As to the evidence involved, if someone Louis did not like had knowledge of their organization's ties with the Klan or the Nazis and said nothing for years, Louis would use every insult in his vast arsenal to attack that person as a neo-Nazi sympathizer based on exactly the kind of evidence Rakesh used in inferring Malcolm's culpability.
I tend to be more charitable towards Malcolm than Rakesh, but then I generally accept that people have mixed motives and histories and look for the best take on their actions when they are generally striving for progressive change in all its forms. But to discount all the NOI years as Louis argues for is to ignore the years that made Malcolm famous. Malcolm's last year is a fascinating story of personal discovery, but only a small handful of mostly white Trotskyists reduce Malcolm to incipient socialist wish fulfillment.
Even if you take Pathfinder Press as gospel, you see a bunch of different ideas swirling around, some that fit Rakesh's "radical shopkeeping" model and others that show Malcolm moving towards becoming a political hack.
At the second OAAU rally, Malcolm spent most of the time talking about organizing blacks to vote as a primary vehicle for mobilization. If you want to hear something really anti-radical, how about this paragraph by Malcolm:
"Once you get the ballot, you know what this means? You don't have to get out in the street any more and risk your health and your life and your lib demonstrating. All you have to do is organize that political power and direct it against anyone who's against you or direct it behind anyone who is for you. And in this way you and I will find that we're always taking constructive, positive action and getting some kind of result."
Malcolm wrapped this argument with tough rhetoric like the "ballot or the bullet" line, but the heart of the strategy outlined was no different from what a Major Owens and other black radicals implemented in New York City and other urban areas.
I have the sense that if Malcolm had lived, Louis would be denouncing him as a loudmouthed party hack who had sold out the people to participate in bourgois politics.
In a sense, Malcolm's death was the best thing that ever happened to him, since everyone can project wish fulfillment onto him, without him ever choosing one direction or the other and breaking people's heart.
--Nathan Newman