Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam - Martin Luther King (April 1967) - How did Martin Luther King's position on the Vietnam War alter American politics?

Extract

[...] Instead, King not only infuriated the so-called political establishment in America by giving this speech but also many in the civil rights movement. Conclusion Overall, Martin Luther King Jr. eloquently argues against the United States involvement in Vietnam through his use of parallelism, diction, and imagery. His use of diction and imagery arouses anger while increasing his credibility since he criticizes the unjust war he describes. Furthermore, when these stylistic elements are concluded with his use of parallelism, King effectively establishes America's involvement in the Vietnam War as unjust. [...]

[...] Although it focuses squarely on King himself, it tries to avoid some of the pitfalls of the biographical approach by examining the nature of his "Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam" (King, 1967). This essay will firstly come back on the origins of the Vietnam War, before highlighting King's denunciation. Finally, America's resulting political fracture will be overviewed. I. Origins The Vietnam War was probably the first war America had ever lost, and for this reasons it structures a major shift in global politics The expansion of communism in Asia saw China, North Korea, North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia falling under Soviet imperialism. [...]

[...] The armed forces of the NFL (Vietcongs), supported by North Vietnamese who received equipment in Soviet light weapons, had been practicing in guerrilla warfare against the Diem regime since 1959. According to the "domino theory" (one country should not fall under Communist rule, otherwise it will drag its neighbors into its fall), the US decides to move from the limited commitment (see agreements of Geneva) to an unlimited commitment: between 1961 and 1963, 17,000 "military advisers" are sent to South Vietnam to supervise the South Vietnamese army. [...]

[...] It took 4 more years for Martin Luther King to get denounce this war. II. King's denunciation MLK took on the Vietnamese cause after having signed major civil rights agreements with President Lyndon Johnson, but critics argued he did it too late. Martin Luther King Jr. applies imagery throughout his speech in order to illustrate the horrors of the war to arouse anger at its atrocities and injustice. For instance, he does when he depicts the, "Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools." The image of death, as powerful as it is, becomes amplified when Martin Luther King associates the injustices of segregation with the Vietnam war. [...]

[...] Moreover, Martin Luther King Jr meticulously chooses specific words that carry with them a negative connotation that helps associate the Vietnamese war with injustice. By claiming that the United States, "the greatest purveyor of violence," prefers, "massive doses of violence to solve its problems," King effectively establishes the U.S. government as the pervasive wrongdoer. Moreover, this set of diction allows King to logically state that he cannot continue to fight on behalf of the oppressed if he himself doesn't address their oppressor, the U.S. [...]