I didn't get the impression that MLK was being broadly dismissed at all. He is invoked because he is a sacred cow of Polite America, and the piece surgically targets his assertion that there is some moral arc of the universe bending toward justice -- a flowery, inspirational notion that unfortunately has no basis in reality -- for its criticism. And it is wholly appropriate, especially now, when we have this weird debate over whether it's okay to punch Nazis, as if they are the victims here. Ten years ago, few people were out looking to punch Nazis because it was generally accepted that if a Nazi were to venture out from under the rock in Idaho where they swarm like cockroaches, the inevitable result would be.... that they would get punched. Indeed, in Nigel's brief history of Portland, we see that punching Nazis is a time-honored tradition, and for good reason.
Nazis, and all white supremacists, exist for the singular purpose of inflicting violence on others as soon as they have any opportunity. Their violence predates any fists that may come their way, and in fact they are already guilty of a committing kind of violence in this present historical episode just by showing their faces in daylight and intimidating their targets by their suddenly ubiquitous presence on social media, television, and rallies. The notion that we must wait for them to fire up the gas chambers and load people onto trains is itself violent, in that it assumes some number of victims must be expended before we can justify saving others. The fact that we are even debating this is ludicrous.
