Imagine transcription: An image of Light Yagami, Misa Amane, and L from Death Note on a fiery background. The caption reads: “Did you know, in the anime ‘Death Note’ for copyright reasons, the milk has to be spelt ‘MLK’ on the cartons? Google ‘MLK Death Note’ to find out more!”. End transcription.
Oh man I didn’t actually know about this, it’s enormously fucked up and absolutely unsurprising.
Can you explain?
It’s reasonably safe to Google, it’s about this letter where the FBI encourage Martin Luther King Jr. to commit suicide, using particularly abusive, dehumanising and degrading language. The content of the letter isn’t necessarily hard to read the if you want to read it, particularly as it didn’t work, but it’s still bad to know that this was an official government plot.
Is there something I’m missing, or is this letter nothing more than an old-timey version of modern internet comments and conservative “LGBTQ+ people are somehow pedophiles!” claims that are as outlandish as they are unfounded? Like, how is claiming a reverend has secret massive orgies he’s clearly not having going to get him to kill himself? He probably just read this, said “Well that’s a load of nonsense.” and threw it away without another thought.
They didn’t have to be true. The implication was that they could make the public believe such things were true, which at the time would have ended him.
Obviously in a reasonable world no one should give the slightest fuck about someone else’s orgies, but unfortunately a lot of people have puritan brainrot, which was much, much more widespread at the time.
They also sent him recordings of the supposed orgies, and were trying to blackmail him. So if he really was having orgies, it would have been pretty bad for his personal life and reputation. The tape recordings are sealed until 2027.
https://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-martin-luther-king-report-tapes-orgies-suicide-2019-5