A few weeks ago, independent presidential candidate Cornel West condemned Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for defending his family’s involvement in the FBI’s surveillance campaign against Martin Luther King Jr.
During an interview with POLITICO, Cornel West asserted that the Kennedy administration had essentially declared war against the Black freedom struggle by authorizing the wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr. under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the then-Attorney General, stated to POLITICO that the Kennedy White House had valid reasons for supporting the FBI’s strategy of scrutinizing Martin Luther King Jr.
These remarks were made during a visit to Atlanta with his independent presidential candidacy, just a day before the federal holiday honoring King. Cornel West emphasized that the wiretap on Martin Luther King Jr. empowered “an undeniable gangster-like J. Edgar Hoover, who was trying to crush by any means the Black freedom struggle.”
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West asserted that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. needed to recognize that it was not merely an institutional arrangement between his family and the FBI but a declaration of war against the Black community.
Cornel West further explained, “That’s what COINTELPRO was,” referring to a Hoover-era FBI initiative that monitored domestic political groups perceived as radical. He characterized it as a declaration of war against the Black freedom struggle, encompassing figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer, and various musicians and artists.
Cornel West, who spent MLK weekend campaigning at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and 16th Street Baptist Church, clarified that his rebuke of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s comments was not solely about their rivalry in the presidential race.
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West emphasized, “This is about lies about a great Black freedom tradition,” and asserted that he was coming out swinging on that issue.
The exchange between Cornel West and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. marks an unusual and unpredictable clash, injecting a profound disagreement over modern American history into the middle of a presidential campaign.
The two independent candidates bring rare personal prominence to the debate — West, with his credentials as a public intellectual and scholar; Kennedy, with his storied lineage and direct familial link to the story of King and the FBI.
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Kennedy told POLITICO that there was “good reason for them doing that at the time” and that Hoover had told his uncle and father that one of King’s chief advisors was a communist.
“My father permitted Hoover to wiretap them so he could prove that his suspicions about King were either right or wrong,” Kennedy said. “I think, politically, they had to do it.”
West believes this reasoning is insufficient and said, “There was no evidence that Stanley Levison was a communist.” Levison was a Jewish attorney from New York who became a King’s inner circle member and helped raise funds to support the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
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