What does it mean to like MLK, really? || Azfar Hussain

It seems almost everyone in the US likes--or, let me put it this way, almost everyone WANTS to like--Martin Luther King, Jr., or MLK. Cool. But what does it mean to like MLK, really? If one really, really likes MLK--or, for that matter, MLK's work in its totality--one is then likely to combat racism and imperialism and the worldwide terrorism of the US government itself as well as economic injustice that is so aggressively prevalent in our society and in the world under capitalism, to mention but a few issues here, and one is even likely to be committed to fighting for nothing short of a revolutionary social transformation and even building a world free from all forms and forces of exploitation and oppression. Is liking MLK then an easy thing? The MLK with his revolutionary agendas? But it seems MLK is more fashionably liked--and even fetishized--than actually understood and taken seriously, while white liberals in particular--among others--have by now thoroughly de-historicized and de-politicized him by notoriously pitting MLK against another revolutionary--Malcolm X. Damn!

P.S.: Last year in January, I was at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Center in Havana, Cuba, where we discussed--among other things--certain connections among MLK, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and other third-world revolutionaries vis-a-vis the question of revolutionary politics.