Russia Tried to Use Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Assassination to Start a Race War

[Anon-C]

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/russia-tried-to-use-martin-luther-king-jr-s-assassination-to-start-a-race-war-9eeab04f1b82

Russia Tried to Use Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Assassination to Start a Race War
The plot involved the KKK, the Jewish Defense League, black militants … and a bombing
Darien Cavanaugh
Mar 14, 2017

The Cold War often brings to mind visions of cloak-and-dagger spy escapades in Eastern Europe and Moscow — or the countless coups, revolutions, proxy wars and clandestine ops that pitted Communist and Western interests against one another in developing nations around the world.

Amid these sensational tropes of international espionage, it’s easy to forget the KGB and other intelligence agencies were highly active within the United States. Their exploits here weren’t quite as extravagant, but they went far beyond mundane intelligence gathering.

There were, of course, Soviet operatives in the United States who did focus strictly on intelligence. In the 1980s, a German-American spy hacked hundreds of networked military computers and sold the information to Russia, and KGB field stations established a massive surveillance program that monitored U.S. radar and satellite transmissions.

The Kremlin also ordered its agents in America to generate social unrest, undermine faith in the government and develop plans to sabotage targets in the military, energy and infrastructure sectors.
One such campaign sought to capitalize on the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — by using it as a pretext for inciting a full-blown race war.
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[notdarkyet]

1. Is their plane still here? Send them off. How long does it take to unload a cargo plane? Don't

Trust them. Probably staying at the White House. Go home ruskies.

[appalachiablue]

2. Rings a bell, bloody awful intrigue, interference and espionage

[The Magistrate]

3. Just Pissing Into A Downpour, Sir

Anyone sentient at the time knew what was going to happen immediately the news Dr. KIng was shot came over on the radio. Riots verging on insurrection were common in large cities through the mid-sixties. Any attempts at fomenting 'race war' by the Soviets would have had no particular effect save perhaps to pad the budgets and expense accounts of operatives.

A more salient line of Soviet influence, both actual and perceived, relates to the Civil Rights movement itself. Segregationists in Dr. King's time frequently charged 'integration' was a Communist plot, and that Communists were behind, and controlled, the Civil Rights movement. There is no need to go into florid details of just what this 'commie plot' aimed for, but at the South, and in some quarters elsewhere, they were widely believed. As with many such delusions on the right, there was a grain of truth to the claim, though hardly one sufficient to support the outlandish structure reared up upon it.

First, before the Second World War, 'equality for the Negro' was a part of the CPUSA platform, and the lawyers aiding blacks who were the objects of unjust frame-ups in Southern courts were often members of the Lawyers Guild, an organization that was associated with the CPUSA.

Second, in the early going of the Cold War, as European colonial powers were facing independence movements in Africa, segregation laws and the history of lynchings in the United States became an effective tool for the Soviets in courting independence movements in Africa, to turn them to a pro-Soviet course, or at least to opposing the West. One of the reasons Mr. Kennedy, an ardent Cold Warrior, supported the Civil Rights movement to the degree he did, was to draw the teeth of this line of Soviet agitation in Africa.