Me, West, NOI, relativism, & other dead horses

[Rakesh Bhandari]

I cannot find the San Francisco Chronicle article but as I remember it,
the NOI, represented by Malcolm X,  agreed in a private meeting not to
defend those in SNCC from KKK attack.That's how committed the NOI was to
maintaining segregation.  At any rate, why should Malcolm X be so well
known, not Ella Baker or James Foreman? I think Malcolm X became sickened
by how anti political the NOI was as heroic black and white people were
risking  their lives. His break with the NOI is usually reduced to his
moral objections to Elijiah Muhammed's multiple wives, but the truth is he
never expressed a feminist sentiment. And his real objection to the NOI
was probably  its antipolitical and repressive nature. This can even be
inferred from the Autobiography. 

By radical shopkeeper politics I mean that Malcolm X's political economic
vision never clearly broke from the development of black business as the
principal task. That's how it stands in the Autobiography and there is
no clear analysis by him of the limits of such a strategy. It is almost
impossible to figure out the details or meaning of Malcolm X's critique of
capitalism. As you said, he was becoming receptive to socialist ideas; he
never developed them in detail.

Because of that Breitman and the SWP could claim Malcolm as one of their
own. But it does not seem to me that speeches bear this out; it's just not
possible to guess where his mix of islamic, anti colonial, pan african,
socialist, etc ideology would have taken him.  I think Breitman erases the
confusion here in order to mobilize the myth of Malcolm X as socialist  to
build the SWP. 

He supported anti colonial revolts without any analysis of the nature of
the national liberation movements themselves. Again I consider this less
nuanced than Fanon's chapter in Wretched of the Earth, though people
usually don't get much past Fanon's justification of violence in the
previous chapters. 

For me Malcolm X's greatest importance was his bold attack on the March of
Washington as a spectacle that would only do good for the image of the US
abroad. He was vindicated a few weeks later when a black church was
bombed in Birmingham. But for the limits of the March on Washington and in
particular the way John Lewis' speech was censored--with ML King's
encouragement--I find Foreman's autobiography (The Making of Black
Revolutionaries)  more illuminating than Malcolm X. 

It is  important for me at this point to underline how dangerous and
reactionary the NOI is. It does not serve my purpose to discuss whether
Farakhan is a fascist, so I will not defend the point. 

By the way, I don't think the evidence of FBI involvement in his
assasination is strong. Well certainly not as strong as the evidence of
the NOI's and Farakhan's involvement. I wonder how Malcolm X would have
characterized the handsome calypso singer turned numerological demagogue. 
See Michael Friedly The Assasination of Malcolm X.

Rakesh