-----Original Message----- From: Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>When Nathan talks about "ties," he is obviously distorting the real
>relationship between the NOI and the KKK, let alone Malcolm X's role in
all
>this. As has been repeatedly pointed out, this was Elijah Muhammed's
>cockeyed scheme and not Malcolm's. It is simply ahistorical to attack
>Malcolm's role in this meeting.
---
>More to the point of collaborating with the KKK, Nathan's beloved
>Democratic Party was much more into this than the NOI ever was. Bobby
>Kennedy's dragged his feet as Attorney General when civil rights workers
>were being beaten or murdered in cold blood.
In the period in question, namely 1959-1962 (or thereabouts for the various meetings with the Klan and the Nazis), Malcolm was the main public spokesman for the NOI. He was not merely a disciplined cadre member but the public face and ideological spokesperson for the NOI. To exempt Malcolm from criticism for standing by and even participating (however reluctantly) in such relationships is a ridiculous abdication of accountability.
As your attack on the Democrats illustrates (and I endorse your criticism), you will hold those you dislike accountable for their acts of political expediency while "whitewashing" (hey, one of the few negative uses of "white" in our vocabulary) the sins of those you favor.
>It is an attempt to shift the focus
>away from Malcolm's own political trajectory and turn him into a simple
>black hate-monger. Liberals were guilty of this, long after Malcolm had
>dropped every vestige of anti-white rhetoric. Rakesh and Nathan are
simply >repackaging this line of attack.
Actually, neither of us is arguing anything of the sort. In fact, both of our criticisms of Malcolm is more about failures of loyalty to other black activists, not about being anti-white. But it suits your polemics to mischaracterize the issue.
Look, I like Malcolm, especially his last year views. But I don't have to ignore his failings to respect his insights; god knows, Malcolm himself was more self-critical than his obstensible defenders like Louis and Carroll.
>I do not "discount" the NOI years. I simply challenge the notion that the
>NOI "collaborated" with KKK terror. This is a filthy lie.
I posted the experience of James Farmer, one of Malcolm's closer friends in the civil rights movement. The NOI had information on racist attacks on the civil rights movement and (the implication of Farmer's experience) only selectively informed other activists of those attacks. Maybe this was a sporadic, tangential issue, but it is far more serious than you make it out to be.
And of course, the most serious issue about the NOI is not collaboration with Klan terror but the serious terrorism they conducted themselves against their own members and ex-members such as Malcolm himself. There are reasons to constructively engage the NOI even today but Farrakahn's connection to the murder of Malcolm is reason enough to condemn much of what the NOI stands for. And the fact is that Malcolm took a hell of a long time to break with the NOI despite knowing of many of those practices being committed against members while he was a top leader.
Yes, it's great that Malcolm broke with the NOI and he is to be praised for that redemption, but I have sympathy with Rakesh's view that leaders in SNCC who risked their lives from day one for the right cause deserve respect from today's movement that is lacking. Lots of people know Malcolm's name but few know Ella Baker's, James Foreman's, James Bevel's and all the other heroes of SNCC and company. That is the broad issue Rakesh was raising as well.
>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.
-No, the only one that is moving toward becoming a political hack is you, -Nathan.
Louis, why you can't have a civil discussion on such matters eludes me, but to make this statement while ignoring the Malcolm quotation I cited shows a serious intellectual failing on your part - much more serious than Rakesh being unable to find a newspaper article that you condemned so hard.
>No, Malcolm was against supporting Democrats. He viewed this party as the
>"fox" while the Republicans were the "wolves".
Sure he did, just as all the other militant urban activists did who entered politics in the late 60s and early 70s. Yet, many Black Panthers became a key part of the rise of black Democratic leadership in Oakland in the 70s and 80s (with David Hilliard a key organizer for Jerry Brown's recent mayoral run) and former membership of Mississippi Freedom Summer becoming the backbone of southern Democratic parties and whites deserted for the Republican Party.
But even back in the day, Malcolm was not talking about creating a third party (Louis's implication) but was talking about disciplined use of the black vote to influence both Democrats and Republicans strategically - a reasonable approach especially in the era of Lindsay Republicans in NYC.
Malcolm never argued against voting Democrat- he just wanted blacks to have their own organization that could elect or unelect whoever they pleased without being subservient to the Dem machine, a very serious issue in a place like NYC and a lot of urban areas. It took years for blacks and other progressives in Chicago to build up the strength to beat the machine there with the Harold Washington campaign in the 1980s. That campaign seems to be exactly the kind of fight Malcolm was advocating at the OAAU rally.
Here's a challenge Louis. I can post more discussion by Malcolm of his strategic approach to building a black political machine. How about you posting something where Malcolm advocates creating a third party.
Just to give you something to respond to, here is Malcolm X from a radio interview in BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY (courtesy of Pathfinder Press BTW):
"Let us say that Tammany Hall functions for the good of the white power structure by and large, and we will set up a black Tammany Hall that's for the good of Harlem."
So, where does this strategy differ from the one Major Owens, Harold Washington, Ron Dellums and a host of other black activists created in the 1970s and 1980s?
--Nathan Newman