David Garrow explains

Historian and Spectator USA Life & Arts editor Dominic Green interviews historian David Garrow on his most recent findings deriving from recently disclosed documents reflecting the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King. I have embedded the podcast below. In his related Spectator USA column, Green asks whether media outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic, and the Guardian suppressed and/or disparaged Garrow’s findings for ulterior purposes.

If anyone would know whereof he speaks, Garrow would. He is a principled man of the left and perhaps the world’s foremost scholar on King and the FBI.

Garrow’s column on the newly disclosed documents appeared last week at the UK’s Standpoint under the heading “The troubling legacy of Martin Luther King.” After reviewing Garrow’s recent findings, Green writes:

No less appalling, if true, is Garrow’s claim that senior editors, almost all white and male, overruled their frequently female and non-white staff when it came to publishing [Garrow’s] findings. Naming the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, and the Atlantic, Garrow alleges that the editors are afraid of being attacked as racist by Twitter mobs — a theory that seems to be confirmed by the Post’s attack on Garrow.

We might add that King is sacred to liberalism — perhaps so much a saint that the prelates of the press are covering up his feet of clay. Whether caused by misplaced paternalism, cowardice, or simple partisanship, this is a dereliction of journalistic duty. It’s hard to imagine the same newspapers demurring from running transcripts involving Richard Nixon or Donald Trump.

You will want to check out Garrow’s Standpoint column, Green’s Spectator USA column, and the Green/Garrow podcast below. This is — all of it — not merely of historical interest, though it is certainly that. It is also of current interest in several respects including Garrow’s discussion of James Comey at about 12:00 of the podcast.

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