This quote is a bit sensational. I get the point, but shaming people who mind their own business and keep politics out of literally everything? They should be championed. Maybe if we had more of those kinds of people we wouldn’t be so screwed as a society.
No, your attitude is exactly backwards. Those people are perhaps the most callously evil of all, arguably even more harmful to society than the fascist partisans themselves, because they’re the ones who let them get away with it!
If you think that quote is “sensational,” how about MLK’s thoughts on the same topic?
First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.