Being labeled a 'radical' is meant to be an insult. History tells us otherwise

[xchrom]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/20/we-need-radicals-for-social-change


Martin Luther King, once dubbed a 'radical', reaches the climax of his speech in Washington DC in 1963. Photograph: Bob Adelman/Magnum

America has a propensity for dismissing people and ideas with labels. Terms like "socialist" and "communist" are frequently hurled at those who dare to promote substantial programs that address poverty, or suggest that government provide what many other "developed nations" deem fundamental services – like universal healthcare. Anyone who openly identifies with such positions is assumed to have nothing legitimate to contribute to public debate, irrespective of the plausibility, merit, and true ideology informing their arguments.

It's a similar scenario with "radical" – a word often used to evoke associations with extremism, instability and an absolutist approach to politics. But the popular usage belies the important role many radicals have played in promoting democracy and justice throughout history, not to mention the continued role radical ideas and activism have to play in unfinished projects.

A recent op-ed in the Chicago Tribune illustrates the common abuse of the term in the media. The columnist, Dennis Byrne, rightly criticizes a tendency in America to privilege individual liberty over community solidarity, but he then attempts a "balanced" perspective by presenting examples of "radicalism" on both sides of the aisle. On abortion, Byrne writes: "Radical individuals on the right and the left demand the supremacy of a woman's body. … For [those who are pro-choice], a woman's rights are nearly absolute."

Squaring the false equivalence circle he adds: "Similar absolutist views are held on the right by those who interpret the Constitution's Second Amendment to mean that government regulation of firearms should be extraordinarily limited, if not nonexistent."

[hunter]

1. I'll own it. I'm a radical leftist.

This U.S.A. needs some radical upgrades in order to survive the coming storms.

The economic system we have now is destroying both the natural environment that supports us and the social environment that binds us together.

It's the very wealthy who ought to be most frightened. You can't eat wealth. It's paper or bits in a computer. You can't fight Mother Nature, she has all the time in the world. Exponentially growing populations crash. Aircraft carriers can't stop the sea from rising.

[frazzled]

2. Radical is in the eye of the beholder

My memories of Martin Luther King are that he was not considered radical at all, at least within the movement, and fairly much in society at large (except among extremist racists). He was a respected figure in the world I grew up in, which was middle-class white Indiana. I was 14 in 1964.

Indeed, King's commitment to nonviolence and willingness to work with government institutions garnered severe criticism from more "radical" factions, who contrasted his nonviolent methods with Malcolm's "by any means necessary." Neither man was, of course, "radical"--but in those times, it was the earlier Malcolm X and later Panther and Black Power movements that were seen as radical in the society at large.

To me, this article seems somewhat a rewrite of history. I think those who opposed King, from J. Edgar Hoover to your garden variety Southern segregationists, saw King as dangerous precisely because he was a popular and accepted figure.