Sacred Disobedience: Antigone, MLK, and the Question of When to (Dis)Obey
Today, elected leaders like Senator Lindsay Graham not only endorse Israel’s preemptive military strikes on Iran, but treats them like a “game.” Many of the same leaders continue to allocate U.S. tax dollars to fund what Amnesty International and leading scholars in the field have determined is Israel’s perpetuation of a “genocide” in Gaza.1
Within U.S. borders, President Donald Trump has explicitly identified with autocracy, endorsed imperialism, directed the arrest of non-violent activists, and forcefully disappeared and deported countless students, friends, family members, and fellow human beings from their communities. Many have been denied basic due process rights with some condemned to incarceration in El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison on grounds their mass-produced urban attire or generic tattoos such as crowns evidenced gang affiliation.
All this as President Trump prepares to hosts an unprecedented spectacle of presidential military might and, according to U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, has illegally seized control of and deployed the California National Guard to address anti-ICE protests in violation of the 10th Amendment of the Constitution.
Judge Breyer expressed deep concern over the Trump administration’s contention that the protests in Los Angeles constituted a “rebellion” against the government worthy of federalizing the National Guard . “[T]he Court is troubled by the implication inherent in Defendants' argument that protest against the federal government, a core civil liberty protected by the First Amendment, can justify a finding of rebellion,” wrote Breyer. U.S. courts, the Judge explained, “have repeatedly reaffirmed that peaceful protest does not lose its protection merely because some isolated individuals act violently outside the protections of the First Amendment.” That protests generate discomfort, are “provocative” and sometimes cause “inconvenience” are not justifications for their suppression.
Now, as millions of Americans plan to participate in 1,800 “No Kings” protests across the nation, some elected officials are issuing menacing warnings. “For those people that want to protest,” offered President Trump without prompting as he discussed his June 14 military parade, “they’re going to be met with very big force. And I haven’t even heard about a protest, but you know, this is people that hate our country, but they will be met with very heavy force.” Meanwhile Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the deployment of 5,000 Texas National Guard troops in anticipation of protests in his state.
In Florida, Brevard County Sheriff, Wayne Ivey warned protestors of the different ways they could be injured, imprisoned, or killed depending on their interaction with police. “If you spit on us, you’re going to the hospital, then jail. If you hit one of us, you’re going to the hospital, jail, and most likely get bitten by one of our big, beautiful dogs we have here.”
In times of ascendant authoritarianism and the exaltation of force and militarism, the humanities offer a storehouse of moral and spiritual sustenance. I have Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and Sophocles' play, Antigone, particularly in mind. Each reminds us that the lover of liberty—of human freedom—refuses mindless obedience to “law.” The law, after all, is part of culture and culture is human-made. It is our responsibility as human beings to create, scrutinize, and refine laws and institutions, not to unthinkingly submit to such social powers.
Antigone’s Disobedience
In this fraught moment we are called more than ever to ask, what is worthy of obeying or disobeying? What are the laws, and do they accord with the higher laws of not only the Constitution but also elemental human reason and conscience? If not, do we obey unjust laws at the expense of core values and moral integrity? Is our obedience a mere cloak for cowardice, bitterness, and faithless disregard for our human brothers and sisters?
When King Creon condemned her brother’s body to be left unburied and devoured by wild animals, Antigone chose criminal disobedience of Creon and therefore the state. Before the criminal act, Ismene begged her sister, Antigone to obey King Creon. Antigone responded by shaming her sister’s prioritization of obedient self-preservation over conscientious, even if “criminal,” action.
In the dark of night Antigone attempted to bury her brother. Her efforts were thwarted when she was discovered by the King’s authorities and eventually condemned to die, entombed with a small bit of food. Antigone knew the risk of disobeying Creon. She also knew the only way to obey eternal moral principles and retain her integrity was to disobey the King’s unjust decree.
In refusing to betray her humanity to appease authoritarian power, Antigone became a literary martyr for passionate reason, independence of thought, and human freedom. Standing before those in power, Antigone admits she broke the King’s law and affirmed the right of independent conscience. “It wasn’t Zeus…who made this proclamation—not to me. Nor did that Justice, dwelling with the gods beneath the earth, ordain such laws for men. Nor did I think your edict had such force that you, a mere mortal, could override the gods, the great unwritten, unshakable traditions [immortal moral precepts].” The decrees and laws of Kings and those with mortal power do not deserve unthinking affirmation. They may be scrutinized, challenged, and even disobeyed when found faulty.
Objects before People, Authoritarian Idolatry
More than obedience to unjust decrees, some under the spell of authoritarian consciousness have lost sight of the unique sacredness of people. What can be said of us who are more moved by the damage done to objects—things—than the tearing apart of mothers from children, husbands from wives, people from their communities? Is it not sacrilegious—a sin against the humanistic love of life—to bestow greater concern upon the things wrought by human hands over the human beings themselves?
The exaltation of things over human beings exemplifies what the ancient Hebrews called idolatry, what philosophers have variously called alienation or mistaking the means of life for the ends. In his lecture, “Nonviolence and Social Change,” Rev. Dr. King clarified the difference between the value of persons and objects. “A life is sacred,” he said. “Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on; it is not man.”
Those adhering to King's philosophy of nonviolent civic action will agree that property destruction is wrong, but only indirectly as harm done to a person who possesses the property. The harm done directly to people, through unjust starvation, killings, incarceration, and deportation, is direct and greater.
The authoritarian consciousness views law and order as an end unto itself because power-over others is deemed intrinsically valuable—an ultimate value. For the non-authoritarian, by contrast, the coercive powers of the state are understood as a necessary condition for a free society that must be balanced with accountability and continual revision. Lovers of human freedom view the authority of the state, at its best, as a means to the end of facilitating human liberty and creativity. As Isaiah Berlin put it in Four Essays on Liberty (1969), “We must submit to authority not because it is infallible, but only for strictly and openly utilitarian reasons, as a necessary expedient.” And when authority ceases to serve humanity it also ceases to deserve obedience.
Authoritarian Consciousness
But many continue to obey inhuman authority. The submission to authoritarianism goes beyond conscious preferences and stated political beliefs. As Erich Fromm explained in his 1941 examination of fascism, Escape from Freedom, authoritarianism helps some cope with and compensate for their fear, pain, bitterness, and feelings of powerlessness.
Authoritarianism appeals to those seeking an easy, magical escape from the reality of their alienation and impotence in the world. In supporting the merciless abuse of the marginalized and politically weaker, authoritarianism’s adherents further disguise their own impotence and obscure the reality of their powerlessness. For authoritarianism’s adherents are weak in the truly human powers of reason, compassion, and knowledge. Their state of shameful alienation from humanity is only intensified as they cheer on a strong man who crushes ordinary people in whom they cannot help but to see themselves in.
People attracted to authoritarianism are lured away from the prophets’ table which serves a vision of power comprised of reason, love, struggle, and solidarity. They join the fallacious banquet of demagogues, believing the ancient lie that the hunger of their inner and/or social impotence can be satiated through ritualized fear, force, and dehumanization of the other, their brothers and sisters.
Authoritarianism exalts the emptiest of all forms of power: the power of psychological manipulation, physical dominance, and control of others. Authoritarian power is a naked appeal to force and fear rather than reason and love. Authoritarianism’s devotees enjoy the direct and vicarious pleasures of self-aggrandizing assertion over and against others.
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Authoritarian consciousness not only denies but outright mocks expressions of love and human solidarity as instances of genuine power. Instead, moral concern for others and compassion are portrayed as ideology or just plain weakness, as when President Trump and some of his supporters condemned Rev. Mariann Budde’s inaugural entreaty that the new president have mercy on those with less power. Powerlessness, Fromm explained, repulses the authoritarian personality. “Whereas a different kind of character is appalled by the idea of attacking one who is helpless, the authoritarian character feels the more aroused the more helpless his object has become.”
But dominating others quenches the human thirst for self-determination and transcendence the same as seawater quenches thirst. The intoxicating yet fleeting sense of control over the world is quickly replaced by a more acute feeling of impotence.
The manipulative control over others is tenuous and perilous. Those drawn to authoritarianism seek to fill the gaps in their humanity with cheap spectacles of braggadocio. The resort to dominance “is the perversion of potency,” exemplifying the opposite of what it postures itself to be. Confronted with this reality, authoritarianism’s adherents have to either abandon their ideology or double down on irrational appeals and exertions of dominance.
When Security is a Price to Heavy to Pay
Antigone and Rev. Dr. King stand as revolutionary opponents of authoritarianism and exemplifications of a vision of power characterized by a love of life, reason, courage, and integrity. We gain much from revisiting their examples as we ourselves are faced with difficult questions of existential importance.
Antigone and Rev. King refused to allow security, fear, and conformity to override reason and commitment to eternal moral principles. Rev. King frequently repeated his conviction that “if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, in a sense he is not fit to live.” Like King, Antigone knew what was worth living for and what was worth dying for.
Confronted for her offense, Antigone declared obedience to unjust authority and law to be too great a sacrifice.
“So for me to meet this doom is trifling grief; but if I had suffered my mother's son to lie in death an unburied corpse, that would have grieved me; for this, I am not grieved. And if my present deeds are foolish in thy sight, it may be that a foolish judge arraigns my folly.”
Neither Antigone nor Rev. King sought out death. But neither would they prioritize physical safety at the cost of their souls. The cost of principle and integrity was too great even for survival, they teach us.
Anti-authoritarian Power
Antigone and Rev. Dr. King exemplify anti-authoritarian power, a power sprung from the love of life. Such a form of human potency is not the ability to control others, but the full flowering of their human potentiality. Though this vision runs counter to common sense it has the endorsement of great thinkers throughout human history. The Buddha encouraged his followers to concentrate on self-mastery in place of “victory” over others. “Self-conquest is far better than the conquest of others,” we read in The Dhammapada (after 400 BCE). “Not even a god, an angel, Mara or Brahma can turn into defeat the victory of a person who is self-subdued and ever restrained in conduct.”
Even the frequently misunderstood philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s notion of power emphasized developing and mastering our own humanity. According to Nietzsche, our possessions and objects of external control could never fill the void left by failing to develop our fullest inner potential. And by prioritizing the joys of self-creation, Nietzsche contended in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, we would become less inclined to harm others.
Centuries before James declared faith unaccompanied by action “dead” (2:14-17), Antigone insisted that our loves will be known in what we do. When discovered in defying the King’s decree, she declared her “crime” as evidence of her obedience to human conscience. “Who did the work?,” she asked rhetorically. “Let the dead and the god of death bear witness! I have no love for a friend who loves in words alone.”
The question for us in this unique historical moment is whether or not to follow in Antigone’s immortal footsteps, a path of potential peril but also profound potency. She reminds us that what we love—what we truly believe in and care about—and therefore who we are is declared in what we do even before the eyes and judgment of authority.
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These scholars include Ugur Umit Ungor, Raz Segal, Shmuel Lederman, William Schabas, and Melanie O'Brien. See Sondos Asem, "Top genocide scholars unanimous that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza: Dutch investigation," Middle East Eye, May 17, 2025.