MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan claimed that Republicans who quote or otherwise declare to strengthen the mission of Martin Luther King Jr. are distorting his legacy and ignoring his revolutionary 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 the use of his words out of context and to additional “proper-wing” reasons.

He then accused brand new conservatives of using Reagan’s playbook:

Nowadays, conservatives and Republicans who decried MLK all over his lifetime for his civil rights activism, his anti-conflict speeches, and his very open fortify for socialism and socialist economic policies wish to faux he wasn’t a person of the left, wasn’t a thorough who stood up to and loudly critiqued both financial injustice and racial inequity in The us.

And so they have got enthusiastically pushed what Cornel West has known as the Santa Claus-ification of Dr. King, and they have got finished so through disingenuously specializing in one line in a single speech. Nowadays Republican politicians and Fox hosts observe in Reagan’s footsteps and take each chance they are able to to cite this one line from Martin Luther King Jr.

Hasan then refereed to King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, by which King famously said, “I even have a dream that my 4 little youngsters will at some point live in a nation where they’re going to not be judged by way of the colour of their skin, but by using the content of their personality.”

Hasan performed various clips of distinguished Republicans reciting the phrases. The MNSBC host accused Republicans who use the section of the speech of doing so “shamelessly.”

Noting that the road from the speech was in simple terms “aspirational,” Hasan went on the attack:

Put all that aside for a second and suppose how dishonest, how ignorant, how cynical you need 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 cut back his views to a single out-of-context, self-serving line from the one speech of his you’ve even heard of.

In a speech in 1966, King urged the united states include socialism.

“There have to be higher distribution of wealth and possibly The us must transfer toward a democratic socialism,” he said. “Call it what you can also, name it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, however there should be a better distribution of wealth inside this usa for all of God’s children.”
Watch above, by way of MSNBC.

The submit Mehdi Hasan Slams Republicans Who Cut back ‘Socialist’ MLK’s Legacy to ‘One Line in One Speech’ first appeared on Mediaite.