errorist Ku Klux Klan and Lincoln Rockwell's Nazi
~Q—
organization. He cited several attempts on his life and he charged that although the police knew about the plans to attack him they had done nothing. Plainclothesmen were in the audience when he was shot down.
The most reactionary forces in the United States had reason to seek the death of Malcolm X. He was rapidly moving to the forefront as the most authentic voice of the freedom-seeking Negro masses in’ the United States. What he represented was the rise of a new militant consciousness that is now beginning to challenge ‘the old, conservative, pacifist-minded leadership. His views were evolving and while it remained to be seen how far he would go, he was clearly attracted by revolutionary socialism. Coming across the American Trotskyist movement, he paid it high respect, developed friendly relations with some of its members and leaders, and was beginning to study its tenets, Recently he became a subscriber to World Outlook.
Malcolm X belonged to the generation that was shaped ideologically under the twin circumstances of World War II and the monstrous betrayals and defaults of the Stalinized Communist parties. These circumstances operated with special force on him as a member of an oppressed people. .
His rebellion, as can often be the case, at first took the wild form of delinquency. However, after bitter experiences, including a long term in prison, he began to seek the causes for his miserable © position in society. His first steps in this process, again, were not unusual. The religion given him was bad, he decided. Yet he did not proceed directly toward a scientific outlook. There was no powerful Socialist or Communist movement in the United States to help him in this step. He went through a transitional stage of seeking a more humane and positive religion. For a time he thought he had found this in the Black Muslim faith. But this, too, proved inadequate to his inquiring and developing mind. Breaking from Elijah Muhammad, he turned to the orthodox Muslim sources. He had not completed this phase when he was murdered.
The rise of the Negro movement in the United States, which was fostered by the consequences of World War II and the great postwar revolutionary upsurge in the colonial world, began to draw Malcolm X out of the shell of religion and into the active world of political struggle. Talents of a high order cast him for the role of a leader in this mighty movement, and television helped convert him into a national figure of great prominence in a remarkably short time. There was little doubt that he was-marked for a consequential role in the freedom struggle in the United States,
His turn in this direction, representative of the trend of the most promising sector of the black nationalist movement, was highlighted by his forming a political grouping, the Organization of Afro- American Unity.
~ Zu
The principal issue on which he stood, and which gave him his extraordinary appeal to the Negro masses, was the right of self-defense and advocacy of practicing it. In this he foreshadowed the next great turn in the civil-rights movement in the United States.
"With infallible instinct, his foes singled this out for special treatment in commenting on his assassination, Misrepresenting his position as advocacy of "violence," they claim that his death reveals _ the operation of a kind of natural justice. Thus the New York Times, in a lead editorial LFebruary 22 international edition], said that "his ruthless and fanatical belief in violence not only set him apart from the responsible leaders of the civil rights movement. . . It also marked him for fame, and for a violent end." The editors even went. so far as to say that he "spawned" the forces that ended in his death,
According to this logic, the "prince of peace" spawned the forces that nailed him to a cross. The modern prophet of nonviolence, Mahatma Ghandi, did likewise, for he died at the hand of an assassin. The Rev. Martin Luther King, an American disciple of Ghandi, is not without a similar propensity, for he came close to death at. the hands of a knife-wielding fanatic. ,
The remarkable blindness of the editors. of the Times is shown even more glaringly by their overlooking the continual assassinations in the South of advocates of nonviolence. What does their victimiza-_ tion prove?
Malcolm X's position on this question must be examined on its own merits. Do victims of violent assaults have the right to defend themselves? Does an oppressed group have the right to organize an effective defense against the violence of its oppressors? The entire history of mankind, particularly the history of revolutions, says yes. The truth is that there is no other road to an eventual end to all class violence and the murderous currents it spawns. What the editors of the Times and those who think like them really object to is that an oppressed people, especially the Negro people in the United States, should defend themselves against violence occurring on an endemic, nation-wide scale. If Malcolm X is to be criticized at all it should be because the defenses at his meeting, after repeated threats to his life, were not effective enough.
The generation to which Malcolm X belongs has already produced outstanding figures ~- Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba, These men found their way independently to the revolutionary. struggle, demonstrating that it is possible to by=pass Stalinism. There are others like them developing in rebel movements throughout the world, They will become the heroes and models of the younger generation now undergoing ideological formation. These two generations | are destined | to lead the world into its socialist future.
That world, we may be sure, will never forget its martyrs, its Patrice Lumumbas, its Malcolm X's,
4a