From King to Mugabe

Wall Street Journal editorial

Summary: Left loved Mugabe, because he was a marxist liberator, and so Western leftists supported him and ignored his thuggish murders, from the Fifth brigade to today's violence.

Key passage?

This is the essence of totalitarianism, a political order that recognizes no higher authority, no limits and no decencies.

Which brings us back to Martin Luther King Jr. In his 1958 essay "My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence," King described his encounter with, and rejection of, Marxism. "Since for the Communist there is no divine government," he wrote, "no absolute moral order, there are no fixed, immutable principles; consequently almost anything – force, violence, murder, lying – is a justifiable means to the 'millennial' end. . . . I am convinced now, as I was then, that man is an end because he is a child of God."

Unlike some of his counterparts in the civil rights movement, King not only accepted the American political system, he demanded it. .... His political genius, like that of the Founders, was to lead a revolution in the name of restoration – the restoration of God's given order for all men, irrespective of race.

There is a final ironic contrast here between King and Mr. Mugabe. Though a political nihilist, Mr. Mugabe, at 84, clings almost impressively to what remains of his power, and his life. On the day before his murder at age 39, King was a man at peace. "I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man," he said. He was liberated. Mugabe, the "liberator," is not.