51: What Happened To Martin Luther King Jr | Red Thread
02:39:51 Share

Every day, thousands of Comcast engineers and technologists, like Kunle, put people at the heart of everything they create. In the average household, there are dozens of connected devices. Here in the Comcast family, we're building an integrated in-home Wi-Fi solution for millions of families like my own.

It brings people together in meaningful ways. Kunle and his team are building a Wi-Fi experience that connects one billion devices every year. Learn more about how Comcast is redefining the future of connectivity at comcastcorporation.com slash Wi-Fi. ♪

All right, welcome to Red Thread, the podcast series where we dive into the conspiracy theories, the cults, the murder mysteries, and all the wacky stuff in between. You guys know what Red Thread is about now. By now, we've been here for 51 episodes. You know, we talk about things that

A peculiar have unanswered questions. And in this episode, we're going to be talking about the question on everyone's mind, especially currently with what's happening in America. Did the FBI kill Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?

The FBI wanted you to believe they didn't, but maybe they did. The FBI isn't known to be the best guys in the biz or the nicest people, so it's entirely possible. We'll be finding out today in this episode of Red Thread. If you're new here, hello, I'm your host, Jackson. We're just coming back from a break now, an extended break over Christmas and New Year's, so it's good to see you all again. Thank you very much for coming back. I was in Japan. I'm now engaged. It was a wonderful trip.

I'm engaged to the woman who was on the last episode who obviously writes all of our Red Thread documents and stuff, Kira. So, you know, that's cool. Yeah, very happy with that. Very happy with the trip. However...

It's not all sunshine and roses or whatever the saying is. I'm missing my regular co-hosts as you could probably already see. Isaiah sadly had a family. That was an awful time to laugh. He had a family emergency he needed to attend to. He's okay, but we're obviously wishing him all the best while he's out of state. And on the other hand, Caleb is moving on from Red Thread. I know that's huge news to just drop on you right now, but yeah, he's moving on from Red Thread.

Truthfully, he's just, he's a very busy guy. He has his own YouTube channel. He's candy business at Sour Boys. He's video game company. He's got so many eggs in that basket that it was just, it just made sense for him to move on and refocus his time elsewhere, which is totally understandable. Totally fine. We thank him for, you know, joining us for the time that he did. We'll hopefully get him back for one final farewell episode next week before we

We go through a bit of restructuring on the show itself, but the show is not ending. It's just going through another Red Thread evolution. We've already had several Red Thread evolutions in the time. It does feel like that guest spot is kind of cursed with the amount of people that have joined and then left, but it's what it is. It'll come back even better than ever down the line. Weekly episodes will still come out.

But we still needed an episode this week. And with both guys being unavailable, I needed to make a few emergency calls. I, I, I,

Opened up my phone and the first contact there, I hit call. I was desperate. Big thank you to him for showing up. I'd like to welcome the guest host for this episode, making his Red Thread debut, world-renowned fellow Australian YouTube creator, Friendly Jordies, or Jordan Shanks. What would you prefer to be called, Jordan? I'm calling you Jordan, but from their perspective.

Let's go with branding, shall we? Yeah, Friendly Geordies, alright. Don't refer to them anything else other than Friendly Geordies. Make sure the brand perseveres. Yeah, you were my first, obviously, my first call, because we talk, you know, quite a bit.

You're like an old school guy. You still use like a fucking Nokia flip phone, so it's a bit difficult to get in touch with you, but we make it work. And there's one thing I know about you from the very first conversation we had off air is that you are a bit of a conspiracy nut, let's say. Would you agree with those terms? I would say conspiracy connoisseur. Yeah, I guess. I think that you are in the same realm listening to your podcast. You are in the world, but not of it.

Yeah, I think, like, I enjoy dipping my feet in the kiddie pool, basically. Like, I like understanding everything that goes on, but I wouldn't say I'm there creating the conspiracies. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, totally. I'm on board with that. So I'm really excited about this podcast. I would like to note that we're doing Martin Luther King because you've already done JFK, right? Yeah, we've already done JFK, sadly. That sucks. Just after the Trump. Yeah.

Yeah, I know. Well, we can come back to it once he unveils everything and declassifies everything. We can come back to it. We can do JFK again once all that information is out there. But we were, yeah, we pretty thoroughly did JFK. And it is a bit weird that we don't have any Americans on this show because Martin Luther King is obviously a very American-centric episode. So it was a bit weird that I brought another Australian on board. What the hell? Yeah, to talk about things that have nothing to do with us. You've run out of American contacts, haven't you? That's it.

Yeah, I'd run through everyone, through my entire book of content. Yeah, the next slide after me would just be the flight of the Concords boys, that's it. Yeah, but no. I want to tell this little anecdotal story to give you a bit of, to boost your credit in the conspiracy theorist realm. I remember the first phone call we had together, like on the phone, was...

About two and a half hours long, and it was about 90% talking about aliens and the whole UFO situation in America. This would have been like a year and a half ago, probably, right? Oh, yeah. Maybe. Yeah. All right. I am in safe territory here, aren't I? Yes, you are. We are amongst believers. You can talk about UFOs. Yeah, we're believers, for sure. That's like Jordan's level of involvement. He was on...

You were very passionate. Let me put it that way. You were very passionate to talk to someone about UFOs. So we got to talking about UFOs and stuff. And I was...

impressed and inspired by your level of enthusiasm for it. Yeah, your depth of knowledge. So I was like, I need to get this guy on Red Thread eventually, because he will love talking about conspiracies and stuff. Outside of UFOs and stuff, how much do you know about conspiracies? How much time do you spend diving deep into the realm of conspiracy theories and that kind of stuff?

Honestly, I've noticed that there seems to be three types of conspiracies online that are quite predominant, don't you think? It's ironically revolving around the Earth not revolving around the Sun. Don't you think there's a lot of space conspiracies? Yeah. It's always like Mars doesn't exist or the Earth is flat. That type of realm. 100%. Things that can easily be disproven almost immediately. There's that realm. There's that realm of conspiracy where if you just look up and you see Mars, you could disprove it.

Like, it's 100% that easy. So there was that realm of conspiracy. Some of the people in the 1600s would have known. Yeah, but I would classify that, right, as...

uh, not harmful conspiracy. Cause it's like fundamentally so easy to prove that it doesn't have a real effect on anything. They're just kind of fun and goofy. No, totally. But what I don't understand is why does that one spread like wildfire? Why does everyone want to believe that the sun is 200 meters in the sky? Do you think, do you think that they truly believe it? Or do you think that they're in on the joke?

I think, like a lot of things, it starts as a joke and then you think about it for a bit and then you, nah, not a point. I swear that that's how Nazism started. Exactly that. By believing the sun was 200 meters in the sky. Just that kind of... Yeah, well, like, just the same thing that we're talking about here where it's,

It's sort of just a jovial, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then after a while, people are goose marching down the street. Yeah. We took the joke way too far. It's like a social contagion. Yes, yes. I think that's it. Honestly, that's a lot of how things start these days. It's kind of just, isn't this the pipeline when it comes to conspiracy theories? A lot of it starts as a joke on 4chan. Yeah.

Yeah, 100%. And then people start like, also jokingly start making up like valid sounding rationale behind the conspiracy theory that other people then look in, like, look onto the discussion, don't understand due to them not having like social faculties, I guess, or something, not understanding that it's a joke and they're not on the inside of the joke. So they take it and they're like, well, actually that makes sense a little bit. Let me spread this to another person who didn't even see the foundation of the joke.

or didn't even see the context of the joke. They just get the information that, well, the Earth is flat because pilots are in machines that don't have the correct windows or something, so they appear... The Earth appears round through the windows of airplanes, but it's actually flat. Or sometimes fucking... I don't even know what they're up to now, flat Earthers, in terms of explaining their delusions. But, like, yeah, they pass it on. That person doesn't even have any kind of foundational knowledge

understanding of the context of the joke originally, so they don't know that there was a joke originally. No.

No, at that point, it is straight fact. Yeah, that's fact. Or at least a fact-based meme. Do you ever do the thing where a friend tells you something and you have no understanding of the topic at hand, but because they're a friend, you just kind of go, oh, yeah, makes sense. Sure, I believe you. You're my friend. You'd never lie to me. I am a human being. It is honestly incredible. Isn't it so strange? I was thinking about this the other day, that Zoomers are the first generation in human history to have...

something in their pockets that can immediately fact check things. All throughout history before that, your version of Google was whatever your mum said when you were six.

And then I still to this day do that. Sometimes I will say, think something and it's purely just because my dad told me it when I was six, probably just to shut me up from asking many questions. Yeah, exactly. You come up with excuses just to shut people up or to sound smart. There's a million reasons why people make up information and it's not, it's not ever, it's not always just purely like malicious either.

Like you can just be, you can just have like a wrong recollection of events or something and then you pass it on because you believe it's true. And then someone else now has the unfortunate burden of carrying your fucking stupid minds, you know, output, basically. Your miscollection of events. And now they're passing it on to other people too. It is genuinely like a contagion at that point.

But that's how it works, isn't it? That's a whole magnetic theory. And you're right about, you are absolutely right about how we have something in our pocket that can immediately disprove whatever we're talking about. But guess what, Jordan? That doesn't fucking matter because us idiots are on that fucking app or that phone or whatever, that website, putting in about a metric gajillion megabytes or gigabytes worth of information that's just entirely incorrect anyway.

I know. Now all it's done is made it more effective. Yes. Yes, exactly. And again, not even just malicious. It doesn't even need... Misinformation doesn't need to be malicious. It can literally just be you're stupid, right? And now stupid people are connected. Yes, yeah. It's just easier to spread that. Like us. It's easier to spread the contagion. It's...

I don't know what you do about it, honestly. We're heading into... No, I really don't know what you do about it either. There's two outs for it. The one is kind of just like a complete crackdown on information like they do in Turkmenistan, for instance. Or you just let it spread like wildfire and watch democracy burn like we are across the planet now. Those are your options. Hey, it's great. I mean, what...

You can't put the genie back in the bottle. We can't just make a mandate where, you know what, shut off the internet. It was fun while it lasted. Everyone pull out a hammer, smash your phone. We're going back to living in small tribal communities. Globalization was fun for a bit, but we've moved on from that. Obviously, it was a failed experiment. You can't do that. You can't do that. You just can't. There's no way to curtail this. And you can spread all of your life going out there and

you know, speaking truth or whatever, like correcting people, but it's not going to make a difference. I'm afraid because it's not as fun. That's why. I mean, that's the premise of this whole podcast, isn't it? It's just more fun. I think honestly, every time I ever hear somebody with a counter explanation for a UFO in the sky, my brain involuntarily goes, shut up. Yeah. Fucking nerd. Yeah.

Because how can you compete with beings from another universe visiting us? Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's better than, oh, no, actually, that was just a drone. Who wants to be the person that comes into a party and goes, well, actually, like that meme. No one wants to do that. Like, that sucks. Fuck you. You're not going to get invited to the UFO parties anymore.

No way. We're going to hang out, you know, fucking get drunk and talk about aliens and it's going to be way more fun. Way more fun. I mean, honestly, that is the type of conspiracy. The one that we are talking about now, that's the one that when I look into it, there's also, I think the other category, I guess, is, um,

Don't you think that this is in and of itself, anytime a black celebrity in the US does something wrong, there is a huge pushback if they didn't do anything wrong. But, and this seems to be the one exception, he did it. And I think that we both agree that the reason for that purely is...

His music's not that good. Michael Jackson is, so he gets the pass. He was the king of pop. Yeah. At some point you've built up this like, uh, affection or like the audience loves you so much. And Michael Jackson is like for his faults. And I will say I'm a Michael Jackson truth or I do, I do think that, uh, a lot of children were molested by Michael Jackson. Um,

I do honestly believe that. For all of his faults, he was a once-in-a-generation talent. That's just undeniable. It's undeniable. It's undeniable. It's undeniable. And with that seems to come certain privileges. You get to do the taboo, the societal taboo. And people will defend you to the nail post you being dead. Yeah. That's how incredible it is. They will defend you.

They will defend you just beyond the limits of what I thought humans were capable of. Your spirit to get beyond. Yeah. They'll go. They'll go there. And then if you're P. Diddy, it's like, I never liked any of your songs. I always thought that you were a no talent bum and that you were a lucky just to be

Who's Fat Tupac again? What's his name? Biggie Smalls. You're Biggie Smalls' friend. That seems to be why you're a billionaire now. Well, yeah. People don't like the molesters that do it. They molest and they do these crimes, but they're like background people almost. He's just a producer and stuff. He's rarely ever on stage and shit doing shit, right? PDD. He had a prolific chain of multi-platinum CDs.

Did he? Despite the fact that he has no musical talent at all. And it seems like he's most famous for going, which is just him recording his Tourette's. That seems to be why he sold millions of albums.

Yeah, I guess that is it. Well, I do think that, like, Jeffrey Epstein, again, no one's defending Jeffrey Epstein because he was just a fucking... Because he can't dance. Yeah, exactly. He's a nerdy white dude that banked a lot. He did banking and fucking financial bills. Yeah, where's his talent? Yeah, who's going to defend that? And then on the other hand, Chris Brown literally beat up Rihanna, another enormous, you know, musical star. Like, someone just...

It was all public. There were videos of this. Because he dances good and he sings good, people defend him and still listen to him to this day. That's not even a conspiracy theory. He beat up a woman, multiple women, constantly. And probably did the same things P. Diddy did, if I'm being completely honest. And then, of course, you've got Bill Cosby and R. Kelly. And people will thoroughly defend both of them.

Yeah. They'll defend her. Yeah, I guess you're right. What's up with that? I'm telling you, it's just because of talent. You go back and you watch Bill Cosby's All in the Family or whatever it was called from the 70s, and you sit there and you will chuckle to yourself a lot, finish the episode and think, good wholesome fun. That's all you need.

It's honestly incredible the power of talent. Oh, I mean, we see it every single day. The world is a meritocracy in that aspect. If you have the talent, you can get away with crimes.

And again, I don't think this is just a black person thing. We named a lot of black actors and stars just then. But I also genuinely do think it's just across the board because you see like Matthew Broderick. Remember, he ran over someone. He killed someone. People still defend him because they love him in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

I've heard the name before and I've heard of that, but I'm sure Ferris, I'm sure people love Ferris Bueller's day off. It must be like a huge cult classic. So he gets the pass. Exactly. Like there's people that get the pass, uh, like Johnny Depp, even though I think he was innocent, people were defending him based solely on their enjoyment of his movies for sure. Yeah. There were people absolutely defending him for that. Uh, but,

But I do think that he was probably innocent as well. Anyway, what are we fucking talking about? Oh, yeah, sorry. We got off the deep end. Yeah, the third. This is so good. Us just bitching about celebrities. Yeah. That's the podcast. It's gossip. Is that the second conspiracy theory type or is that the third? That was the second. And then I think the third one generally revolves around the CIA and anything that I ever look into when it comes to that.

There's never a smoking gun because it is the CIA and they are very good at creating plausible deniability. And there is a bunch of ex-CIA agents that release entire books about how they create that plausible deniability.

But I would say those types of conspiracy theories are often the most grounded in logic. Yes, exactly. They point to a lot of different things. And again, there's no smoking gun because that's the nature of conspiracies, right? All these mysteries. There's no smoking gun, but there's a lot of information that adds up to tell a convincing kind of story about what probably happened. And a lot of that is born from...

Institutional mistrust, I would say. Like, obviously, immediately you're going to mistrust anything the CIA says. But that's, again, that itself is based on logic because the CIA has lied about a lot of things. They've done a lot of shady things. So obviously we naturally have a proclivity to mistrust them and dig a little bit deeper into whatever it is they're saying. And a lot of the time we're vindicated in that aspect because the information just doesn't add up, right?

The information doesn't add up is probably the best way to say it. Usually those conspiracy theories would say it's got a lot of circumstantial evidence. It points that way, which is so intriguing about them. Like when you go to say JFK or American viewers wouldn't be anywhere near as versed in this or even know who these people were. But in Australia, Gough, Whitlam, Kevin Rudd, these were both prime ministers that were... Harold Holt could be. These are prime ministers that...

could have been deposed by the CIA, and there seems to be a lot of corroborating evidence for it. And in fact, I would say that UFOs, I honestly put in that same category now. I used to put it in the same category as Bigfoot and Loch Ness. Yes, same. But then I read a lot of books about it and how interested the CIA has been over the last 80 years in covering up UFOs, that the lengths that they go to as in writing out media decrees

where they will tell the US press to constantly malign the subject, only show the hillbilly in the field with the missing teeth saying he saw one, never the fighter pilot that saw one. Very deliberate optics to instill into people's minds. We were conditioned not to believe. We were conditioned immediately to believe that kind of information was, you know,

gobbledygook. And a lot of that is down to how they marketed it. America is an expert at marketing. Don't forget that. And especially the organizations that make up America, they kind of built on it in a way. So like you said, them painting people who believe in these conspiracies as those hoedunk hillbillies out in the hills, drunk on moonshine, missing teeth, banging their sisters or whatever, painting the believers as that is incredibly effective.

Incredibly effective and also the thing that I have always thought when it comes to the UFO conspiracy theory is why go to that effort?

But 80 years. And also, why, unlike France, where when you're putting it into UFOs, they put all of that information to their version of NASA. And then for the last century, almost, all of the information goes to a CIA proxy or the Air Force when it comes to America. It's like, why would you give it to an agency whose specialty is covering things up? Secrecy. So,

So when it comes to that one, that's when I started thinking, all right, I put that in the same category as say Martin Luther King Jr. or JFK, where it's yes,

It's not there, but it's plausible. Yeah. It becomes an institutional conspiracy at that point. It's moved from one bucket to the other, from wild and wacky kind of, again, Bigfoot sighting kind of territory, where it's harmless and fun, but you don't really give it much deeper thought because there's not that evidence there to supply the need to believe it. And then it moves over into this new bucket that is...

Or maybe the CIA is actually covering up something because they've had a history of constantly covering up things and lying to the American people and indeed the entire world. Well, in fact, it is the design of that institution. Yeah, that's what it's made to do. That's the entire point of it. Yeah. It's to hide sensitive information. So it's just, there's a lot of things. So that's why when it comes to this level of conspiracy that we're discussing today. MLK, yep. Yeah, MLKs.

I wish that there was another word for it, because I think that it gets dirtied by being put in the same category as the last two that we were talking about. Yes. Again, I think it's the word conspiracy. As soon as you mention the word conspiracy, again, it's the American marketing machine. They've turned the idea of conspiracy into, like you said, an unsullied word, or a sullied word, basically, where there's

There's negative connotations there for the general public. As soon as you hear conspiracy or this is a conspiracy, you're more likely to try to discredit it, I think. I think so too. I think so too. And you're right. Much like it's very similar to the word propaganda, how that was deliberately turned from a neutral term to a negative term. Yeah, it was weaponized. A weaponized term. And that's exactly what seems to happen with conspiracy theories.

Because really, the definition of a conspiracy is a bunch of people plotting something. Yeah, a bunch of people conspiring. Happens every day. That's constantly happening. I mean, that's just the nature of politics. Whether it's good or bad, that is how you play the game of politics. I mean, like you said, the FBI and CIA were literally created to conspire. Yeah, on a global scale. Yeah.

It's not that far-fetched. No. And that's why whenever things involve the CIA and the FBI or any kind of US or even other countries' institutions, right? I'm immediately more likely to kind of...

wait for the evidence, wait for there to be some kind of impetus to the idea that people are presenting. Like, I'm not going to just believe things without any level of evidence, but if there is evidence, like even just, like you said, evidence pointing in the general direction, I'm definitely more biased, I would say, against those institutions or in believing that those institutions are behind something. Which naturally everybody in this day and age would be. And should be. And should be. Yeah.

I do very much want to one day talk to somebody from the CIA or the FBI and see what it is from their perspective because there is definitely...

when you are one of those high level intelligence officers, you would be seeing the world in a much different way to us. Uh, it would, it would be like a global chess game that you're playing. Well, it'd be an, uh, the, uh, the ends justify the means kind of world that you're operating in. Well, yeah, absolutely. That would be it. And so I would imagine that a lot of the explanations that they have would be very, uh,

At the very least, when you are hearing it from their perspective, they would have pieces of the missing puzzle where you would kind of get like a more rounded view of it, which I think that never really happens because the whole point of it is to just keep that information to yourself. Yeah. Anyway, that's the whole thing. When it comes to the CIA and the FBI, purely because of the points that we pointed out, these ones are...

Honestly, a lot of the time when you look into it, sort of this secret history of the world and how it was shaped, that seems to be the kind of...

feel that you get when you look at these ones. So I'm excited about it. Yeah, I'm very excited to dive into this. We spent a little bit of time building this up. But hey, that's just because I love talking to you. You're a very interesting dude. You know a lot about the stuff that you're talking about and very engaging man. But before we dive into the topic, just a quick shout out to all of you who signed up to official.men. That's the new membership platform. You guys made the launch very super successful.

So thank you very much. And the merch was also very successful as well. If you're not signed up, you can head on over to official.men to get early access to all of our officially made shows. That's Criminally Stupid, The Official Podcast, Red Thread, and Real Boys, all ad-free and uploaded a few days in advance so you get early access. Merch is still available. Members get discounts. The merch that went out

a lot of people bought it. They really loved it. We got really positive feedback, which is great because we tried our hardest to make it affordable, comfortable, and the style really cool. And it sounds like it was a success in that way. People really liked the feel of it. So it's very comfortable. So go check it out if that interests you at all. It does have Caleb's face on it. That's unfortunate now that Caleb is leaving the show, but you know, that's what it is. It's a piece of history now. You can, you can get a, you can

You can get that over at official.men. It would mean the world, obviously, if you guys support the show in that way. So thank you very much if you already have. And also a big thank you to Rocket Money for sponsoring this episode. You'll hear more about them later on, or maybe even now because we've been going for a while right now already just talking about conspiracies in general. You'll hear more about them right now. So

Subscriptions are endless in this day and age. Every single thing has a subscription tied to it. It's annoying. It's not always bad, but the worst part of subscriptions is definitely just keeping track of all of them due to how many there are. I remember having about five subscriptions that were active that were just sucking money out of my wallet that I wasn't actually using. That's where this episode's sponsor, Rocket Money, fits in nicely to your financial arsenal.

Rocket Money is a killer app. It's an all-in-one personal finance app that helps you cancel all of those active subscriptions. It also helps you lower your bills and manage your money better. It's easy to use and it has immediate effects that you'll notice straight away. You'll find expenses you didn't even know you have and you can recapture that money so it sleeps where it belongs, in your piggy bank.

With just a few taps, Rocket Money will identify all of your subscriptions and from there you can select the ones you don't want anymore and Rocket Money will attempt to help you cancel them. It really is just that easy and on top of that, Rocket Money will automatically scan your bills to find savings wherever it can. In fact, it can even negotiate your bills for you. That is mental. Internet service, cable, phone bills, it doesn't matter. Rocket Money wants to give you your money back so

for the love of god let them please so take control of your finances today go to rocketmoney.com red thread to get started for free save more and spend less joining over 5 million members using rocket money today go to rocketmoney.com red thread or click the link in the description

for free. You can also unlock even more features with premium that'll help you save even more money. So check them out. They're the best finance app that you can use to easily manage your bills and subscriptions. It'll make a real difference that you'll notice straight away. Thank you to Rocket Money and thank you for listening to the sponsor slot. It really helps out when you go check them out. So thank you very much for doing so. And now back to the show. Okay.

Jordan, or Friendly Jordies, as you like to be called. This week's topic, MLK, Martin Luther King. Just a top-level thought, do you believe that he was assassinated by the FBI? Off the top of my head, I think it's less plausible than JFK, looking at the evidence that I'm seeing. I do know that the FBI was involved a lot with the civil rights movement. And not in a positive way. Not like they were handing out brochures.

Yeah, well, it depends if you're from the South or not. More so in the way that they were very close to killing Martin Luther King in general. If they didn't pull the trigger on killing MLK, they were definitely trying their hardest to discredit and kind of remove him from power. Yes. Now, killing a political activist, the reason that I am a little more sensitive about this one is when I look at it from the FBI's perspective...

What is the benefit of getting rid of him? Because if you're getting rid of JFK and you're talking about exiting the Vietnam War, there's a huge motive for the military industrial complex to get rid of JFK. Yeah. When you get rid of Martin Luther King, they would surely be aware of this. They probably would be great students of history. They would know that you are creating a martyr. Martyr, yeah, 100%. A martyr Luther King, if you will. Nice. That's good.

Put that on some merch. Yeah, like, again, you're completely right. If their goal, and I think their goal was to destabilize the movement because it was creating civil unrest, that much is 100% confirmed. They obviously didn't like the civil rights movement. They wanted it to stop because protests are bad for them, obviously. So they wanted to discredit the movement and Martin Luther King, but

Again, does it make sense to kill a man and create an icon, basically, that will empower and embolden the movement that you're seeking to kind of destroy, basically, right? Yeah. I mean, I can point to a lot of revolutions throughout history where the tinderbox moment was the leader of that movement getting assassinated. Yeah, 100%. You know? Yeah.

At the very least, if they did it, it wasn't a very wise move. No, of course not. And it also, it did make him into Armada, 100%. And it was probably what led to him as an icon being even more successful and the movement being even more successful. So if that was their goal, they failed completely. And they also, yeah, I mean, they were just unsuccessful, right? Ultimately. Well, I mean, yeah, evidently so when you look at it.

When you look at it. Let's start reading because we've got a big document here thanks to Kira, again, my girlfriend, well, my fiancée, for creating this document for us to read through with all of the information. Maybe it'll change our minds. Maybe we'll become ardent FBI defenders by the end. They didn't do anything wrong. They were heroes. They tried to stop the assassin. They just painted it incorrectly. Somehow I have a feeling that that won't be the case.

So it's been 61 years since what is probably now known as the most iconic speech to ever have been delivered before. On August 28th, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. was at the March on Washington, an organized demonstration calling for civil and economic rights for African Americans in a combined effort to end racism in the United States. Just the day before, Wyatt Walker, Martin Luther King Jr.'s advisor, had offered his opinion. He begged King to hold back on his I Have a Dream speech.

Speech stating, quote, it's trite, it's cliche. You've used it too many times already, end quote. And he nearly did until gospel vocalist Mahalia Jackson called from behind him, another quote, tell them about the dream, Martin.

This was all that King needed to hear, and what followed was a speech that defined an entire movement. However, what followed that speech itself was a cacophony of governmental conspiracy, with King being assassinated at the early age of 39, just five years later. A killer was ultimately fingered, but behind closed doors, speculation surrounding his death led many to turn their eyes to the FBI, where they involved in Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, and if they were,

Why? And that's what we're aiming to find out on today's episode of Red Thread. And I just want to start this off by saying Martin Luther King's speeches, all-timers, right? Like, that's undeniable. He was such an incredible, like, orator. Well, yeah, I've never really sat down and listened to one. Really? But I would imagine that he has that old-timey pastor speech where it's got a bunch of...

But it's such a skill. It's such a skill to do that with confidence and project your voice. It's a skill that I really do admire. Like, it takes something. It's definitely a thing, isn't it? The greatest orators of all time seem to be, Martin Luther King was this, right? Like a southern pastor. Yeah.

I mean, there's a reason megachurches exist. They're just so compelling. 100%. If you put a megaphone in front of someone naturally charismatic, well-spoken, knows good words and shit,

that person's going to be the most popular person ever. Speech is so important to how others perceive you. There's definitely a magic trick to it, especially black southern churches. If you ever watch them, they look like the funnest places on earth. How do you make religion fun? I mean, Hillsong tried to do it and it's just really cringy. Their version of it

I get why people spend... Because their sermons go for like six hours. I know. How do you spend that long? The speech has to be really good for that. Totally. There must be a secret formula to it that the rest of us just aren't privy to that he was grounded in first off. And then having that much practice...

Honestly, it makes a lot of sense why throughout history there's been church leaders that have started these movements. He also had the benefit of having that kind of dynamite below his feet, basically, that movement behind him, like that social impetus behind his speech that gave, obviously, additional weight to what he was saying. But again, I think it takes a skilled person to utilize that movement and still deliver incredibly motivating, incredibly unifying messages

speeches that were that successful. And I don't think the movement would have been nearly as successful if Martin Luther King obviously didn't exist in that capacity. I think it takes something. You need a once-in-a-generation to do those kinds of things, don't you? Yeah. They exist and they are truly once-in-a-generation. You can really pinpoint it all throughout history. There's always one person that you look at and you think, that guy doesn't exist on every bus.

Speaking of buses, do we want to talk about the civil rights movement to provide the context for the scene at the time? Because there's a lot of people who... I think every American knows this story. So we are speaking to the... Preaching to the choir at this point. But, you know... Is this their year seven history? Probably, yeah. We don't learn about this really at our schools. No, Christ. We don't.

We don't learn much history at all. We learn about Simpsons donkey and that's it. What's the extent of American knowledge that we're taught during education? It depends. You take up history as your senior year subject and then you will learn about the Civil War.

Yeah, like if you have a modern history class, I think that you'll probably... But that's like, the limit of that is like World War II, probably. World War II. Yeah. And even then, they're the side characters, because as we all know, Australia was the main player. You're going to offend a lot of Americans with that one. Trust me. You and what army? All right, would you like to take this paragraph? We'll kind of take turns reading, if you would like, so that you're not completely...

left it in the dust. Oh, I'm helping, am I? Yeah. It's cool. It is like year seven history. Yeah, it is. If you enjoyed being that person who, you know, stuck his hand up every single time the teacher asked someone to read out loud in class, you'll love this show. Yeah. Well, I

I was one of those people that was a little bit fucking nervous when that happened, but let's see. Really? I'm going to say a typo wrong, and then I do because I'm thinking about it. Yeah, overthinking it. To understand the animosity between the FBI and Martin Luther King Jr., we first need to understand the civil movement that was ready to explode within the United States at the time. In 1955, Rosa Louise Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus.

this seemingly simple act of defiance on December 1st was anything but simple in truth, as it was an act that telegraphed the difficulties of an entire race of people who had been oppressed by society for centuries after slavery itself was abolished in the United States in 1865. Yeah, so that's...

This shows my limit of American knowledge. I was kind of under the understanding that, well, belief really, that slavery ended and then everyone was happy. Like everyone was just, everyone just got along. This was a while ago that my understanding was this, but I didn't realize there was like a century long kind of gap between slavery being abolished and

black people or African-American people finally being afforded the same rights as everyone else in the country. And you might, the audience might call me naive, but again, we do not have this education in Australia. We don't talk about American history, really.

Yeah, this is incredible. I do really like the fact that the extent of our knowledge seems to be what we are reading on the fly. Yeah. Because as soon as I heard 1865, I thought, yeah, that's right. It was in the 19th century. Yeah, that makes sense. That's why they had the musket gun. It's just so fucking mental thinking that even in the 60s,

The entire race of African Americans were not afforded the same rights. It's just unfathomable to think. That's modern history. In the modern era, they were that separate from white people. In terms of the actual constitution at the time. That's so recent. Well, it was...

It was a Southern experience, wasn't it? And I think that a lot of that really does come down to the fact that when it comes to the United States, and again, just lecturing Americans about their system, I think that really they have quite a weak federal government in comparison to a lot of other countries. And so states pretty much are their own little... It's almost comparable. It's not this far, but it's closer to, say...

Europe, and then you've got your France's and your Germany's. Like the EU itself is rather weak compared to- The EU is federal government. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So everything else is, you know, Alabama is for instance, I don't know, Serbia or something. So any Alabamians out there in our audience to, or what country did you say? Syria?

No, Serbia. Serbia. Or to Eddie Serbius, who might be disillusioned by that comparison.

Yeah, it's just brutal. Sorry, that is really mean. But you know what I'm getting at, right? So I think that, yeah, when it comes to that, there's always going to be a lot of residue because you can powerfully hold that political nexus in control, especially because when it came to federal government, I remember reading this, that the Democratic Party back then was really heavily controlled by

by the Southern Democrats because the Southern Democrats were able to sort of gerrymander the place in effect to the point that it was impossible to get any other political party moving. And the way that they kept that in was really by gerrymandering the white vote. And so they were very dependent on keeping that white vote. And it took...

I think Lyndon Johnson we're talking about here, but obviously JFK was starting it. It took them to really start to break that down in the Democratic Party, which immediately switched all of the South over to just being blooded Republicans for the rest of... I think it was Lyndon Johnson that said this. He said, once that happened, he said, I think we've lost the South for a generation. And it turns out they've lost it forever. That is never coming back. LAUGHTER

Yeah, it doesn't seem to be. It's still all red today. As red as it gets. That shows the proximity of what we're talking about. In my head, I'm thinking like hundreds of years ago or like 1800s. But no, this happened in the 1960s, which is only... It's in our... People are still alive that experience this. So it's kind of wild. It really does...

Play, as you're saying now, Margaret Thatcher had this great quote that economics is the soul of a nation. And I think that's pretty much it. When you make human beings sort of your tractor for 400 years, it's hard to not see them as your tractor forever.

Well, yeah, from that region's perspective, yeah. From that region's perspective. And so that transition is always just going to be extremely bumpy after that. It's not going to be this break off. Yeah. It'd be very hard to change minds without force, really. Like it would take a lot of convincing. Oh, it took that, didn't it? It took a war and then it took federal...

military and police presence. Yes, and a lot of unification, like decades of unification behind an idea. Where were you up to?

This refusal to give up a seat was a statement that African-Americans were done with lacking the same rights of those they shared a country with. The Act Rosa Parks became the mother of the modern-day civil rights movement. At the time, Martin Luther King Jr. was a pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. See, that's where you get his... Oh, 100%. That's his riz right there. Dexter Avenue Baptist. His riz. That one's for all you Zoomers out there. Keep you engaged. Yeah.

which was located in the same area, Montgomery. King, early on, played a vital part in the execution of the Montgomery bus boycott, which was a non-violent protest that went on to last, really, 381 days.

As the head of the Montgomery Improvement Association, MIA, King himself was pushed to become the spokesperson of the movement. He was relatively new to the area. Many of his peers in the organization felt that he would be better suited to be the spokesperson as he had no strong ties to anyone else.

or any local events, good or bad. So he was chosen to spearhead the movement or be the spokesperson of the movement because he was kind of an unknown figure at the time. Like he didn't have any, there was no perception of him. No baggage. Yeah, no baggage, exactly. Which is interesting. That's how you do it. It's honestly the success source behind Barack Obama. Yeah, you bring in someone who doesn't have any baggage. And actually to an extent, really, Trump. Well, Trump had a lot of baggage. What do you mean?

Yeah, he had scandal baggage. He didn't have that same senatorial baggage that the rest of them have. Oh, like they point out, like, you voted this way. Yeah, in 1932, he voted. Yeah, that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The campaign was a relative success, leading to the Supreme Court ruling racial segregation on transportation was unconstitutional. However, the movement was just beginning, and now they could effect change if they were pointed in the right direction. All right, so to speak on Martin Luther King Jr.'s upbringing briefly, he was born on January 15th, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, to Reverend Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Williams King. So his father was a reverend as well.

So this... Nepo baby. Oh, no. That's the true conspiracy. Dr. Martin Luther King was a nepo baby. Oh, God. No, but obviously, orating, I think that's a word, orating runs in his family, I guess. So he would have learned from his dad. Definitely. It is honestly incredible. It's the same thing that you see over and over with black comedians in the US. So often their fathers, so often their fathers are

Yeah. You're learning the tricks of the trade. Yeah. The stage presence alone is insane with black comedians. They get it from that. I'm telling you now. Yeah. And on top of that, I think that there is a lot of, I think when you watch an exclusively black audience in America watching a black comedian, the energy is like nothing else.

And I think it's because they've all just been conditioned by this church system. They know how to give it and they know how to take it, you know? Yeah, it is like a church setting whenever there's a predominantly black audience with a black comedian. I feel like we're going to bust into those fucking Thai cliche jokes, you know? White people will be like, hmm, I like my bread buttered and toasted evenly. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It still works for me. That's...

They haven't found a better… That is the best joke. You know what it is, it's just circa 2015 classic YouTube content of… It's been around forever since the 80s, those kinds of comparisons. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. We stole it from it. Yeah, it's endless. It's perfectly cyclical. It keeps happening. He was raised in a deeply religious household growing up in the Ebenezer Baptist Church with his father working as a pastor.

He's, that's pastor as in like a person who, you know, presides over a church. He's a pastor. Yeah, not a piece of pastor. I know my accent kind of fucks it up. His mother, a former school teacher, instilled in King Jr. a love for education.

Despite his relatively comfortable middle-class home, King Jr. experienced racial segregation and discrimination firsthand in the Jim Crow South. He was a bright student and he skipped grades and entered Morehouse College at just 15 years old, where he would be further influenced by civil rights leaders and the philosophy that would guide his involvement in the civil rights movement. So obviously a very bright individual growing up. Not much more could be said there, right? Like, obviously. Yeah.

Well, he's got that perfect background for exactly what he became. His origin story makes sense. He honestly, if he was born a few decades later, I feel like he would have been like a prominent politician. Yeah, or a black comedian being like, see, white people, they won't... Oh, no. White people like their bread like this. Whereas black people are more like, we'll have bread whatever way, man. Yeah. I suppose they do because he did.

All right. You continue on. Martin Luther King Jr. believed in the power of nonviolent protest for social change, going as far as saying in his speech that if one day every black person turned against nonviolence, he would stand alone and not be afraid to say that it is the wrong way.

Damn. That's powerful. Now that is a religious man. That takes balls to say that to your own people's movement, basically. Like, I will turn against you if you guys turn to violence. That's an insanely empowering message in my eyes. That's leadership. Yeah. Yeah. Makes a lot of sense that you learn about this guy in the history books as opposed to Malcolm X, huh? Yeah, yeah. For sure. Yeah, that's a...

Because it's a more unifying message, it really is. Well, it's a very powerful message, isn't it? Yeah. And throughout the 1960s, his message and emphasis on unity was working as the world saw the difference in the nonviolent protest compared to the counter-protests and police who often counteracted in violence. It simply could no longer be ignored. That's a really good point. Like, if you are a nonviolent protest and your opposition is violent, that's definitely going to skew public opinion. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

People love cheering for an underdog. Oh, yeah. Except for the Americans. I honestly always thought they hated underdogs, but there you go. I always thought Americans were like, they're losers.

I thought they worshipped success. I think in like the global aspect of it, yeah, I think they cheer for themselves and powerful figures because they are the powerful figures. But like in terms of their own country, I think it's just human nature to cheer for the underdog. Go for the underdog. Yeah, you see it in sports. You see it in pretty much any kind of conflict.

Yeah, Ben. As a lot of online narcissists know, how good is victim status? Yeah. Oh, dude, being the victim's the greatest. Unfortunately, as to us in our YouTube mansions, we cannot claim that. Victim status? Yeah, no. What are we going to claim victim status over? Stop me from trying.

Oh, well, you got your house firebombed. Never mind. You're safe. I've got victim status. You've got permanent victim status. Yep. And I will be milking it. Thank you very much. You can't not. I'm sorry. It's just too easy. It's too easy. For context, for people who don't know Friendly Geordie's story here, his house got firebombed very recently. And it'll happen again. Yeah, me and Martin Luther King, eh? Two sides of the same coin. Two peas in a pod.

When will it all end? We shall persevere on this paragraph.

King was very present in many protests at the time. He used the power of his words to keep protesters grounded and marching. In April of 1963, King and other protesters were arrested and placed in the Birmingham jail for violating an injunction that prohibited anti-segregation protests in Birmingham. Many of those jailed were schoolchildren. While he was there... Lock him up. Lock him up. Lock the schoolchildren up. Yeah, how dare they protest?

You know the state of the country is bad if fucking school children are out on the streets protesting. Yeah, how do you get away with that in the 60s? Don't you get spanked or something even if you go to school? I mean, their parents were there with them, probably. Yeah, but parents back then weren't like our parents now where they go to the teacher and they'll say, I'll report you for misconduct. I think parents were more than willing to beat their kids as well. Everyone was in on it.

You were just a good, clean fan back in the day. I don't know. It just seemed like that was your options back then. It was either go to jail or get spanked. I'd choose jail. Yeah, they went to jail. I don't want to be spanked. They were probably going to get spanked in jail too. With a ruler? Yeah. I don't know. I didn't even think it was possible to jail school children like this. That's kind of crazy. Yeah, well, I think... Maybe. I don't think it's possible in this day and age. No, I think that it's very strange to understand...

that yes, you can sit there and say it's not too long ago, the 1960s, but it was quite long ago. I don't know if America had the same experience we did, but there's this book here called The Land Before Avocado or whatever, and it's just talking about how much shittier people's lives were not that long ago, as in

People in ancient Rome were drinking out of lead pipes. So were people in the 60s. Oh, my God. And they had lead paint in their house. And you used to burn the garbage right out the curb of your house. And so there used to be blooms of toxic burning garbage smoke like it's Cambodia just across your middle class neighborhoods. And everyone would just be coughing that in being like, yeah, that's fine for the atmosphere to be like that. And that's normal life. That just is how it is. That's

This is normal life. So it's weird going back now and thinking about school children being in jail. But I reckon probably it happened all the time. I bet you they didn't even have juvenile hall. Yeah, true. You're fucking, you, you, you, you know, make a bad joke in class or whatever. That's three weeks in jail. Out with the murderers. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Put it in the same jail cells as fucking murderers. Yeah.

While he was there, he wrote a now famous letter explaining why he was in Birmingham and why his movement was so important. It's always the case. Every time, every great figure throughout history, as soon as they're arrested. So Nelson Mandela and, of course, Adolf Hitler. I was going to say, I know where this is heading. I don't like it. I was like, what figures are you talking about?

Jail is school. It's a better school. It forces you to concentrate more than the teacher with the ruler. Oh, I would get so much done if you put me in jail. Like, what are you going to do? Work out all day and, like, work on your brain, basically, just to stop yourself from going insane. It's so good. Yeah, it's life's little cheat sheet. Here you go. Here's a tip for all listeners out there. Go out, commit a crime, go to jail for five years. Go to jail.

And you'll come out a better man. Probably. Really educated on how to make a successful drug empire. You have a lot of... I've heard this about going to jail. Because as you know from my career, that has been quite the possibility on many occasions. And they were honestly saying the same thing over and over. It's not so bad being a minimum security prison. And the reason for that is, one, here in Australia, I don't know what it's like in America, but in Australia, you get an iPad...

It gives you options for lunch and dinner. Yeah, don't you have a menu? You have a menu for what you can eat. Yeah. That's crazy. Minimum security here is business class. That's it. You're just trapped and you can't leave. And frankly, I don't want to leave. I don't want to get off the plane once a business class flight is over. So I'd love it. That's what I've never understood. Like if you're homeless, wouldn't it be a better idea to just go to jail? I mean, to cry. Yeah.

So you're encouraging... Such shitty life advice. Yeah. We're awful people. We're out of touch. That's what we are. So out of touch. You know what you need? Jail. Don't follow our advice, obviously. It should go without saying. I'm sure there's some downsides to it. Yeah. But the friendships you'll make in there will last a lifetime. A lifetime!

And they might be valuable. That's the whole thing. Sorry. What I was saying before is they were saying that everybody in jail is either a criminal genius or a complete dope. And if you have two brain cells, you start hanging out with the criminal geniuses and you learn a lot. You basically just get an MBA. That's what happens. MBA in drug business kind of. Or fraud. Which really, it's the same sort of model.

Plus, it's got built-in error correction, right? Because they can tell you how they failed so when you get out, you don't make the same mistake. That's definitely true. Wow. And also, there's quite an incentive, I'm imagining, in a drug empire not to make mistakes. So is it possible that jail is actually just creating smarter villains? Yes.

If they are smart to begin with, which thank God 90% of them are not. But if there is a criminal with brain cells that goes in there and learns from experts in his field in there and comes out, he's now a smarter criminal. A lot of the time, if they can handle being in the pen, because the other thing that people always say to me is,

About two weeks in, you realize, fuck, this is boring. And so you kind of just, that's a big reason why you change your life. It's not even the violence. It's the fact that it's sort of thing of,

I want to go to McDonald's. You can't. Well, I think, yeah, the freedom. The freedom is the main thing. But at the same time, I'm pretty sure you get an Xbox in prison. So over here anyway. Well, you'd be set, wouldn't you, Jack? Yeah, I'd just fucking game all day. Are you kidding me? Yeah, I mean, your entire life wouldn't change at all if you had it. Yeah. This is my jail cell. This room right now. Yeah.

The only thing is you would probably be forced like me to socialize a little bit more. Yeah. Honestly, Al, as a YouTuber, your life would probably improve. Well, yeah, you wouldn't be making the money that YouTube offers and stuff. So probably not improve overall.

Oh, really? I thought... Alright, okay. Again, if we're talking minimum security prison, I bet you you could say, but I want to go on Twitch and they'd say, alright, you have to be in bed at 9. Yeah. Oh, dude. Maybe.

Why hasn't anyone tried that yet? Has anyone tried it? That's what I want to know. I've always heard stories of like the people smuggling in phones easily and just like tweeting from prison. Yeah. And do you remember there was a viral video of some like female prison guard just banging the prison prisoner in the jail cell last year at some point. So they're getting pussy too. I've got the question must be asked. Was she hot?

I mean, it was like they smuggled in an old Nokia, probably your phone, your type of phone. So the camera quality wasn't great. But yeah, she was pretty attractive. See, then you just get to live out porn. Yeah. It's a better place. It's just porn fantasy. What I'm saying is Martin Luther King should have just stayed there and he would have had a sick life and probably wrote some cool trichesas. Well, he did write cool shit as we're about to find out. All right. Well, yeah.

I'll take excerpt one. Whose turn is it? Is it yours? I'll take excerpt one. So we're going to read some excerpts from the letters that he wrote, these famous Birmingham letters, which kind of explain why the movement was so important.

This is quote, "You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham, but your statement, I am sorry to say fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I'm sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the black community with no alternative."

That's powerful. Well, see, he is, who'd have guessed, quite the wordsmith. Yeah. And he's got a really good way of constructing arguments. Yeah, I mean, that's a pretty straightforward argument, but it is a pretty concrete one, too. Concrete, but also... You've left us no alternative. No alternative, but he's so polite. Yeah, you wouldn't... I don't know if you'd see that in this day and age. I feel like we don't have the... Everyone's an arsehole now.

Yeah, we don't have the ability to be like this. And people would argue that it's not effective. People would argue that being polite is letting yourself be walked over. Evidently, that is not true, though. Well, here it is. I think it's now because everyone is just such a jerk now, including myself. I'm king of the jerks. But reading that now sort of reminds me of what Koreans say about their mums, where when they put on that extra polite face,

level of language in their language. You know how there's sort of just like formal language in Korean when you're talking to the king or whatever and then there's talking to an elder and then there's talking to your friends. When they put on the I'm talking to a king language when they're talking to their children. Yeah, different kind of tone of the message. So, so much scarier. And I'm kind of feeling the same thing now. Honestly, no one speaks as eloquently anymore. And

And this is the big thing. Honestly, being polite is more effective and more, oh, maybe I should listen to this person.

God, we've degraded so much. I know, we have. That's what I'm saying. Everybody back then, including the Ku Klux Klan, were better people. They just were. Oh, no. They just were. Everyone is nicer and better than we are. Is that a red thread endorsement right now? Is that what's happening? What are we up to now? Go to jail and then obviously join the white supremacist gang while you're in there.

That's our advice. Fantastic advice. Fantastic life advice. Honestly, it's the same thing when you go and read. You would have the same thing, Americans. When you go and read World War I letters back to their sweethearts of 19-year-old boys, they speak as well as Martin Luther King.

Yeah, I feel like reading comprehension and writing ability has just plummeted. And I don't know if it's the fault of our lower attention spans due to social media and literally not having enough focus to be able to string together words eloquently. But I've definitely noticed the difference, which is weird because you see...

At the moment, you see a lot of people reading books. Books are very popular at the moment. And yes, they are mostly like smut books for TikTok audiences. But it's still words, right? It's still reading. Yeah, but they're so much dumber. Every self-help book cover now just has the word fuck in it.

It's like, yeah, all right, let's get motivated. Writing is far worse now. Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck, balls, kick ass. Writing generally across the board is so bad now. It's crap. Across all mediums. Yeah. I don't know why. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, that's a very Nelson Mandela quote, really. It's still true. He must have been inspired by it. Who?

Who'd have thought? Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was well-timed in the view of those that have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation for years now. Look, he is making a very cogent argument. I just hate that very cringey people on Twitter make the same argument now. But...

But still, warranted for the time. For years now, I have heard the word wait. It rings in the ear of every black person with piercing familiarity. This wait has almost always meant never. We must come to see with one of our distinguished jurists that justice too long delayed is justice denied. We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. Very union-esque message there. Yeah.

I reckon if you go and look into a deep dive at Martin Luther King, I think he probably would have learned a lot from the union movement. From the what? From the union movement. Oh, like fucking employment unions? Workers unions? Yeah. It's absolutely shrouded in the same sort of logic and

Yeah, like if we lay down and take it and wait, it'll never come. It'll never come. The if not now, when sort of mentality. Yeah, because the person with the power isn't just going to willingly give up their power just because. Yeah, he's a pay raise just because I'm nice. You have to demand it, but as Martin Luther King said before, you have to demand it in such a way that is unifying in of itself, which I agree with. And really, now that I think about it,

sort of pretty good union negotiator slash you just going to your boss and asking for a pay rise. That's really the way that he is expressing this in jail to, I'm guessing, wardens and whatnot. Sort of is, hey, I've been a pretty good employee for a while. How about upgrading me to the constitutional rights? Give me the business class. Give me the soul of the Xbox. Yeah.

Alright, this last excerpt is,

He was a good writer, for sure. He was a good writer. Don't know what scintillating means. That's how you know he's a good writer. Let's find out. I'm pretty... I know... Do you ever hear words and you just kind of understand the general premise of them, but you wouldn't be able to define them? I don't know. I don't even think that that's a very modern trade. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Persufication. So I get it. You know the context in which they're used, but like...

You wouldn't be able to pinpoint it. Sparkling or shiny. Yep. All right. So this was a deeply impactful letter, obviously, and it highlights everything King stood for. And in this extremely racially segregated city at the time, he was directly making a change that nobody could ignore or a call for change. Really. The Birmingham campaign led to an agreement of removing segregation signs of toilets, drinking fountains and plans to further this to lunch counters and also improving and increasing employment for black people. That's, that's,

That's a kind of morbidly hilarious sign of bureaucracy where you have to create plans to extend this action to like lunch counters and stuff. Like you can't just do it. You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's on the docket. We'll get to it eventually down the line. It just, it takes time, obviously. Like we've got to get the right people to approve the funding for it to remove the signs. Is that, is that level of bureaucratic, bureaucratic nonsense that I fucking loathe? Yeah.

It's funny. Although this... Sorry. Yeah, you continue. Okay, thank you. Although this was positive, those in Birmingham who opposed this change responded with violence, setting off explosives and bombing the house of King's brother, Alfred Daniel King. You know what that feels like, Jordan. Yeah! Sucks, doesn't it? Holy shit, Alfred. You and me, bro. Months later, the Ku Klux Klan bombarded

And yeah, you kind of like, you want to look back at this history and be like, oh yeah, everyone held hands, sung songs and marched through the streets. And, you know, Martin Luther King Jr. gave some nice speeches and stuff.

But you can't talk about this without also saying, like, probably close to half the country did not agree with this message. Now, I would like to know that. What was the sentiment in the north of America? Yeah, I don't know. Were they sympathetic? I would imagine they were. I did read a stat that Martin Luther King at the time was generally disliked broadly. Like, I think he had, like, a 45% approval rating at the time, just broadly.

Not bad. A lot of presidents would kill for that. Yeah, but if you're enacting social change, that's still one in two people don't like you. One in two people. One in two people. So they didn't like him or didn't agree with the movement. That specifically, I'm talking about his approval rating. His approval rating.

Now that probably suggests that the agreement of the movement was probably lower, unless, it depends how he's portrayed in the media, you wouldn't know. Obviously in the South it wouldn't be great, but... Well, we have the same problems with the media now than we did then. Like they were very much, you know, a machine that operated in the same way. It's just kind of increased in its efficiency now. But yeah, I'm sure they were stoking the flames. Yes, well, this raises a very interesting point because...

What was the BNES perception back then? Because I would have imagined that major networks would have been sympathetic towards him, but it could have been the same deal where...

media pats itself on the back endlessly now saying, oh, we were so anti-Vietnam the whole time. It crumbled because of our coverage. And then you go back and look at it and they were absolutely pro-Vietnam War the whole time until the administration decided they were going to change. And then two weeks later, the Centralist War must be ended. Yeah. And of course, we're talking about the media like it's an all-encompassing thing. There were probably articles here and there that broke away from

from the general sentiment. Yes, but back then, probably three outlets, pretty easy to control the narrative. True, yeah. And as we will come to learn and know, again, the institutions themselves, they didn't have a high approval rating of what was happening. So if they themselves were pressuring the media to push their agenda, then that's going to have public perception issues as well for Martin Luther King and the movement. Yes, yes.

Yeah, definitely. Good. I'm glad you got that stat. Again, there were definitely people, bad people trying to stop this from happening with violence. Yeah, this is just proven. And obvious, right? That's obviously going to happen.

Oh yeah, totally. The civil rights movement was snowballing, growing in support across the country, but of course this power meant a rise in those who opposed King and his beliefs, such as the Ku Klux Klan, like we just mentioned. There was also the White Citizens Council, who didn't just use violence, but also social and economic oppression against the black community in an effort to help keep black voices oppressed. King became a main target of these groups very quickly, as one might suspect. King

King described the White Citizens Council as the modern Ku Klux Klan in a speech he presented in New York in 1956, demanding that they must be held accountable for what they had done throughout the South.

That is terror, mob rule, and brutal murders. Many of these detractors believed and indeed spread the idea that King may have had communist connections, something of importance to the overall story. But yes, we all know that racism ran deep in America during the time period. It's undeniable. It's persisted beyond just the White Citizens Council and the Ku Klux Klan. There were business owners and titans of industry who thought the changes may impact them negatively. And of course, the institutions and systems that propped up America were

were also infected by decades of inaction and the proliferation of racist policy. This indeed included departments of the federal government, which is where we come to our boy. Well, that's an awful phrase, actually. He's not our boy. Jay Edgar Hoover. Yeah, the man of the story on the opposite end of Martin Luther King, I should say, is Jay Edgar Hoover. I'm an idiot.

I'm an idiot, Jordan. Who is J. Edgar Hoover? Can you please tell me? J. Edgar Hoover is a conspiracy in itself. This is a Red Thread episode that you must delve into. Was he a cross-dresser? Yes. When I was investigating this story, I read all about his... A lot of different rumors, really, but cross-dressing was one of them, yeah. One of them? One of the many. So it's confirmed, is it? I mean, I wouldn't say it was confirmed, but I mean...

Someone said it at some point. You wouldn't be surprised? I would be surprised. I think you misunderstand how common cross-dressing was in the 50s and 60s. It was? I mean, it wasn't entirely uncommon. I mean, I'm talking relatively, maybe. But I wouldn't... He's a weird dude. I wouldn't be surprised. Is he a weird dude? He doesn't look like a weird dude. What do you mean? He looks like a cross-dresser.

You think? I can imagine him in a bra and panties and a nice wig. What do you mean? I can see it. The vision. Maybe because your brain has been conditioned because of what you've read. And so he's just looking at it like, yeah, it's a Mrs. Doubtfire affair. Not me. It wouldn't be. Not me. All I see is straight up Robin Williams, mate. It wouldn't be the first powerful figure that has been indicted as a cross-dresser. Do you remember that Canadian colonel?

Who was cross-dressing and he murdered a bunch of people? No, but that's an insane story that I will have to look into. Yeah, I don't remember his name, but he was a Canadian colonel. He was an active cross-dresser. He'd break into people's houses and cross-dress with their clothes and then murder them. It was wild. In the 50s? No, this was like the 80s.

He's doing that in the 80s. Maybe even the 90s. Don't you think the 90s and the 80s seems like a very serial killer decades, doesn't it? Yeah. Well, the entire 1900s do, really.

Oh, okay. Yeah. You'd know more about these than I would. And then it stopped due to mass surveillance and stuff. I mean, it still exists, obviously. There's still serial killers, but I think... You can't get away with anything with phones these days. Yeah. Those poor serial killers. So good, just making the political correctness has gone mad argument. Serial killers.

In May 1924, he served as the fifth and final director of the Bureau of Investigation, which was the preceding organization before the FBI. So he kind of presided over the transformation of basically the creation of the FBI. He was instrumental in the creation of it. And what's wild, I don't think a lot of people know just how long he was the director of the FBI. He was there for like 50 years as the director.

From the beginning. I knew that. Did you? It didn't come out about two minutes ago. No, I didn't.

Yeah, he was very much instrumental in creating the FBI as we know it today. He served 50 years as its head, the department head, when it was first created. So he was there to create all the guidelines, basically created its identity. So he was the one. He's basically, he's the definition of the FBI. He's instrumental in it.

And he continued in his role or position as director until he died in May 1972. He was there through seven presidents coming through, and they all kept him there. Doesn't the president have authority, I guess, on choosing who directs the FBI, right? Yeah, well...

Yes, but... It has to go through Senate hearings and stuff to confirm it and stuff. Yeah, I would imagine. But also, look, regardless of whether they're good or bad or not, I would imagine that when you are president and someone comes in and you have something that is sort of more of a civic role as opposed to a particularly politicized role, let's say, just keep them rolling through. Especially if it's somebody that sort of founded that shit. Yeah, he was there for 50... But I feel like if he was inept, like if he was bad at his job, he would have been let go.

Maybe, but maybe that's giving it too much weight. As has been exposed, my very limited knowledge about him, that is not the impression that you get of him. No, you definitely get the sense that he's an effective cross-dresser, not one of the ones that sits at home masturbating all day to Rule 34 hentai. That was his civic prowess. Yeah. But no, obviously he was effective. The FBI was...

Definitely for lack of a better word effective during that time period when he was in charge. Like obviously they made mistakes and stuff but they were doing stuff. You can't say they weren't doing stuff.

And yeah, so he made it into what it is. But his public image over time turned from a hero, like you said, he was seen as a hero at the time, to controversial with stories emerging posthumously of a man that would constantly abuse the large amount of power that he had. And these stories directly tie into the overall conspiracy surrounding Martin Luther King Jr. Look at that. We're about an hour in and we're just now getting to the conspiracy. Jesus Christ.

I feel like... It's good for long commutes, I guess. Look, if you're a truck driver, you're going to like this episode. Yeah. The editor could cut things down, but also I do think it's important to provide the context of who these people were, like who the figures were in the environment that they existed in. Because it all does play a part.

Yes, yes. So would you like to start reading Tension Between Two Powerful Men? Martin Luther King Jr. became known to Hoover as the civil rights movement power and influence expanded. Hoover wasn't sold on King's fight for equality, rather seeing it as a possible plot led by communism.

It was around the time of the Cold War, after all, whether this was an earnest fear of communism or a useful scapegoat to hide true nature behind Hoover's mistrust behind racism. To stop the debate, Hoover undeterred brought his suspicions into light in 1963 when King was planning a march on the United States capital, Washington, D.C., head of domestic intelligence of the FBI at the time. William Sullivan was asked by Hoover to investigate King thoroughly in an attempt to determine if he...

any communist influences within the movement. He did. Came back to Hoover a week before the planned march with nothing. Sullivan reported that although communists tried to make connections with the group, they had ultimately failed with the group, preferring to remain focused on their movement instead. Okay. I kind of missed when communism was a

was a detestable thing. I feel like America kind of just gave up on that idea that communism is bad. You missed it, as in just weren't cognizant and conscious at the time. No, I missed it as in I missed America actually pushing back against communism, I guess. Yeah, well, honestly, I think that it is all summed up

Jackson, you've got to look at this footage. It's incredible. Go back and look at old 50s newscasts from America. It is simultaneously the coolest and scariest thing I've ever seen in my life.

It really did used to start off with that grainy footage and some sort of jazzy music going, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And then it'd go to a really classy, handsome man with a cigarette in his hand smoking. And then he'd go, good evening, this is CBS News, and the cigarette is parlance. Today, presidential candidate Richard Nixon has been accused of communism. That's his response.

And then they go to Richard Nixon and then he just sits there and says, I have no ties to the Communist Party at all. There's a Democrat, there's a Communist. And then they just cut back to him and he spoke again and he was like, schmooze.

The Democrats have been accused of communism. That was the whole newscast. It was incredible. Selling cigarettes and pointing witch hunts of communism endlessly. Yeah, I will agree they went too far in using it as a weapon. But I do still think that it's important to push back against communist ideals because it doesn't work out.

Well, I would like to know how legitimate it was in the United States. Oh, I don't... I definitely think there were communist sympathizers, but I don't think that... I'm sure they existed, but everyone in Hollywood was outed. Every... Everyone... Again, it was used as a weapon. Apart from McCarthy seemed to be a communist, according to McCarthy. Yeah, it was used as a weapon. Like, as soon as you didn't like someone, you're like, well, they might be a communist sympathizer. Yes. And it was effective. Oh, totally. That's the whole thing. So I...

Being in that environment, especially because, again, this is my knowledge of Hoover. I think he might be the white lotus flower guy if indeed that is the name of the movie I'm thinking of. The point is it has Leonardo DiCaprio in it. Look, if that is the guy that was kind of spearheading that investigation, this is so bad, this jump. But I don't think that he seems to be a man that was motivated by...

by racial hatred. I really don't think that many high-end bureaucrats in Washington, bar the Southern Democrats, had those intentions back then. I think they were...

more or less thinking this is quite cruel what is happening in the south but politically their hands were tied i feel like that was the the general thing and for him to be sitting there and saying i think this is a communist movement now that sounds like something the u.s political establishment was very interested in the 60s yeah and and some members of

Martin Luther King Jr.'s inner circle had ties to communist sympathizers, I guess, or communist movements previously in their lives. So that was the impetus behind

the government believing that Martin Luther King was kind of, you know, compromised by communist ideals. So, yeah, I do think they could have convinced themselves that this was a communist movement and then they frothed at the mouth, obviously, because they hated communism, which, you know,

Yes, but I also think, I don't think it has to be one or the other either. True, true. I think that they could have used the communism to give it more of a politically accepted slant on why they were doing what they did while still having kind of a racial bias. Yes. Yeah, that could be very likely. And especially, what a bad time to be an 18-year-old back then.

That would be used against you for the rest of your life because, man, everyone in first year uni is a communist. Again, you're an idealist when you're in uni.

You latch onto things. Yeah. That shouldn't be like a lifelong crime. Despite every type of propaganda boomed our nation's black citizens, this is a source, they have never succumbed to the party's saccharine promises of communist utopia. Hoover was not happy about this. Hoover. Since these documents are declassified, we can see that he scribbled a note at the bottom of the page saying, this memo reminds me vividly of those I received from Castro who took over Cuba.

Yeah, there you go. I love it. This is the flavor of it. What a better time. You contended then that Castro and his cohorts were not communists and not influenced by communists. You know he was writing about Castro all day. He would wake up in a sweat just screaming Castro's name. Yeah. You know that's all he thought about.

That's probably why he cross-dressed too. He was driven there by frustration. Out of frustration. How can we let this tiny piss island that we use mostly as a tax loophole get away from us? Time alone has proved you wrong.

Oh, man, he would have loved that. Imagine being right about that for the rest of your life. That's a real Winston Churchill, I was right about Hitler moment, wasn't it? Yeah. I, for one, cannot ignore the memos. Re-King Odell Leveson deleted. Okay. Still classified? Yeah, I guess. Hall et al.,

as having only infinitesimal effect on the efforts to exploit the American black people by the communists. So, yeah, he was directly saying here that he believes that King and his inner circle, Odell, Levinson, Hall, and whoever that deleted person was, obviously were communists or at least being affected or influenced by communists.

with the goal of affecting and exploiting the broader American people. That was there. That was Hoover's, at least it was his professional or political...

kind of, what would you call it, motive or explanation for why he was interested in this. But again, could be a million different reasons. He could have, it could have just been he hated his speeches, honestly. He could have just been like, that guy's speeches are pathetic. I could write better speeches. I could write better ones. Yeah, yeah. Like, that's Hoover saying that. And then just that bias forms in his head. I happen to believe that it was probably, like you said, a communist...

A hatred or a paranoia of communism directly bolstered by institutional racism. Honestly, that's a pretty damn solid theory there. Yeah, well, when in doubt, just combine everything, right? Yeah, everyone's right. Take the middle ground.

So the memos referenced here are FBI memos related to the surveillance and counterintelligence efforts against Stanley Levinson and Clarence B. Jones, two close advisors of King's who were both suspected of communist affiliations, though no definitive proof was ever found. Hoover made his unhappiness with Sullivan, that's the FBI agent, uh,

underling, Sullivan well-known giving him the silent treatment and effectively forcing him to amend the report with altered views on the situation. Hoover was the head of the FBI after all and held all the power over Sullivan and Sullivan later testified that he was basically pushed to change the report or risk getting fired or transferred. So that's how deep Hoover's hatred of Martin Luther King goes. He's basically saying, Sullivan, I won't talk to you anymore unless you amend the report to basically confirm what I'm saying.

It's really interesting how institutions work like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's no pushback from the other side because what are you going to do? I mean, first of all, you'd be crazy to push back against the FBI director unless you want to die. Like, no, thank you.

What Hoover wanted was to gain intel on King and what Hoover wanted, he got. Just two days after the massive protest in Washington, another memo written by Sullivan landed on Hoover's desk and this one reads a little bit differently to the first. This is the excerpt. Personally, I believe in the light of King's powerful demagogic... Demagogic? Is that how you pronounce it? Demagogic? Demagogic?

It's one of those words I've only ever seen written. Demagogic speech yesterday. He stands head and shoulders over all other black leaders put together when it comes to influencing great masses of black people. We must mark him now. That's definitely a direct terminology.

We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous black person of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the black people, and national security. So this was the FBI's stance on Martin Luther King directly in a memo. It doesn't get more official than that. And this is confirmed. The national security thing kind of makes me think that's the first...

truly corroborating thing that I've heard so far. If they're perceiving him as a national security threat, yeah, man, that makes sense that you'd pull the trigger. Yeah, but again, who's determining that he is a national security threat? Well, J. Edgar Hoover is, right? Yeah, exactly. And given his other writing and stuff, it's very clear he's a biased individual. Okay.

So now that the FBI had placed explicit importance on Martin Luther King Jr. and tied him to being an operative of a global enemy without any evidence, by the way, what were they going to do? King had built this great movement, or at least contributed heavily to it. Many looked up to him and he held great moral influence. People like Hoover, people in power, felt threatened by King and they had posited a theory. Without King, the de facto leader, the movement may become directionless and fall apart. So they began to concoct a plan.

In later investigations, it was concluded that Hoover had a strong dislike towards King, "The committee concluded, based on an exhaustive review of FBI files and on the sworn testimony of former FBI and Justice Department officials, that the campaign to discredit Dr. King up to the time of his death and beyond continued as long as it did and as intensely as it did only because of Hoover's deep personal dislike for Dr. King." So this sounds pretty heavily like just bias.

To me. Yeah. Like just bias, not any evidence-based rationale for why FBI resources was utilized to investigate King further. This sounds like Hoover just couldn't admit that he was wrong, maybe. Yeah, that's definitely true.

So they tied King to a man named Stanley Levinson, previously named, who they wrote down as a concealed member of the Communist Party. Levinson was a white advisor and supporter of King, and there's still not much evidence out there to prove that he was a communist. But this was enough for the FBI to begin surveilling King intensely, claiming the motive was their search for signs of communism, when in reality, they were really looking for opportunities for blackmail, which was, of course, J. Edgar Hoover's, one of his favorite pastimes, basically, as FBI head. He loves blackmail.

So they began to spy on King. There were wiretaps located all over his premises. They targeted his own house in Atlanta, Georgia and the places he worked or visited often, like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and hotels that King often traveled and stayed at and homes of his friends and family. They also set up secret microphones in many of these places, allowing the FBI to listen to

Everything that was happening, basically. On paper, they were looking for communist influence under the guise of the COINTELPRO OPERATION, all capital letters. Don't FBI... I just fucking love when they give them names like that. I don't know why. It just tickles my brain when there's an operation name. Like Operation Desert Storm. Yeah, shit like that. I don't know. Well, I mean, to bring it back to UFOs, how good is the name? Project Moondust. Yeah. So fucking cool. Sick.

It's so cool. And also this, this like leaked memos where they say, where it's like a high command from the US Air Force and will say something like UFOs cannot exist and therefore do not exist. I really like how the US memorandum phrases, it's just so boss. Yeah, it really is. It's so powerful. It takes me back to like imagining, imagining myself as a spy growing up or whatever, like when you're a kid running around playing with friends, playing with friends.

Playing like spies. It would just be so good to be in a position one day in your life when someone spoke to you like that seriously and they're not saying it as a joke for... Fuck that. I would love to talk like that. I want to talk like that. I know. But, you know...

You haven't earned the right. No, I know. Because I'm Australian. Yeah. And you're not a cross-dresser. Yeah. Got to start cross-dressing. And then you can act like a boss. Yeah. Because you're getting all the negative energy out at home when you cross-dress. It leaves only the Chad alpha energy. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Maybe there is some psychology there. But of course, there was no evidence. They didn't find any evidence of communist influence, but they did find stuff. They knew it was wrong to handwritten notes within the documents urging each other that these surveillances were particularly delicate and to be very cautious. It didn't matter, however, Hoover wanted this done. And in the end, they found something that they wanted, at least what Hoover wanted. You could take it from here.

The first attempt. First attempt, six tapes. What? Yeah. Really? Now we're getting to the nice dirty stuff. Viewer discretion advised. How did he get a six tape in the 60s? Very, very carefully. Who had cameras? There's a guy with a giant fucking, you know, those old timey cameras. The roller ones. Yeah. I don't think it is done.

He's just under the curtain behind the camera. Hoping that he was a porn star. That's the only way that you get a sex tape back then. Yeah. You need a whole production for that shit. I know.

Pretty easy to find that out, Dean, quickly. So, like 20 films made a year. So, they didn't find communism, but they supposedly recorded the tapes are not available. Oh, my God. Really? They're not available to the public yet. King performing various acts of adultery with many women and filming it. I swear, they must have had the guy. They must have had the guy in the corner. Yeah.

The tape captures the women expressing their love for King and how they miss him, implying that the meetups were a regular thing. Oh, you're getting all hot and bothered there, Jordan. I hear you already. You're stumbling over words. Yeah. This is nice. I did not realize this was going to get steamy. Yeah. It's nice and hot. King liked to get down, down and dirty.

King, you old dog. King would try to keep these affairs a secret, although some of his associates knew King would become jealous over his lovers seeing other people and some women that he paid hundreds of dollars to be with. So King went to brothels, eh? Yeah, I mean, he saw prostitutes.

hundreds of dollars in the 60s. Yeah. How old is this man? I wonder if that was like church money too because that would be bad. I mean, he's... Nasty. It is bad. He had a wife, obviously. This is infidelity, so that's not good. Yeah, look, it's always the same case, isn't it? It's about to get worse. Charismatic men like that. Yeah. I mean...

What's a guy supposed to do? Yeah, when you got that taste of power and like for lack of a better phrasing here chicks throwing themselves at you yeah, it's kind of difficult

I just can't believe that he's saying prostitutes if he's getting that. He's got that Martin Luther King rears. That energy, yeah. I don't understand that. That seems to be a common thing as well. Like really rich and powerful people, they can get anyone they want and yet they still pay for prostitutes. I don't really understand that. The secrecy makes sense.

Oh, you think he's buying their privacy. Basically buying an NDA. Yeah, true. Maybe. There are some horrible accusations in these reports with the Dissociative Kings sexually assaulting a woman, sex orgies. Holy hell, dude. He is. He's Diddy from another generation. Oh, my God. Use of vile language. Yep. See? All of Diddy's albums came up with an expletive warning. And...

And excessive alcohol. He drank alcohol? Unbelievable. Excessive as well.

no australian has ever done that obviously the sexual assault is bad uh sex orgy this is this is all bad for a person with that image anyway obviously uh this like leader this moral leader that's not gonna play well in the 60s uh i think these are also alleged i think they've heard the tapes and stuff so i i think there's a like i'll be honest i think there's a high likelihood that these are real and they uh

They do have king and compromising positions. I just don't see how that's not true, honestly, just given what powerful people are like and what people are like, really, generally speaking. I don't see how this didn't happen.

So glad Trump signed that executive order. I want to see the Martin Luther King sex tape. I want to see that. He'll only upload the uncensored documents and stuff to Pornhub. That's where it's leading. Yeah, yeah. That's the only way we're getting those uncensored documents. It's all just porn. Damn, dude. Could you imagine the view count on that? Oh, you're fucking wild. Although I bet it's got that fucking awful under the nutsack angle that they do on porn where it's just balls slapping.

Well, you think that's the good thing. Imagine that with the rolly camera back then. I'm assuming they're filming through like a fucking high rise window pointing into his house from like, you know, 200 meters away. So it's not going to be the most arousing stuff ever. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, of course. It's going to be HD. Yeah. All right. That makes sense. You know what? It might also just be audio because of wiretapping. True that. Yeah.

What do you reckon they're going to call the video? I have a cream. I have a cream. I have a cream pie. Holy shit. I don't think it gets much better than that. I have a cream pie. Oh my God. If they have footage of Martin Luther King cream pie, that's way more effective than killing him. They have fucking orgy. They have orgy stuff. That's pretty extreme.

Yeah, for the 60s as well. Yeah, well, orgies were popular in the 60s, I think. Oh, wait, yeah, no, of course. Wait, it was the 60s. Everyone had an orgy. Yeah, yeah, but still, like, again, he was a clergyman. Whatever, he was a famous dude. But what I want to know is, like, if you're the FBI agent and you're on the outside recording this orgy, do you feel left out?

Like, what's stopping you from knocking on the door and saying, anyone want one more? He's getting shoved up outside. Like, how do you do that? How do you just be an active watcher? Or, sorry, an inactive watcher of an orgy? Well, as somebody who's participated in an orgy, if I saw one, I would be quite scared. I don't think I've got the...

You've got to be a certain type of person to give that. Yeah, true. You have to want an orgy. You have to want it. If he wanted it, yeah, it would have been hard. Yeah, you're getting chubbed up on the outside of that window. Oh my god, yeah. Your breath's fogging up the window so the camera can't see through it. Yeah, I'm not an orgy person either. I'm a very one-on-one sexual intimacy kind of person. So it's always been weird.

But I will say, there has to be no worse feeling than being in an orgy and being rejected by the orgy. Like, I'm imagining a person being in an orgy and, like, trying to join in and then saying, like, no, thanks, go join someone else. Like, that has to suck. How do you not get, like, so self-conscious or... Yeah, I guess self-conscious is the right word. At an orgy. Like, I would be very insecure. I don't understand how no one...

Has that feeling come across once. So strange. Yeah, I think you're right, though. It's the type of person at the orgy. Like, you have to be a very orgy person. It's not like you just randomly stumble across an orgy and go, yeah, why not? I'll hop in. Straight up dopamine addicts, I reckon. Yeah. Because they're also the type of person that wants to go hang gliding and cheer. Hang gliding orgy. To quote James Bond, the world is not enough. They're those type of people. Yeah, they're pushing the line. Always. Yeah.

All right. Do you want to continue? This is what they had wanted the FBI saw this as, the smoking gun that they needed in order to basically ruin King's life and undermine the civil rights movement. They didn't just send the tapes to King. They sent it to the media in an attempt for the media to leak them to the public. Interestingly, they did buy it, and many saw the tapes as a violation of King's privacy, and those given the films did not release them, making this attempt to make the FBI a failure. There you go.

All right, and then we come to the second attempt. The FBI makes a further move. In 1964, Coretta Scott, King's wife, opened their family front door to a package. With no return address, she curiously opened it to find a threatening blackmail letter as well as tapes of supposedly King partaking in adultery. The letter is filled with typos and corrections written from the perspective of one of King's supporters. And in it, they called King a fraud, urging him to, quote, look into his heart.

and that there is, quote, only one thing left for you to do, and you know what it is, end quote. The letter does not outright say what it is he needs to do, but the implication is clear as day, and I can't say the word because fucking YouTube sucks, but you know what it is, ending himself, you know.

That's what the letter wanted him to do. So this is a quote. This is an excerpt of the last two paragraphs of the letter. You can find the letter in the description below. The document that we're reading from is available in the description of this episode. So you can go read the letter. It's all in there. Quote, the American public, the church organizations that have been helping protestors, Jesus, protestant, protestors. Can you say that word for me? Protestant.

Thank you. That's dramatic.

How is that really blackmail since he... They sent it to the wife immediately. Like, I thought they would blackmail him against the wife. Like, we'll tell your wife about this. But no, they just sent it straight to the wife. To show that they're not fucking around. Yeah, true. Yeah.

Oh man, imagine coming home to that. Yeah. Coming home from the high of being at a sex orgy to an angry wife. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or just raising an entire crowd. Yeah, the power you feel. A million people or something like that. Home, arms crossed, the leader in the hand. I know what you did. And then also a letter saying, hey, commit, you know what? Yeah, yeah, yourself as well. Yeah. But you know what? Honestly, it'd make it a lot easier to commit yourself.

Dude, it is the easiest way out in that situation. If I got that letter and that all happened, like, yeah, I would definitely be thinking about that. Yeah, I know. It was like, well, this came at a very opportune time. Yeah, you didn't need to tell me that letter. I'm already thinking it.

While upset as his wife had opened the letter and heard the tapes, King did not give in to the demands as he knew that it wasn't a disgruntled supporter that had sent the mail to him. He believed that it had come directly from the FBI. Why now had the FBI decide to act so openly against King? And why did the letter seemingly indicate that King must die by a certain date? Already, I think that this is already proven that the FBI sent this 100%.

Yes. I think they were incredibly frustrated by not being successful in their surveillance and pre-existing blackmail against him, like sending it to the media and stuff. So I think this was them acting out and just going balls to the wall. But again, like you said, if he does die, he's a martyr now. So it's so irrational for the FBI to do this. I think as well. It's so strange. I mean, obviously, we're getting a quick excerpt of this.

It really depends how much of J. Edgar Hoover's day is taken up by thinking about Martin Luther King. Well, I think it's about 30% that and about 70% cross-dressing, if I'm being honest. You reckon that those are the two things that J. Edgar Hoover ever did? I mean, it really does make a mockery of the FBI. You can still run that. Will I wear the pink dress today? Yeah.

Oh, dude. Imagine finding out that he was a cross-dresser and then knowing that every time you're in one of those FBI meetings, he was wearing like lace pink panties while he was giving his addresses. Yeah. And also writing this letter to Martin Luther King, dress as a woman. Yeah, he was definitely unhinged. Well, look, we can see. Sorry? I don't know, man. I feel like maybe that comes out. What comes out?

Look, I think if you just tweeted on Truth Social at Trump, release the files on J. Edgar Hoover, he'd be like, yeah, yeah, it's some good person. I think I've already said a J. Edgar Hoover at this point than Martin Luther King. Like, this dude was having orgies and stuff, whatever. I don't need to know about him. Yeah, I know, yeah. I don't need to know who was assassinated. Or he's just an only fan star, so what? Release the cross-dressing files. I need to know which elected officials are currently wearing panties right now. But they don't want to release that information because they all are. That's what's dangerous.

It's like the Epstein files, right? They're all on that list.

Oh, so they're not getting released. That's the whole deal, isn't it? Well, yeah. Yeah. Yes. Purely because Jeffrey Epstein wears panties. Has Trump even talked about the Epstein files, like releasing them as well? I don't think so. I don't think he has. No, that's not a good look. The reason... That's not a great look. If you're releasing every other document and it's like... Except that one. We'll put those ones in the corner. They'll forget it. It's fine.

Alright, so why did he need to die by this certain date? The reason was that King was about to be held to a new moral platform, a new high. He was going to receive a Nobel Peace Prize. Hearing this was the event, or the

What would you call it? I guess the impetus that pushed the FBI to act desperately. The catalyst. That's the word I was thinking of. The catalyst that pushed the FBI to act desperately. As receiving a Nobel Peace Prize was an almost universal endorsement that King Jr. was morally correct. Yes.

In many ways, this threatened to explode the civil rights movement to a whole new level of significance. So a letter that came out from Hoover to Sullivan reveals that Hoover believed his exposure, referring to the black male, quote, and this is from Hoover, is long overdue and maybe he is now beginning to get his just desserts. I certainly hope so.

So, I mean, it's undeniable that Hoover just fucking had an insurmountable bias against King. There was no kind of, like, evidence necessary, right? He would do anything to stop Martin Luther King Jr. I wonder why he got such a hate on for him.

Yeah, I just don't know. I think we need those... I think maybe the files will reveal it. The files will show the FBI's justification further, or at least Hoover's justification further, maybe. Why they went to this extreme level to basically... Again, even if they didn't assassinate Martin Luther King Jr., like they didn't pull the trigger that eventually killed him, they...

They definitively, 100% sent this letter, which could have led to his death anyway via killing himself. Don't you think it kind of reads a lot like the way that this guy's speaking? Very much...

you finding a TikToker or a YouTuber that you personally don't like. They rub you the wrong way for whatever reason. And so then after that, everything afterwards is, yeah, yeah, I bet he was a bullet. That's what he is. That's what Hoover is. He's a certified hater. He's a hater. If he was in 2024, he'd be on like r slash YouTube drama or something. And he'd be posting fucking threads about how much, just every single flaw that Martin Luther King had.

It's pretty funny. All right. So you may be thinking, but what if it wasn't the FBI that sent the letter? Well, it was the FBI.

It was, we know for sure, and not even from just all of the information we just went over. A copy of the letter was found in Sullivan's files at the FBI, who came out and said that the letter may have been planted in the files, and they tried to downplay his involvement in all of this, but that didn't really work. Because in 2014, while searching through Hoover's archives, a history professor by the name of Beverly Gage found, quote, "...a full, uncensored version of the letter tucked away in a reprocessed set of his official and confidential files at the National Archives."

There was too much evidence showing the FBI spying and going after King to deny any involvement or responsibility, and indeed, the evidence and testimony seemed to conclusively indicate that the blackmailing attempt was at least directly ordained by the FBI itself. Not just that, the FBI had history in the field of

pornographic blackmailing. Hoover himself did, with it being public knowledge that Hoover kept a large collection of pornographic films, photographs, and written materials with particular emphasis on nude photos of celebrities that he would reportedly use for blackmail purposes, as well as, again, reportedly, his own entertainment. Hell yeah. As if you wouldn't. Dude, this guy was insane. Isn't that also what Jeffrey Epstein did? He had blackmail on all of his celebrity friends.

And P. Diddy. That was the whole point of it, right? Yeah, and P. Diddy. P. Diddy had blackmail. P. Diddy had blackmail as well. This guy didn't even need to run the parties, though. He just had people that could go and just take photos. Yeah. That's a way better method that he has. He's not implicating himself in anything. Yeah, I guess he's not really. He could just step back and let them do it.

Yeah, let the good times roll. To add some self-admittance into the situation, the US Senate itself later acknowledged the letter and blackmailing to be the work of the FBI. Doesn't get much more concrete than that. As an aside about the tapes, including in the blackmail, once they were publicly revealed to people outside of the agency, Bernard Leigh,

and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference sought to have the tapes gained by wiretaps destroyed in a lawsuit. Their request was, however, denied by the district court for the District of Columbia. The judge ordered all tapes sealed until the year 2027. Damn! Yes! We're coming for it! Damn, it's coming! Mark the day! It's MLK Porn Day! Oh, God! We're going to see that in our lifetime! That's crazy! Unless they reseal it, it's too powerful.

They can't reseal it. The porn is too arousing. The porn is too, they're edgy. Too arousing. Yeah. Imagine, oh man, imagine if we die in 2026 and we missed out on this shit. I always think about that. Like when I die, what, what things am I going to miss out on that happened the very next year?

Yeah, well honestly that's the only thing that I'm hanging around for. That's why I want to join the 27 Club. 2027, that's the extent of your like planning for the future. And then after that, what is it? It's just having Thai food again. It's the same crap. And place them into National Archives and Records Administration. So the FBI sent the tapes to the media and that didn't work. They sent them to King with a letter threatening him to end his life but that didn't work either because King did not stop. In fact,

He kept going even stronger. He accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. He continued pushing for equality in the civil rights movement. And he even was named Time Magazine's Person of the Year. His influence just kept growing. Yeah, do you think he just... Do you think he kept going to more orgies? Like he doubled down on his orgy efforts? Doubled the amount of orgies he was going to each week? Hmm.

Man, if he did, if he had the sexual seminar for that as what? A 40-year-old man. If you have the fucking balls to do that after being told by the FBI that we know what you're doing, you know, end yourself and also your wife now knows. If you keep going, you're insane, dude.

You're a pussy hound. You are insatiable at that point. Yeah, or he knew the end was nigh. It's like that conversation you have with your friends when you're 15. If you knew the world would end, would you just have sex for the rest of the day? Yeah, he was just waiting. Look, honestly, God, it's a very... This man...

Martin Luther King is a real archetype of a figure, the more that I'm learning about it. Yeah, he's a more interesting figure than I thought he was a few days ago. This is definitely a type of person that you see throughout history that is an incredible sex addict, incredibly charismatic, and does just push really dangerous things. They go hand in hand. I don't think you can be a sex addict without being charismatic. Yeah? Yeah, I don't think so. How are you meant to get sex? I guess you could pay for it. No.

Yeah, man, if you are an uncharismatic sex addict. Yeah, that's got to suck. Dude, that's got to fucking suck. I suppose that is just your average incel, isn't it? That's like being an alcoholic that has an allergy to alcohol as well at the same time. Yeah, actually, that's a very good point.

What do you do about that? That's got to suck. I don't know. But that definitely means that if Maury Povich was around, you could have Martin Luther King'd that guy. I bet you he had illegitimate children as well. Oh, yeah, 100%. 100%. You don't go to that many orgies and not father a few orgy children.

His fight was growing and he expanded his efforts in fighting for those in poverty, no matter what race, and his opposition against the Vietnam War continued to hurt the institutions of the United States. Government King actually won a Grammy post-death in 1971 for his speech, Why Oppose the War in Vietnam? He was doing it all. They do that a lot though, don't they? Yeah. Grammys and Oscars. It definitely gives you a huge advantage dying.

Then your art all of a sudden becomes cool. Yeah. It's just the van Gogh effect. I mean, especially like if he died, like, I don't know, if he fell down the stairs or something, I feel like there would be less emphasis. Well, slightly less emphasis placed on him. But the fact that he was assassinated, I think once you're assassinated, you're already put down in the history books. Oh, man. Imagine knowing that that was in your category in 1971 for the Grammys.

I don't know, just a bunch of disco troops going in in their roller skates and their afros and then just seeing an empty chair with Martin Luther King in it. Why did we bother rolling in? Yeah, why did we even come here? What's the point? Just give it to him. Yeah, just give it to him. Yeah, that category has to fucking suck.

And how good would it be if he also at the AVN awards, if the videotape does come out in 2027, gets a post-humus best performer. Yeah. 50 years later, he gets a porny or whatever they call it. Cocky. Yeah. I don't know what they're called. Uh, so we come to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The very important part. Uh,

King was almost constantly protesting or organizing demonstrations, but in March of 1968, specifically, King was in Memphis, Tennessee. Isn't that where music was created or something? Yeah, something like that. Yeah.

Yeah, cool. There had been an ongoing strike of the black sanitation workers for a few weeks already and the workers striking for higher wages and safer, better treatment. For example, when bad weather hit and the sanitation workers had to go home early, black employees were only paid for two hours while white employees were paid for the whole day. See, that fucking...

That sucks. I'm sorry. Not to make this political, but fuck that. Fuck that. That's so stupid. That's like needlessly, like not to downplay this and make it sound like I'm talking to a five-year-old, but that's like needlessly mean. Like what's the point?

I don't know. What is the point? Obviously that's wrong. Anyway, that's a fucking stupid point to make. At this strike, King gave his final speech, quote, I've been to the mountaintop. It is eerie looking back at the speech. The contents made it seem like he knew what was going to happen. King had, of course, a

amassed many threats made to his life over the years and these had not slowed down in fact they had only sped up his flight to Memphis had been delayed due to a bomb threat for example and that happened that fucking day like he was constantly being fucked with like that but as he spoke to the crowd he said quote I've seen the promised land and I may not get there with you um

Yeah, I mean, you can go read the excerpt for I've Been to the Mountaintop, but it is kind of prophetical a little bit. He kind of talks about dying in it, which is, you know, it's odd, but it doesn't mean anything other than being a compelling speech. Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. See, now that right there.

That gets into the whole Tupac had messages in his rap. Yeah, it says that's when the conspiracy theorists take it a little bit further than what I would believe, let's say. Yeah. They run wild with it. Oh, sorry. We forgot about the illustrious category when we were naming them at the beginning of this of Bible conspiracy theories. If you add this word with this word, the completely unrelated paragraph, it says...

That's getting there. Oh, like spiritual? That's always the thing. I don't know. Spiritual conspiracy? Sort of like anagrams that they find in things or… Oh, right. Where they think there's a coded message. A coded message. Hmm.

I mean, if you squint at this document the right way, guys, we've hidden a message in here, in this document that we've written. Yeah. Comb through it and find the hidden message to know just how connected we are to the Illuminati. I know. I mean, look, Martin Luther King was a man of many talents. It seems like his greatest talent was fucking now, but... Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, again, we will find out. In 2027, we will find out. Just how good his strokes were. Yeah, I know. Yes. Yes. It's a lot to live up to. It so is. It so is. The thing is, look, he's a pretty fat guy. I'm not expecting much. Was he fat? Look at him. He's pretty rongero sized, isn't he? Yeah. I can see him being a porn star, though. He's got the porn stash a little bit. Yeah, he's got that. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, he does have that.

Yeah, I can see it. I'm down. I'm down. I'll watch it on repeat constantly. I want to see that shit. I mean, we're not not going to watch it, right? Like who's not going to watch it? This is history. But can they legally, can they legally like release something like that?

They'd be like, hey guys, look at this. And then release some dude's sex tapes. Man, it's the definition of public interest. Every sense of the word. Yeah, who's it hurting really at the end of the day? In fact, if you asked him right now, if you asked Martin Luther King right now, like you got the Ouija board out or something, he'd probably be down for it. I know I'd probably be down for it if I was already dead and there would be no shame. I'd be like, yeah, sure. Show me. Show me.

show me doing that i'm proud of it yeah you're a spirit now what does it matter to you yeah exactly now i want to watch this posthumous man in very grainy footage

Thank you. Not to discredit all of the work that Dr. Martin Luther King did by boiling down these accomplishments to just his porn work. Yeah, but, but I will say, isn't it incredible? This is a conspiracy within a conspiracy. Yeah, yeah. I was not expecting this when we opened this file. Yeah, I didn't know about the sex tape either. I knew that the FBI had been fucking with him, but I didn't know about the sex tape until I started researching this for this document. It's kind of crazy. Unbelievable. Yeah.

Alright, so not gonna read the speech. You can go read the speech. I've been to the mountaintop if you want to read it. So that night King returned to the Lorraine Motel and stayed in room 306, a room that was actually named after him, the King Abernathy Suite. Another event was planned to take place later that night featuring musician Ben Branch. Branch would be the last person to speak with King who told him to play. So King told him to play Take My Hand, Precious Lord real pretty that night.

King wasn't alone. He had friends and acquaintances just feet away who at 6.01pm heard a shot ring out. One

I don't know how to read bullet dimensions, but I think this is a 30 caliber, maybe? It says 30-06 bullet. I don't know what that means. I'm going to say it's a 30 caliber. 30 caliber bullet from a Remington Model 760. Fuck, we needed the Americans here for this one. Yeah, we really do. They would have told me immediately what kind of bullet that was, what kind of gunpowder it used, how it ricocheted, its flight projectile characteristics, everything. It's just so ingrained in there. Yeah.

Ultra, isn't it? That is like our kangaroos, ladies and gentlemen. True, I bet they get sick of it. Well, no, they're probably really proud of being the gun people, actually. Never mind. Oh, man, honestly, the thing is that's really weird about talking to Americans is you can meet an accountant there that seems quite together and they would say, yeah, that's an AR-15 assault rifle. You have to understand this from an Australian perspective. If you have somebody here that is into guns...

they should be in jail immediately. Like, there is no way that you're that into guns here without something fucked with you. You know? It's a different thing in America. Well, I get it for like sports and shit because gun shooting, like, it's an Olympic sport and shit like that. So, if you're an athlete, yeah. But if you just have like a really obsessive, especially over here where there's no point for it,

um an obsessive kind of interest yeah it'd have to pique your interest despite the fact that you basically can't get one and see this is where the americans would jump in and say that's why we have no freedom and why we're under the boot because we've got no tools of protecting ourselves oh yes guys yes you have to yeah thank god we really are north korea over here we're really struggling which is funny it's always made me laugh uh because considering that

America itself feels like two days away from being in a civil war basically where they all hate each other and everything already like and half of them are always complaining about being controlled by the government and stuff so yeah I don't know I'm happy over here let's put it that way yeah I like the nanny state control me even more like god I'm sorry but I make stupid decisions all the time I feel like a bureaucrat would be better at organizing my life than I would I can't even read a clock

That's embarrassing. It's bad, hey? Are you being serious? You can't read a clock? I mean, I can, but I do the whole thing all the time. Oh, that's half past. Right, right. Jesus Christ. I hope you only have digital clocks. Maybe that'll help. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm cheating. Trust me.

All right, so one of these .30 caliber bullets from a Remington Model 760 rifle had been fired, hitting King in the jaw. His jaw broke and the bullet traveled down his shoulder, breaking several vertebrae and severing major arteries.

That's always wild to me. I always imagine like getting shot by a bullet and it just passing straight through. But the more you read about like bullet injuries, they always just explode within you. And then all the like material like ricochets all around your insides, like tearing arteries and damaging. It like bounces around your body like a pinball from what I understand. That's crazy. Did you not know that? That's terrifying. Guys, you have to understand as an Australian,

You don't think about guns ever. The only time I ever think about guns is when I'm watching one of your movies because they're fucking crammed with them. Every movie has a gun in it. I don't know, some movie about a ballet dancer and then Arnold Schwarzenegger just kicks the door down. I can't tell... You've visited America often, right? Yeah. Yeah. You probably have the same feeling. I can't express to Americans this feeling. And I think you've kind of... Americans have kind of...

compartmentalize the feeling. But maybe this is me being sensitive, but being over there, you're acutely aware every single time you're outside that someone could have a gun. Someone probably has a gun. I know I was. I was walking around like, damn, I don't know how many people around me right now are, you know, concealed carrying. How many people around me have just the ability to end my life instantly if they so choose? And maybe that's me being dramatic, but you don't have that feeling over here at all. No. No.

Which is a nice feeling. Most of the time when you walk out, I don't know, but this is just exclusively a YouTuber thing. You have the feeling of I'm going to get accosted by some drunk fucking 18-year-old in the street being like, can I have a selfie? That's my greatest fear here.

Yeah, like awkward encounters maybe. That's the gun! That's the mass shooter version of you. Oh, fuck, not Gus from high school. Hi, Gus. Yeah, these awkward meetings with people you used to know. Hey, man. How much sicker would this encounter be if I had a gun right now? Okay, never mind. I'm converted. I get it, Americans. You're right.

I'd walk around strapped. It does put everything into perspective, doesn't it? Like, look, if you can have your life ended at all times, maybe that's why Martin Luther King was so polite. I remember hearing that, actually, that the more polite a society is, the more violent it is. Really? And it does make sense. Why? Because...

You could have your life ended at any moment. So you are going to be more courteous. You are going to bow like the Japanese do if there's samurais running around for a thousand. True. Okay, so what if there was like some universal law where as soon as you are rude to someone, you just instantly keel over and die? Would that be the most polite society ever? It would have to be. Totally. Yeah, because everyone that's rude dies. It would be the exact opposite of rude. Oh, man. It would be so sick. Anyway.

Anyway, we got to get cruising here. King immediately upon being shot became unconscious as he fell back onto the floor. As his friends immediately rushed over to see King laying in blood, they realized what had happened. And just over an hour later, he was declared dead at St. Joseph's Hospital. Martin Luther King Jr. died at only 39 years of age.

As for the official report of the assassination, the man charged with the death of King was James Earl Ray. A man had been seen shortly after the assassination running from the house over the road and police had found that Ray had been renting a room there. When they investigated the house, they found a rifle and binoculars that had Ray's fingerprints all over them. They felt confident that James was the assassin and a manhunt ensued leading to his arrest at Heathrow airport just two months later.

In 1969, Ray pleaded guilty for the murder of King. He did, however, try to rescind this only three days later. He had, according to him, taken the guilty plea because he didn't want the potential death penalty. He ended up being sentenced for 99 years instead.

James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King Jr. according to the FBI and local investigators. They used his criminal background of petty crimes. He was a known fugitive who had previously escaped from prison. And they believed he was motivated by personal issues, racism, and a desire to be recognized. Sounds like any would-be assassin, right? Yeah. I mean, that's down the line John Lennon's assassin. Yeah. Part of the deep-seating racial hatred. But you can replace that with Christian hatred of him saying, I think...

a huge motivating factor for him was the fact that he said, he said he's bigger than Jesus. Oh, John Lennon. Isn't that insane? So, look, he's fitting the profile. He really is. That's why I was like, when I found out that Martin Luther King was obviously like a sex addict or let's say a man who enjoyed sex and was maybe a bit fraudulent with how he portrayed himself publicly, but come on, that's all celebrities really. Maybe there was...

from Christians. You reckon? Yeah, and I could see a Christian assassinating him. Some religious fanatic kind of being like, this guy lied. I believed this guy for 10 years and here he is in an orgy and banging people. I could see that angle, but just given the context of everything else that has happened with the FBI, I mean, I definitely think that James Earl Ray is the killer because there's just so much evidence there already that exists of James Earl Ray

killing him but was was the question now becomes was James Earl Ray put in a position to do that by the

the FBI or by some other, you know, third party figure. Oh, sort of letting it happen. The, the soft nine 11 conspiracy theory, not that there was demolitions in the towers, but yeah, it was more, they knew it was happening and they let it happen. Or did they frame him? Like I, there's a hundred possibilities here still framing, even though the, even though the evidence suggests that James Earl Ray did this. I mean, it's, there is pretty, you know, strong forensic evidence there. Um,

does it definitively mean that he's the sole responsible party for killing Martin Luther King? I don't think so. I'm terribly sorry about this, Jackson, but I did read ahead and the fact that he always maintained his innocence. Do you think that's a big deal? I mean, every criminal maintains their innocence. Not if you're trying to kill, as they're asserting, one of their big enemies.

motives they were saying was that he wanted to do it because he had a desire to be recognized and have notoriety. True. You do not maintain innocence if you want notoriety. Yeah, you take credit for it. So that gets rid of that factor. Okay. Well, we'll keep reading. Well, anyway, look, honestly, look, I know that this has been curated to lead us to this conclusion, but...

Pretty suspicious. Yeah, you're on board? Oh, damn, I love that. I'm semi-on-board. I'm semi-on-board. I still think that there's much, much more deeming evidence when it comes to JFK. Yes. But there's a case to be made here. Damn. That's where I'm at. What do you think? You're semi. I like that. I'm a semi. Yeah. Are you a semi? I'm feeling it. I'm flipping over a little bit. Yeah. Nice. Nice. I'm feeling some movement.

Yeah, I'm feeling some movement too, that's me. Yeah, no, I could definitely, like, I wouldn't be surprised if I found out that James Earl Ray was, you know, a plant or someone who was framed or otherwise put in a position to do this. I do think he was involved, I personally think he was involved, but to the degree, I don't know which, and I wouldn't be surprised if the FBI did have a hand in it, still. That's my opinion right now. We'll see when we get to the end of this document, which is only a few more pages.

Okay, so now that he was in prison, Ray now claimed that a man he had previously met in Montreal named Raul was actually the mastermind behind the assassination and that he did not shoot King. He was set up. He spent the rest of his years attempting to prove his innocence and even filed a lawsuit against Tennessee for mishandling his case and leaving out crucial evidence. But ultimately, Ray died in jail in 1998. Was Ray getting too close? Did he get Epstein'd?

You're asking me? Yeah, I am generally, I'm asking broadly. What was his name? Ray, what was his name? James Earl Ray. James Earl Ray. How did James Earl Ray die? Oh, no, I don't think it was the, I don't think it was the fucking government that did this one. He died from hepatitis C due to kidney disease and liver failure.

The government would have had to try pretty hard to make that happen, right? Can you get Hep C? Maybe if you're in one of Martin Luther King's orgies. Yeah, maybe he had a hatred for Martin Luther King because he was one of those orgies. Oh, because he was one of the orbiters of the orgy. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. He was on the outside. He was on the perimeter. Many don't believe Ray was the killer, including King's own family. His wife and children have come out expressing doubts and that Ray must have been part of a large conspiracy and others must have been involved in their husband and father's death. Possibly even the FBI. It's curious to me that it's the FBI and not CIA. I guess the CIA was engaged in like external threats to the- Global affairs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I always just think the CIA is involved naturally. Yeah.

Even in the final reports from US agencies, they mostly agreed that Ray did it, but it was probably part of a larger conspiracy. However, they also denied that the government had anything to do with it. But it's not like the FBI hadn't had a history of both systematically attempting to discredit and ruin Martin Luther King Jr.'s work and indeed his life. Nor is it not like the FBI had a history of murdering black activists before as well.

That's at the same time, right? 1967. That's broadly the same time. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes, it is. And this was also, so their activities against the Black Panther party chairman was also included in their Cointelpro program, which was the same program that the whole Martin Luther King stuff was in.

To further expand on this, in December 1969, Hampton, the Black Panther Party chairman, was drugged, then shot and killed in his bed during a pre-dawn raid at his Chicago apartment by a tactical unit of the Cook County State's Attorney Office, who received aid from the Chicago Police Department and the FBI leading up to the attack. This was supposedly in retaliation for the murder of two police officers by Black Panther members the night before. That's fucking insane. They just executed him in his bed? Wow.

Wow, that is actually... And that's part of the Cointelpro program, so it's influenced by the FBI. So they were fully willing to just execute people. I'm sitting on that. That's kind of mind-blowing. It's quite mind-blowing. Again, this is another thing that... There's too much bureaucratic protocol now.

This is coming from somebody who, by the way, just in case listeners aren't aware, the New South Wales police were tapping and following me for six months straight. And I do know that. That is a fact. Could be. I can't prove that part, though. You can red thread that yourself. But I was part of that for six months. And I can tell you now, and also just like actual circumstances of police brutality. Look, we've got videos about it in the past. I still remain...

quite reticent to say that police and institutions like that are anything like they were in the 60s and 70s. It's exactly what you were talking about before with serial killers being a lot easier to get away with things. Like, this is how a serial killer could work. You could just kill someone, then move to Georgia. Then you kill someone and you move to Florida. And it'd be impossible to track them down. Yeah, as long as you wore gloves, you should be fine. LAUGHTER

Is that all they had? Fingerprints. Yeah, probably. Oh man. So that's all you had. So you could just travel. But yeah, it's just like, I think it's one of those things that times have changed. 1960s was a different time. You can't get away with police brutality or that kind of thing. On that scale. Yeah. As easily as you could back then. No, that's cause yeah, it's kind of, and also in that kind of society, um,

I'm not saying that it would have always been justified, right? But we are talking about times when Al Capone was running Chicago for 30 years or whatever. That would have been too far away. I suppose the police kind of were a little more justified in acting like a gang. Well, they had precedence, right? They felt like they had unfettered control. Who? The police.

No, well, I think that back then, organized crime probably would have been a lot more ruthless and open. Oh, I see. And so I'm imagining that, yeah, just being a cop back then, you kind of were just used to just being like, ah, fuck you, and doing a drive-by back at them, you know? Yeah, right. Like it was a gangland war, basically. Yeah, society was just a lot less civil than it is now. Which is crazy to say. It's the civil rights movement. Well, all the...

What's the opposite of civility? All the vitriol has moved online. Everyone who's vitriolic is just waging war online. So that's what's happened. Everyone's become less violent and more puerile. Yeah. And the other way around, everyone was far more polite and more violent. Yes. Which might be why you see protests being less effective these days as well, because most of it is just online, which is easy to compartmentalize.

And there's nothing classy about the protests anymore either. No. It usually is just a bunch of attention seekers. It's just destroying shit. Destroying shit. A lot of the time. That's what it is. So it doesn't have the same finesse. I mean, what's like fucking those protests where they lay down on the road or they throw oil over paintings and stuff?

Yes, very popular people. I'm sure they'll be getting 45% approval ratings. Yeah, very successful as well. Obviously leading to great systemic change, guys. Keep doing it. Keep doing that every single fucking day of your life for the next 10 years. The lines between protests and filming a jackass video are very blurred now. Well, I feel like it's an issue of... In that specific case, it's an issue of...

People's performative nature is taking over the limelight, basically. It's more performative than it is actually attempting to enact social change. I think that's mostly it. There's no kind of unified vision. It's because we've all been raised on entertainment and all we want to do is dance on a stage, which I know is ironic to say as YouTubers, but it's true. I think people just want to perform. That is a very insightful point. And we're not even high right now.

Not even high. But that's the real difference at the core of it, right? Like Martin Luther King was doing it because he had a dream. Yes. And these guys are doing it because they want clout. They like the attention. Damn. Hey, maybe Martin Luther King did also just like the attention because it led him to being more successful at his orgies. I don't know anymore. I don't know. I really don't know. I'm confused. I've confused myself with all this information. Opened a lot of questions. Yeah.

All right, so there is an iconic case where the King family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against someone named Lloyd Jowers, who was a restaurant owner of a nearby place where King was killed. Jowers came out years on from King's death saying he hired someone to kill King as a favor to someone he knew in the mafia. The mafia is involved in this? Of course they are. They were involved in everything. What am I saying?

Yeah, see, that's what I'm talking about. That's the different time. Right there. When you could say the mafia, when you could say the word mafia and it actually means something. Meant something and also not surprising at all. It was another structure of society, like the cops, like trade unions. Yeah, exactly. What a different time. It's crazy. Yeah, okay. And so Ray was just the scapegoat in this situation, allegedly. Yeah.

This trial did nothing to prove Ray wasn't the killer, but the real interesting thing to come out of the trial was something that the jury unanimously concluded. They said that the assassination plot to kill King involves, quote, others, including government agencies. They had all the evidence available to them. That's huge.

The trial lasted four weeks and the jury had heard testimony from over 70 witnesses, including experts, law enforcement officials, and associates of King himself. The key facts that led to the jury's conclusion stems from, I'm going to read these out. Number one, Lloyd Jowell's confession where he stated he had been involved in a plan orchestrated by unknown individuals, including elements of the US government and the mafia.

Number two, the government surveillance and COINTELPRO program that included an extensive campaign to discredit and monitor King and other civil movement leaders. They had a history of including threats and psychological pressure as well as deep hatred for King, which is shown time and time again. I mean, they straight up tried to have him kill himself. I mean, it's very clear that they wanted him dead. Like you can argue every single fucking waking moment of your life that they didn't pull the trigger, but you can't argue that they didn't want him dead.

That's true. Yeah. Number three. Witnesses testified that Memphis police removed a security detail that was assigned to protect King on the day of the assassination. That's big. They removed a police detail. Yeah, okay.

Why would they do that? I have heard that, I did hear when I was researching that King's party was difficult to work with to set up the details and stuff. So maybe that's a reason. Maybe you've just got shift. That's still pretty sus though. I don't know. Yeah, you're right. Like it could just really be a coincidence. It could be. It could be. Number four. Some witnesses also suggested that the shot did not come from the room where Ray was staying, but rather from a location near Jawa's cafe.

So ultimately, the jury ruled in favor of the King family, awarding them symbolic damages of $100, affirming that the assassination was part of a broader conspiracy involving multiple parties, including U.S. government agencies. However, this verdict was in a civil trial, not a criminal proceeding, and it did not overturn Ray's conviction.

I don't understand how the US legal system works like that. Well, there's civil cases and there's criminal cases. I know, but it seems that you can just trial things that should be criminal cases as civil cases and then you get a different outcome and everyone goes, yeah, yeah, that happened anyway. Well, aren't civil cases, like with criminal cases, you've got to prove beyond, what is it, beyond a reasonable doubt that they're guilty?

Yeah. That's the terminology, right? Beyond a reasonable doubt. I think the civil cases are different. I think there's a different quality of evidence, basically. Yeah, now I might be just completely ignorant about our own legal system, but I thought that if you have a criminal case, you have a criminal case. And if you have a civil case, you have a civil case. But in America, it seems to be like,

"Yeah, we're just going to make this rape trial, Siebel." Oh yeah, it was proved there. And then, huh? No, so they did have a criminal case. That's where they determined that James Earl Ray was the killer. I know, but I think, look again, lawyers, if you're an Australian, let me know. But I think that in Australia, you don't do that. Well, I think- You get like a criminal outcome, you don't go- Americans are going to make fun of us here. So I think criminal cases

As the name suggests, they're brought on by proceedings by the Attorney General and stuff like that. Like, whoever's got jurisdiction. The State Department. State Department, yeah. That's someone... It's more professional, I guess you could say, because it's started by the government itself. Whereas civil cases...

are just brought up by people. It's just people using the courtrooms to settle debates, basically, using a jury. So using the same system as criminal cases, but it's brought on by individuals of the public. Damn. So it's enhanced debate club. Basically, yes. And which means it has a lower ceiling of, you know, burden of proof and shit like that, I think. Damn.

So I could take you to civil trial right now if I wanted to, probably. Thanks for not. Yeah. For, for crashing the recording in the first 30 minutes, I could take you to court. You would have a very strong case. You kicked that wire that disconnected your computer on purpose. How am I going to argue that I didn't? Yeah. Yeah. That's why the burden of proof is so low. I could just say it. Plus I know you've got orgies to get to, so we better wrap up here. Martin Luther King Jr. was a historic figure. 13 years. He was,

He was heavily active. He changed the lives of millions and directly led to the civil rights movement's success in America. His power came from others who believed in his cause, and they, in turn, made his voice louder and more powerful. So loud and powerful that those on the other side of the fence felt threatened by him. The FBI's investigation against King was fueled by hatred

They even sent a letter to him telling him to end his life. That's such a current generation internet thing that I would expect to see, like someone sending a DM that says, yo, end your life. It's just such a weird thing for an organization to do.

And the campaign against him and the movement didn't stop after his death too. With attempts to lobby against making King's birthday a national holiday, many believed that the FBI had a hand in King's death. With the declassification of documents we went over in this episode, documents that showed the buyers active in the FBI at the time as well as their productivity of blackmailing King. And what's crazy is there may be even more with now President Trump signing an executive order to declassify all the remaining documents relating to King's death.

It's impossible to say for now. The FBI did assassinate Martin Luther King Jr. Maybe we'll have an answer soon. Ooh, a part two. Once Trump declassifies those sex tapes, that'd be nice. We have to wait until 2027. Well, no, I think he can release those sex tapes as well. Depends how wild Trump's feeling, I guess. But I'm sure he can make an executive order saying, no, release them now, right?

Isn't it incredible the power that the president has? You can just write shit and it happens. You can write shit and it happens. It's like Death Note. Yes! Death Note!

It's crazy. So that's the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. If you want my thoughts, my overall, my conclusion, I believe that, I don't think that James Earl Ray acted alone. I think he was involved, whether unknowingly or knowingly, I'm not sure, but I do think that it was a broader mission to

End the life of Martin Luther King. Whether or not it's the FBI or not, I'm not sure. It could be the mafia. We just don't have enough evidence to point either way. I would say that there's more evidence to point that the FBI obviously had more kind of

more to benefit from it or more desire to have Martin Luther King Jr. killed than anyone else. So I could see them involved. Like I said, I'm not going to be surprised if these documents come out and it says that the FBI was heavily involved in orchestrating this plot to end the life of Martin Luther King Jr. using the scapegoat James Earl Ray. I could believe that. In fact, I kind of do believe it, but we'll have to wait and see for sure.

Only thing that I know for sure is that the FBI acted with malicious intent with the desire to end the life of Martin Luther King Jr. through other methods. Definitely. Like they were fucking with him hardcore. That's undeniable. It's not even a conspiracy. It's confirmed. So yeah, that's where I'm at. Well, Jackson, that was a better conclusion than the conclusion that was written down that you just freed over. Yeah, I just wrapped that shit, man.

Holy hell. Do you agree with that or do you want to... No. I've got nothing to say after that. I thought you meant you don't agree with that. I thoroughly disagree with all of it. Yes, all right. I take that stance. Everything that Jackson said, I don't agree with. The juxtaposition there between you going... Even the fact that Martin Luther King is dead, I challenge that. Oh, damn. That's a true conspiracy theory. Yeah. Fuck.

Actually, quick, check modern day porn. Is there any like 80-year-old porn dudes that kind of look similar to Martin Luther King Jr.? Oh, I bet you there is. If there is. Send through the pictures. I'd be very interested in this shit. Oh, imagine if he faked his own death to just become a porn star. He's just been slinging dick on the reg. Oh my God. He's been right under our noses. One of those very trashy people magazine conspiracies. One of them is finally right.

I do want to say as well, before we get shit for kind of poking fun, I think it's possible that Martin Luther King Jr. I mean, it is. It's not just possible. It's truism. That he did great things and he can still be, you know, a fraudulent or, you know, fake person that also did bad things. I mean, that's just...

You just got to kind of accept that in the world. It's human nature. We're not all good people. We're not just good people. We're made up of good and bad parts, right? Well, very often when it comes to that, when somebody does sit there and shit, because honestly, I'm not cheating on him for being a sex addict. I'm just genuinely- Impressed. I'm more impressed than anything. I'm impressed. But-

Yeah, I think that generally when it comes to that argument, I really don't like people that try and drag down especially great historic figures. I feel like it's just not, you are doing an overall disservice. You're a worse person than whatever bad thing they did. Well, unless, I mean, there are accusations that he was abusive as well in those sexual situations, or at least members of his party was.

Or whatever. But don't you think that whole Simpsons episode is right? The whole, like, a noble spirit embiggens even the smallest man or whatever. Like, it's good to have these sort of mythical creatures in your society. Well, just people that do great things. Society needs people that do great things to function, really. It's a source of inspiration. It's a source of...

progressive, not progressive in the modern sense, but actually just pushing us forward as a human species. People doing these great things. To be that well, actually person that goes around and says, well, actually, did you know that Martin Luther King Jr. had orgies? Yeah. Okay. So what? I like to have sex. Does that make me a bad person? What are you saying? I don't know. It's a very specific person that's like that. Anyway, that's why I'm saying

that Michael Jackson deserves to get away with whatever he got away with. That's not the ending that I wanted. No, no. This is all just a justification for that. Yeah, two, three hours. And our conclusion has nothing to do with Martin Luther King. It's justification for Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson didn't do it. We just gave all the Michael Jackson defenders out there even more ammunition. They're going to use this as a source, basically.

Oh man. Okay. And that is the end, isn't it? Yep. That's the end of Red Thread. Thank you very much. Big shout out to our new audience of Michael Jackson fans. Thank you very much for showing up. Really appreciate it. No, but seriously, thank you for showing up. It's good to be back from the break. I hope you guys enjoyed this. It was a longer episode than I anticipated, but I think that comes down to you and me just enjoying chatting really. It was fun. Very

Very funny. Sorry to subject everyone else to it. No, I mean, the editor can cut out the boring shit anyway, so you won't be hearing it. No, we will glean, glib, and to the point the whole time. Jordan, or Friendly Jordies, sorry to use your common name. Would you like to please shout out all the stuff? And I mean all the stuff, Jordan. All the stuff, all the different places people can find you.

Friendly Geordie's podcast, Jordan Shanks. I've got a TikTok now that I'm sort of understanding. Way too late when it's just been fucking banned. Yeah, go help him out. Go check out his TikTok. Leave comments letting him know how to use technology. You're a crazy man. It's always funny to me when YouTubers, like people that make their entire livings off YouTube and off technology, don't...

They don't have an understanding of technology. Former host of the podcast, Charlie, is very much like that. Does not understand technology. It's always endearing to me. How do you do it? How do you operate on YouTube and not understand technology? Look,

I am truly shocked to learn that Charlie doesn't know anything about technology. That's... I mean, he's changed over the years, definitely, like in terms of his knowledge. But there was definitely a period of time there where he was very, very clueless. Yeah, but he's a troglodyte as well. Okay, look. I'm going to excuse myself because I'm me, but... It's a lot of people. It's a lot of people. Really? Really? And it's always impressive to me because it shows...

It shows perseverance, I guess, more than anything. I suppose it does. Yeah, it's impressive. I really admire it. I admire that trait. All right.

Yeah, go check him out. Friendly Geordies does incredible content, both on Friendly Geordies and his Jordan Shanks channel. They'll be linked below. So please go check him out. Give him a subscribe. Watch his content. I highly recommend you people go watch the firebombing arc and all of that interesting stuff, as well as his new content, of course.

You do more like self-help kind of fun stuff over on Jordan Shanks, right? Yeah. A lot of reading people's Tinder and Grindr stories. That's somehow self-help. Yeah.

If you like that, if you need self-help, there's no one better in the field than Jordan Shanks. Go check him out. Who's combining that, eh? You got any live shows coming up? Because you do live shows in Australia as well. Yeah, I do. In fact, this audience would be interested in it if even one of you is Australian, which I highly doubt. But I am touring across Australia with my brand new show, Jordan Shanks Alien Hunter. Oh, what? No way.

Yeah, the whole show is just going to be about UFOs. That's perfect. Oh, man. When are you coming up to near Brisbane for that?

sooner rather than later i'll be there i'll come i want to see that one yeah you you will like this one honestly i've usually anytime i've ever done a stand-up show before in my life i'm ashamed to even admit what it is because it's usually extremely historical and even more autistic you know yeah this one i think that everybody's interested in that oh it's gonna be that you don't believe even if it's gonna be like the cool kind of stand-up what's the cool kind of stand-up

Well, less, I don't know, just you made it sound really cool. I don't even know what you mean. What? You said it's less of a niche topic. I don't know. More mainstream, I guess, I mean. Oh, it's hell more mainstream. I mean, UFO sightings is classic midday television filler. I can't wait. All right. It's going to be great. I can't wait for the orgy to break out then if it's that cool.

Oh my God. So could I. Now that's a TikTok. All right. Thank you very much, guys. Official.men for bonus episodes, ad-free content, and merchandise available. Remember, official.men members get a, I think it's a 15% discount off the top of my dome. So you can, you know, make that even cheaper.

Would really mean the world if you support us. Let us, let friends know about the show. Share it around. That's how the show grows. Word of mouth. So please tell, tell everyone you know. Tell your parents. Make them watch. Yeah, just, that's the best way to help out the show. So big thank you to those who do. And thank you very much for, you know, sticking with us and listening. We really appreciate it. And we'll see you next time for Breadthread. Thank you very much, Jordan, for joining us again. Really appreciate it. Pleasure. Thank you. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye.

so