On Tuesday, Fox News legal analyst and George Washington University Law professor Jonathan Turley attacked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for using emergency powers to clear out the anti-vaccine "Freedom Convoy" truck demonstrators blocking a crucial international road — and compared the demonstrators to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s.
"By this rationale, they could have cracked down on the Civil Rights Movement," said Turley, who was Republicans' sole expert witness at former President Donald Trump's first impeachment trial. "They could have arrested Martin Luther King."
Dr. King was, in fact, famously arrested dozens of times for his activism, which was the origin of his "Letter from Birmingham Jail." Additionally, the FBI itself engaged in a campaign of blackmail and wiretaps to try to thwart him.
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Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley, on Canada PM Justin Trudeau invoking emergency powers to deal with the "Freedom Convoy" blockade:\n\n"By this rationale, they could have cracked down on the Civil Rights movement. They could have arrested Martin Luther King."pic.twitter.com/s9dwkcvihQ— Justin Baragona (@Justin Baragona) 1644961829
Stunned scholars and historians were quick to pile on Turley on social media for his apparent ignorance of the history of Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement.
Check out some of their reactions below.
Yeah, imagine if they'd ever arrested Martin Luther King.https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1493704292317999106\u00a0\u2026— Kevin M. Kruse (@Kevin M. Kruse) 1644963242
Maybe Turley thinks that MLK was just visiting when he wrote the Letter from Birmingham Jail??https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1493704292317999106\u00a0\u2026— Steve Vladeck (@Steve Vladeck) 1644963892
When you don\u2019t teach critical race theory, people don\u2019t learn that being arrested was a tactic of the civil rights movementhttps://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1493704292317999106\u00a0\u2026— Michael McDonald (@Michael McDonald) 1644966489
Apparently CRT is good nowhttps://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1493704292317999106\u00a0\u2026— Don Moynihan (@Don Moynihan) 1644966326
This was referenced in \u201cLetter From a Birmingham Hipster Coffeeshop\u201dhttps://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1493704292317999106\u00a0\u2026— Seth Masket (@Seth Masket) 1644965017
and then it wouldn\u2019t have been called the Letter from a Cushy Birmingham Hotel Suite, would it?https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1493704292317999106\u00a0\u2026— Josh Chafetz (@Josh Chafetz) 1644965103
Civil authorities literally "cracked" open the skulls of civil rights leaders. https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1493704292317999106\u00a0\u2026pic.twitter.com/svxxWRsraf— Kevin M. Levin (@Kevin M. Levin) 1644963880
Glad to see Turley take time out of his campaigns to get me fired to provide such important analysis such as that with crazy Canadian progressive governance, Martin Luther King might have been arrested, which certainly never would have happened in Alabama.https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1493704292317999106\u00a0\u2026— Erik Loomis (@Erik Loomis) 1644963830
