White Supremacists Are Never Murdered in America, but Anti-Racism Activists Are

The right is violent and the left is slaughtered, but nobody seems to care

There is only one political debate that is worth your energy, and conservatives absolutely refuse to engage it. The only question you should be asking is: How do we stop right-wing violence?

Conservatives will answer that “there are bad people on both sides.” This statement is a lie. There is nobody on the left that is out murdering people. There are no images of the burned and tortured bodies of white supremacists being hung from trees. Ask conservatives to tell you the last time they can remember a white supremacist getting murdered. They can’t because in America, white supremacists are allowed to live to a ripe old age.

If you are anti-racism, you’re likely to get shot or beaten or lynched. This is the kind of thing that needs to dominate our media instead of lies about what CRT is about. This is the kind of thing that needs to dominate our history classes. This should dominate our media.

Instead, everyone pretends this isn’t the reality.

White supremacists are lawless terrorists who routinely threaten and practice violence. They take the lives of our best people. Then they turn around and claim they’re the “victims” and the media listens to them. They’re not the victims. They’re the oppressors. They’re torturers. They’re murderers. We have to demand something is done about them.

Martin Luther King Jr.

On the third Monday of January we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day. However, the ongoing hate campaign from white supremacists continues to dominate the narrative of his life and death even to this day.

King had to know the moment he started his activism for justice and equality, he’d signed his own death warrant in racist America. On April 4th, 1968 King was fatally shot by James Earl Ray.

Or was he?

The problem with history in the United States is that there are forces that always insist on looking at it through a white supremacist lens. Even after death, these evil, oppressive individuals want to claim ownership of a story and become violent if anyone even suggests we should consider something other than their approved narrative.

Above all, white supremacists do not want us to even consider that there might have been a larger plot to kill MLK. However, there is evidence that this is the case.

In fact, the idea that there had been a conspiracy to kill King — that, even if Ray fired the gun, he did so at the behest of larger forces — began to spread right away, and not without some reason. As Sides points out, it isn’t surprising that members of King’s family and his fellow civil-rights leaders would have suspected that some larger government conspiracy to kill the minister must been at play. After all, the FBI stalked King and his cohort in order to, as Sides puts it, “ruin and smear the civil rights movement.” The ugly reach of that campaign has only become clearer over the years — Olivia B. Waxman

Consider this the next time you drive through a neighborhood and see a house covered in “Trump 2020” and “Back the Blue” signs. The white supremacist tactic is to turn worshiping the police into a sacred concept. This way, they incite the public to react with violence if you even dare to bring up historical facts. But there are plenty of historical facts to suggest Ray was involved in white supremacy.

On June 8, Scotland Yard investigators arrested Ray at a London airport. He was trying to fly to Belgium, with the eventual goal, he later admitted, of reaching Rhodesia. Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, was at the time ruled by an oppressive and internationally condemned white minority government. Extradited to the United States, Ray stood before a Memphis judge in March 1969 and pleaded guilty to King’s murder in order to avoid the electric chair. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison.

Three days later, he attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming he was innocent of King’s assassination and had been set up as a patsy in a larger conspiracy — History.com Editors

Having a federal holiday named for Martin Luther King Jr. is a poor way to honor the man’s legacy. Instead, we should be asking pointed questions about his murder.

Based on the response to the white supremacist critical race theory smear campaign, how do you think the intolerant citizens of this nation would react if you suggested children be taught the true circumstances of MLK’s murder?

[I]n 1997 a dying Ray told Dexter King, his victim’s son, that he didn’t do it. That claim prompted the family to push unsuccessfully for a new trial. Ray died while that campaign was ongoing — Olivia B. Waxman

Even in 1997, the family was still looking for answers. They wanted a new trial as a way to reopen the investigation and bring further evidence to light. This effort was obstructed until it became impossible due to Ray’s death. There’s no justice for a black man in America even when that man has a federal holiday in his honor.

White supremacists in law enforcement

It’s not a deranged conspiracy theory to mention that white supremacists are present in law enforcement. This is a fact. How could anyone doubt this assertion based on the complete lack of legal consequences white supremacists suffer for their violence and lawlessness?

White supremacists and other domestic extremists maintain an active presence in U.S. police departments and other law enforcement agencies. A striking reference to that conclusion, notable for its confidence and the policy prescriptions that accompany it, appears in a classified FBI Counterterrorism Policy Guide from April 2015, obtained by The Intercept. The guide, which details the process by which the FBI enters individuals on a terrorism watchlist, the Known or Suspected Terrorist File, notes that “domestic terrorism investigations focused on militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists often have identified active links to law enforcement officers,” and explains in some detail how bureau policies have been crafted to take this infiltration into account — Alice Speri

White supremacists make their presence known on a regular basis. They were present at the January 6th terrorist attack on Capitol Hill. They’re present at your local school board meetings threatening violence against anyone who tries to teach critical race theory. They were present at the Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.

They are out murdering people. It’s in the news. White supremacists are never murdered. The only people getting murdered are those that try to resist white supremacists! This is an ongoing terror threat that should be the primary cause of concern for every American citizen.

You might think of lynchings as a disgraceful and barbaric practice from the past, but they continue to this day. In 1998, James Byrd was chained to a car by three white supremacists and dragged to his death in the streets of Jasper, Texas. In 2020, Ahmaud Arbery was fatally shot while jogging near Brunswick, Georgia. The three white men charged with killing Arbery claimed he was trespassing.

The videotaped death of George Floyd was a modern-day lynching. Floyd was killed in broad daylight by police officer Derek Chauvin, who held Floyd down with a knee on his neck for more than nine minutes — History of Lynching in America

White supremacists are never lynched. The other side is better than they are. Do you see what they’re doing to us? We can’t even comprehend their mindset because we would never wish to torture somebody to death. White supremacists do that all… the… time!

They’re sociopaths! We can’t reason with them. We can’t debate them. We can’t convince them to stop killing us. Instead, we have to get the white supremacists out of law enforcement and politics, and then hold these deranged domestic terrorists legally accountable.

Don’t let them hijack the narrative

I have lost all patience for people who insist I must try to reach across the aisle and reason with white supremacists. I’m not going to put my biracial children in a room with people who are afflicted with such cognitive dysfunction that they think my family is sub-human and can therefore be tortured and killed without consequence.

Too many people you talk to want to skip off this reality like it’s an unreasonable concern. Look at the statistics! Look at the FBI reports! Look at the news! White supremacists are violent murderers and they’re VERY active!

You have a right to say, “I will not continue this debate with you until you acknowledge that we have to put an end to right wing acts of terrorism, violence, and murder.” If they try to insist there is violence on the left, cite the FBI report, cite reality! Ask them when was the last time a white supremacist was murdered. When was one burned alive, had his limbs cut off, and was hung from a tree? When?

IT HAS NEVER HAPPENED!

The only people who are being slaughtered are those that defend the cause of basic decency. In fact, I’m probably putting a target on my back just by writing this. But I won’t join the ranks of white supremacists out of fear. The idea of murdering people fills me with disgust and sadness. I wouldn’t endure their company even to save my life. The cowards in our nation who are pressured by fabricated fears into voting for conservatives are signing the death warrants of the innocent, and they don’t even recognize it.

Nobody is entitled to that level of ignorance. Make the ruthless violence and lawlessness of the political right our primary political issue. Everything else is nothing more than a distraction. We have both decency and truth on our side. Don’t let them bully you, they’ve gotten away with that for too long.