Martin Luther King Blasts Beck Allies in 1965 Playboy Article

Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1965 interview with Playboy provides insight into what the late civil-rights leader would have to say about Glenn Beck’s political movement, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Discovery Channel attacker James Jae Lee.

Glenn Beck made King the centerpiece of last weekend’s “Restoring Honor” rally, held on the 47^th anniversary of King’s iconic “I Have a Dream Speech.” Beck even went so far as to compare himself to King.

The rally he organized “picks up Martin Luther King’s dream that has been distorted and lost” and his supporters “are the inheritors and the protectors of the civil rights movement.” Unfortunately for Beck’s argument, he’s associating with some of King’s greatest enemies.

Like so many of his right-wing pals, Beck has taken a fierce stand against illegal immigration. He’s so opposed, in fact, that he has praised the ultraconservative Christian group John Birch Society, which opposes NAFTA, illegal immigration and even the income tax. Beck says they “make sense.” Dr. King would say otherwise. In fact, he did.

“The Birchers thrive on sneer and smear, on the dissemination of half-truths and outright lies,” King said of the group in 1965. “It would be comfortable to dismiss them as the lunatic fringe… but some priests and ministers have also shown themselves to be among them.”

King’s comments are of particular importance to Beck’s movement, because the “Restoring Honor” coalition includes the Black Robe Regiment, religious figures who fight a holy war on “tyrannical government,” much like the Birchers.

“They are a very dangerous group,” warned King to Playboy. “They could become even more dangerous if the public doesn’t reject the un-American travesty of patriotism that they espouse.” Considering that conclusion, it’s pretty unlikely he would approve of Beck and his ideological allies “reclaiming” the civil rights movement.

King would also have plenty to say about another immigration-related figure: Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, against whom the Justice Department has filed a lawsuit obstructing an investigation into his police force’s procedures in immigration cases.

Arpaio, a fierce advocate of his state’s draconian immigration law, refuses to stand down because, “I am the elected sheriff. I don’t take orders from the federal government.”

The Sheriff’s tough talking and strong arming have made him a right wing hero, and some have compared him to King’s arch-nemesis, Alabama’s segregationist Governor George Wallace.

“[Wallace] symbolizes in this country many of the evils that were alive in Hitler’s Germany. He is a merchant of racism, peddling hate under the guise of States’ rights,” King told “Playboy” of the famously racist Republican. Arpaio’s opponents often say the same thing about him.

King’s 1965 remarks about non-violent activism carry extra weight in the wake of James Jae Lee’s attack on the Discovery Channel building this week. “A strong man must be militant as well as moderate,” King said of non-violent resistance. “If I am to merit the trust invested in me… I must be both of these things. This is why nonviolence is a powerful as well as a just weapon.”

King would have disapproved greatly of Lee and other domestic extremists. “Here in America, we’ve got to live together,” he said. “We’ve got to find a way to reconcile ourselves to living in community, one group with the other.”

Dr. King’s words ring true after all these years. The threats of which King spoke still loom large, proving that his dream has still not been achieved, and the iconic leader has proclaimed, in his own prescient words, that those who are claiming his mantle have it all wrong.