When reading the American texts the past few weeks, one observation stood out to me: the authors had vastly different ideologies, yet their organization’s struggles played out with more or less the same actions and concrete goals. If ideology were the foundation of actions, should different ideologies not naturally call for different courses of action? On the other hand, since the actions were similar across the board, I wonder if the ideologies were just used to justify the actions that were already bound to happen.
Both MLK’s peaceful protests and Huey P. Newton’s Black Panther Party had similar goals and methods to achieve Civil Rights for underprivileged African Americans. For example, they both shared the common goals of black economic power, adequate living conditions, and an end to police brutality, which are found abundantly in MLK’s speeches and Newton’s Ten Points. In terms of action, both groups focused largely on peaceful demonstrations to raise awareness, such as MLK’s marches in various cities and the Black Panthers’ armed patrolling of black neighborhoods. However, MLK and Newton had complete different, if not opposing ideologies. MLK heavily preached traditional Christian values such as love and forgiveness, while Newton drew on a variety of ideas from his readings, such as Nietzsche’s existentialism, and completely rejected Christianity as enslaving. It is interesting that both groups sought alliance from groups with different ideologies than their own. MLK welcomed non-Christians to join the movement. Newton maintained correspondence with and borrowed ideas from Muslim activists, such as Malcolm X. It seems like their primary goal was to gain momentum for their movement and concrete actions, while their personal beliefs were used to justify their actions and label their movements in public events.
A similar phenomenon is seen in the Chicago Eight and the Catonsville Nine. The demonstrations led by the Chicago Eight and the burning of draft files by the Catonsville Nine were both protesting the Vietnam War. Both groups also used the trial as an opportunity to gain international attention and display political beliefs. An important difference in their actions, though, is that the Eight disregarded courtroom order in protest, while the Nine obeyed it to show their high moral standards. However, the purpose behind these different actions was still to expose the corrupt system. Despite similar pursuits, both had very different ideologies. It could be argued that the Eight did not have a unified ideology, as they were leaders of different organizations with different backgrounds. The Nine, however, were devoutly Catholic and used Jesus’ actions to justify their actions. Yet interestingly both groups deduced from their different ideologies that the appropriate action was to display anti-war sentiments publicly and use the trial for that purpose as well. Therefore, it seems to me that it was only the war that prompted their actions and they simply manipulated their ideologies to make an argument for their actions.
On a related note, after reading the several works mentioned above, what were the most relatable for me were not ideological arguments, such as how human dignity derives from God or how the will to power can make people good or evil, but instead their concrete struggles filled with vivid details. Therefore, I think what motivated people to join the movements would mostly be the anger and frustration of the system, and different ideologies were really only used to justify what must be done instead of guide the course of action.