole point of Affirmative Action -- that Blacks are not qualified and so must be favored). All these things make enemies. Under the media radar, to be sure, but the media while powerful is not the be all and end all of social power.

Moreover, come a sustained period of economic hardship, let alone sustained decline, continued mass migration, and the "Multiracial Democracy" that King envisioned will not be a bunch of rich White people sticking it to "the wrong sort of Whites" to help non-Whites. It will be an overt Hobbesian war of all against all, particularly as elites Whites are increasingly asked as Michelle Obama demands, to give up their power so non-Whites can have it.

The whole point of the Civil Rights movement was to help Blacks by sticking it to people who live in South Boston, or Detroit, or Birmingham Alabama, and were the "wrong sort" of White person. And that just creates ever larger groups of enemies, as demands for helping non-Whites grown and the "wrong sort" of White person grows and grows. White flight is turning already to White fight. "Racist" is now a joke word, as Cartman on South Park said, "in this day and age Black people can never be wrong." And -- "Black people are the one group no one can mess with. Ever!" That status, is solely the province of Black people as a magical totem of morality by White elites. Who in turn have lost the confidence of most ordinary Whites by screwing up the economy and making most Whites discriminated minorities in their own hometowns.

That in turn has Hillbilly-ized much of America. If all the Welfare goes to say, Detroit, or Mexican illegals and their kids (fully 85% of Santa Ana Unified School Kids qualify for the free and reduced lunch program, to the point where SAUSD got a waiver from the USDA to provide all students with free meals), then by definition there is little to help Whites in need. In time of economic distress. The King Model, which amounts to "Blacks sit in the front of the Bus, Whites stand in the back" is sure to produce a fight among Whites, who will get nothing from government but taxes they will evade, Italian or Greek style. Meanwhile those who slip from Elite to ordinary status are likely to be demanding aid for them, at the cost of that towards Blacks and Hispanics.

Already, in a deep recession, the First Black President offers no help to struggling Whites other than celebrating big parties, lavish vacations, and lectures from a First Lady with the biggest ass on a non-clinically obese person, on eating one's vegetables. While she downs lobster and Kobe Beef sliders. Meanwhile the borders have been thrown wide open and preference given to illegal aliens in admission and financial aid to universities and colleges, ahead of residents of other states and in-state Whites. That is the logical fruit of King's Dream -- discriminating against native Whites to help illegal aliens from Mexico.

King notably said:

"Integration is ... mutual sharing of power. White America must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of society. This is a multi-racial nation where all groups are dependent on each other."

But other than minstrel type chest beating in college and professional Basketball and Football, Whites have no needs that Black people fill. Whites are not dependent on Black people, for anything other than Rap thuggery and chest beating athletes with many illegtimate kids:



Black people and Hispanic people are dependent on White people (welfare money and other income transfers), but not the reverse. A few rich White elites depend on Black people as moral tokens and status objects, but not the rest. White America has already lived through radical restructuring of society, to its detriment. As it has become poorer, more violent, with less social and upward mobility, less physical mobility, and numerical inferiority in many places to match legal inferiority. As the only non-protected class that exists. King's folly, like that of Bismarck, was to not realize the entirely foreseeable future. That Whites in a crisis would throw out status moralizing, that parts of the Puritan-Quaker elite having fallen, would prefer to have more money/power/status for them, rather than an ever expanding non-White population. And that White flight would be endless. That White fight would never occur. Because the power of TV and status-mongering elites would last forever. Just as the wisdom of the Kaiser would always forestall unwise military action in the Balkans.

So let us remember the real man. One of unquestioned physical courage, a great gift for political tactics, one with keen insights into White social and political dynamics. Not the plaster saint of no real faults and virtues. But the real man. And while we take a moment to admire his real political genius, and courage, recognize his dream, no less than Bismarck's, has become a nightmare. And let us hope and pray it does not turn out to be ashes the way Bismarck's ultimately did.