Dr. King on Democracy, Demagogues, and Fascism
A survey of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches, sermons, and writings leaves little doubt as to how he would view demagogues like Donald Trump and oligarchs like Elon Musk.
Juanita Abernathy, Ralph Abernathy, Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr., Floyd McKissick, Stokely Carmichael, and many, many others, marching into Jackson, Mississippi, 1966. [Bob Fitch photography archive, © Stanford University Libraries.]
In his last essay, “A Testament of Hope,” Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described the national mood of 1968 in terms many might today find frustratingly familiar: “If we look honestly at the realities of our national life, it is clear that we are not marching forward; we are groping and stumbling; we are divided and confused.”
Among the interconnected problems he saw afflicting the nation 57 years ago—injustices and outrages of war, racism, economic inequality, corporatism, capitalism, poverty, militarism, and more—Dr. King was also profoundly troubled by threats to democracy itself from authoritarian impulses in U.S. society, and from reactionary right-wing extremism.
King’s warnings about fascism, and his critiques of the Republican Party of his time, and what he called “the fanaticism of the right,” are unlikely to appear in celebrations of his legacy this weekend. However, a close reading of his rhetoric uncovers a prophetic public voice that never hesitated to call out, for example, “race baiters [in] the political arena”; “white racists in Congress”; “leaders [who] lie”; a “fanatical right wing”; and “demagogue[s]”—to name just a few.
A survey of King’s speeches, sermons, and writings leaves little doubt as to how he would view demagogues like Donald Trump and oligarchs like Elon Musk. We don’t have to speculate, or try to imagine what Dr. King might say, when we can read what he said. By engaging his work and his words as citizen-scholars, we enable King to once again speak for himself.
Throughout the thirteen years of his public ministry from 1955 to 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was consistently concerned with democracy, fascism, and authoritarianism—issues that have come crashing to the forefront in the Trump era. In speeches from the late 1950s he described “the conflict which we witness in the world today between totalitarianism and democracy.”
He frequently spoke of democracy (and the United States itself) as a Dream. “The dream of our American democracy” is “a dream yet unfulfilled,” he said, but, nonetheless, a “dream that ultimately distinguishes democracy and our form of government from all of the totalitarian regimes that emerge in history.”
King urged his listeners to recognize the fragility of democracy and the vigilance necessary to safeguard it from potential authoritarian takeover. “America is in danger of losing her soul and can so easily drift into tragic Anarchy and crippling Fascism,” he cautioned in 1958. “Something must happen to awaken the dozing conscience of America before it is too late.”
Years later, in a 1966 sermon at Riverside Church in Manhattan, he again warned that the United States is susceptible to fascism. “All I am saying today is that there is a need to stand up for what is right,” he preached. “If America permits thought-control, business-control and freedom-control to continue, we shall surely move within the shadows of Fascism.”
For King, the links between fascism and racism were clear. In a speech to students on the UC–Berkeley campus, he laid out the stark connection. The problem of racial injustice continues to exist today, he asserted, “because many Americans would like to have a nation which is a democracy for white Americans but simultaneously a dictatorship over black Americans.”
King sharply criticized politicians who intentionally fan the flames of racism in their quest for power. He chastised the “many irresponsible leaders of states in the South using this issue merely to keep the people confused and arousing their fears just to get elected.”
Dr. King viewed leadership as critically important.
We have got to have more dedicated, consecrated, intelligent, and sincere leadership. This is a tense period through which we are passing, this period of transition, and there is a need all over the nation for leaders to carry on. Leaders who can somehow sympathize with and calm us and at the same time have a positive quality.
On occasion, King drew upon the patterns and language of a 19th-century poem by Josiah Gilbert Holland to describe the qualities of leadership required for tumultuous times.
We need leaders not in love with money, but in love with justice; leaders not in love with publicity, but in love with humanity. To paraphrase the great words of Holland: God give us leaders; a time like this demands great leaders; leaders whom the spoils of office cannot buy; leaders who have honor; leaders who will not lie; leaders who possess opinions and a will; leaders who can stand before a demagogue.
Staring down a demagogue, whether in King’s time or in ours, requires each of us to act boldly, sometimes in unfamiliar ways. In 1960, Martin Luther King Jr. did not make an official endorsement in the presidential contest between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. That changed in 1964 when Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona won the Republican nomination. “I feel that the prospect of Senator Goldwater being president of the United States so threatens the health, morality, and survival of our nation,” King announced, “that I cannot in good conscience fail to take a stand against what he represents.” He predicted that if Goldwater’s brand of right-wing Republican demagoguery were to win the White House, it could lead to a “dark night of social disruption.”
King’s comments on Goldwater are as close as we can come to ‘letting King speak for himself’ on the topic of Trump. His lambasting of the 1964 Republican nominee illuminates how King might feel about the Trump-led Republican Party of our time. “The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism,” King said of Goldwater’s national presidential campaign. “All people of goodwill viewed with alarm and concern the frenzied wedding... of the KKK with the radical right.” “The Republican Party had taken a giant stride away from its Lincoln tradition,” King continued, “and the results of election day graphically illustrate how tragic this was for the two-party system in America.” King held the Republican Party accountable for Goldwater’s “candidacy and philosophy,” which served “as an umbrella under which extremists of all stripes would stand.”
By moving past the superficial images of Martin Luther King Jr. in popular memory, and recalling the candor of his actual words, we come to see that King’s philosophy is antithetical to the Trump-era Republican Party. The inauguration of President Trump coinciding with the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday offers us two distinct models of leadership, and two visions of the United States that are not only dissimilar, but incompatible.
Where Trump sows division and disconnection, King saw community and interdependence. While Trump rides a toxic wave of bigotry and retribution, King sought the common ground of unity and reconciliation. Whereas Trump tried to overturn an election and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, King declared, “I never intend to adjust myself to the viciousness of mob rule.”
With the nation entering a fraught and precarious period of its history, let us take guidance from Dr. King’s advocacy for democracy, justice, and interrelatedness. King reminds us that “we cannot sit idly by and watch [the world] destroyed by a group of insecure and ambitious egotists who can’t see beyond their own designs for power.” As the second Trump administration begins, and the shadows of authoritarianism and kleptocracy loom, may we who believe in liberty and self-governance unite to keep the Dream of Democracy alive.
Drew Dellinger, PhD, served as Scholar-in-Residence at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University from 2020-2022. He is author of the upcoming book, The Ecological King.
