Mehdi Hasan Slams Republicans Who Reduce ‘Socialist’ MLK’s Legacy to ‘One Line in One Speech’

MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan claimed that Republicans who quote or otherwise claim to support the mission of Martin Luther King Jr. are distorting his legacy and ignoring his progressive beliefs.

Filling in for Chris Hayes on All In, Hasan slammed former President Ronald Reagan, who signed off on designating Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a holiday, for using his words out of context and to further “right-wing” causes.

He then accused modern conservatives of using Reagan’s playbook:

Today, conservatives and Republicans who decried MLK during his lifetime for his civil rights activism, his anti-war speeches, and his very open support for socialism and socialist economic policies want to pretend he wasn’t a man of the left, wasn’t a radical who stood up to and loudly critiqued both economic injustice and racial inequity in America.

And so they have enthusiastically pushed what Cornel West has called the Santa Claus-ification of Dr. King, and they have done so by disingenuously focusing on one line in one speech. Today Republican politicians and Fox hosts follow in Reagan’s footsteps and take every chance they can to quote this one line from Martin Luther King Jr.

Hasan then refereed to King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, in which King famously stated, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Hasan played a number of clips of prominent Republicans reciting the words. The MNSBC host accused Republicans who use the portion of the speech of doing so “shamelessly.”

Noting that the line from the speech was merely “aspirational,” Hasan went on the attack:

Put all that aside for a moment and think how dishonest, how ignorant, how cynical you have to be to reduce the views of a man who gave over 2,500 public speeches, gave dozens upon dozens of TV and newspaper interviews and wrote five books, to reduce his views to a single out-of-context, self-serving line from the only speech of his you’ve even heard of.

In a speech in 1966, King suggested the country embrace socialism.

“There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism,” he said. “Call it what you may, call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God’s children.”
Watch above, via MSNBC.