"Who Killed Malcolm X" Attempts to Murder His Revolutionary Life

Malcolm X and Kwame Nkrumah in Harlem, NY, in 1960. Nkrumah's revolutionary Pan-African government was overthrown within a year and three days of Malcolm's assassination, but these revisionist scholars and their supporters, would have you believe all of this, and much more, is unrelated and a coincidence

Netflix recently released the above titled docu-series.  The six episode series details the efforts by an African named Abdul Rahman Muhammad to fulfill his ambition of finding out who was behind the February 21, 1965 assassination of El Hajj Malik Shabazz – Malcolm X.  Although the series does its best to suggest that no one has ever had the determination to match Muhammad’s focus on getting to the bottom of this crime, the reality is that plenty of people have explored this question before Muhammad’s docu-series.  There have been a number of books that have been written on this topic.  George Brietman released “The Assassination of Malcolm X” in 1967.  I first read this book in 1979.  In 1992, Karl Evanzz released “The Judas Factor; The Plot to Kill Malcolm X.”  There are many, many others.  And most of them, most notably Brietman and Evanzz’s works, go much deeper with much more critical analysis than Muhammad’s docu-series. 

The fact that books on the topic of who assassinated Malcolm and why have been churned out for the last 50+ years makes it that much easier to shake my head at “Who Killed Malcolm X.”  This is my response because I know the very troublesome lack of intellectual honesty that exists today.  I know that most people haven’t read one authoritative book on anything, not to mention Malcolm X’s assassination.  I know that most people suffer from intellectual laziness and will always choose to have someone else do their work for them instead of engaging in serious study themselves.  I know that most people will rely on Muhammad’s mediocre work instead of seriously investigating this question.  And, I know that Netflix as a multi-media propaganda mechanism for the capitalist system, will rely on all of the issues I’ve indicated here to do what capitalism always does; shape in a very subtle way our liberation movements and figures to fit neatly into capitalism’s desired manifestation of who and what those people and movements represent(ed).  And, armed only with what our enemies have provided us, most people will passionately argue Netflix’s position on who killed Malcolm X which, if it wasn’t so surreal and pitiful, would be hilarious. 

There were countless issues with the docu-series so I’ll try to recount the most glaring ones here.  First, Muhammad focuses a lot of his presentation on the innocence of Muhammad Aziz, formally Norman 3X Butler, and Khalil Islam, formally Thomas 15X Johnson.  Both men were convicted, along with Talmadge Hayer, or Thomas Hagan, for assassinating Malcolm X.  Hayer was the only admitted assassin convicted (and he was only captured because the crowd at the Audobon Ballroom grabbed him and beat him relentlessly until police arrived and rescued him).  Aziz and Islam each served 20+ years for the conviction.  Anyone with even cursory knowledge of the assassination knows that Aziz and Islam had nothing to do with killing Malcolm X, but casual observers of this history should understand clearly that to most of us who have closely studied this for decades, the portrayal of Aziz and Islam as innocent victims in all of this is deeply offensive.  As even Muhammad states himself multiple times during his production, Aziz and Islam were well known New York “enforcers” within the Fruit of Islam, the para-military wing of the Nation of Islam.  There is no confusion what is meant by the term “enforcer.”  These were guys who beat and intimidated people who did not conduct themselves in ways favorable to Nation of Islam leadership.  These two guys in particular were involved in multiple incidents of intimidation aimed at Malcolm during the final months of his involvement with the Nation of Islam and certainly during the 11 months between his departure from the Nation and his assassination.  The fact Aziz and Islam (the latter who died in 2009) played these nefarious roles within the Nation of Islam is what made it so easy for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the New York Prosecutor’s office to accuse and convict them.  Muhammad expresses dismay that no one spoke up on behalf of Aziz and Islam, despite common knowledge that those two were innocent of Malcolm’s assassination.  Most likely, people didn’t speak up because people knew that those two may have been innocent regarding Malcolm’s death, but they were certainly guilty of plenty of other crimes against people in the community. 

Secondly, Muhammad’s tiptoeing around the disgraceful character known as John Ali, the former National Secretary of the Nation of Islam under Elijah Muhammad, is criminal in its neglect.  There are ample documents, most notably from files recovered in the 1974 Freedom of Information Act, that demonstrate that Ali was one of multiple highly placed FBI informants within the Nation of Islam from 1957 forward.  Accompanying documentation of his increased bank accounts during that period, despite no known source of income besides his modest salary within the Nation of Islam, along with other sources of documentation, make a very compelling argument against Ali in this regard.  Regardless, Muhammad resorts to only asking Ali politely about this and responding with nothing when Ali responds with a silly and garbled Biblical comparison.  This is significant because the actual evidence strongly suggests that much of the internal dissension within the Nation that helped lead to the environment of Malcolm’s assassination was widely instigated by Ali who played a critical role in cutting off Malcolm’s access to Elijah Muhammad while feeding Elijah Muhammad dishonest and wedge strengthening information about the work Malcolm was doing. 

Third, Muhammad does mention the position of the defenders of Elijah Muhammad during this period (and up to the present day) repeating over and over that Elijah Muhammad said publicly that Malcolm was not to be harmed by anyone in the Nation of Islam, but we know that as Sekou Ture taught us, “based solely on what comes from our lips, we are all equal.”  Even despite the weak overall analysis of his docu-series, even Muhammad is clear enough to realize that there is absolutely no way Elijah Muhammad Jr., the son of Elijah Muhammad, would be brazen enough to tell 400 Fruit of Islam soldiers in the Armory building in 1964 to “cut out the n - - - - r’s tongue and send it Chicago and I’ll stamp it approved!” unless he was pretty comfortable that what he was doing wasn’t in direct violation of Elijah Muhammad’s orders. 

Finally, the most egregious violation of this docu-series is its flippant treatment of the federal government’s role in orchestrating Malcolm’s assassination.  Muhammad mentions this at different points, but his production never seriously centers the role of this government in precipitating the assassination and its impossible for me to consider this a pure accident.  Our ideological training has taught us, as Kwame Ture was fond of saying, that “any analysis of our people’s suffering that doesn’t include our enemies is incomplete!”  The FBI’s own files provide more than enough evidence to substantiate the role the FBI and local police played in the days leading up to the assassination and immediately afterward.  Also, Muhammad’s neglect in mentioning the fact Malcolm was denied entry into Frances days before his assassination (presumably because the French government, being aware of the U.S. government’s intentions of having Malcolm assassinated, didn’t want it to happen in their country), and that Malcolm was unquestionably poisoned (by expert medical opinion) in Cario, Egypt, days before his assassination is curious at best and criminally amateur at worse.  He didn’t mention either of these incidents because neither fits neatly into the Nation of Islam assassinated Malcolm X scenario since the Nation has no capacity to have carried out either incident.  Also, you can never forget that the primary objective of Netflix is never to provide revolutionary education to the masses of African people and humanity.  Their primary objective is always to produce content that will generate a large viewership for the purpose of profit and they will produce and air anything that will generate such an audience.  And, they will air it anyway that fits them regardless of its accuracy.
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We already certain we know how some of you are going to react to this piece.  There are those of us who still (amazingly) wish to subscribe to a classless analysis of our people and what we produce, wanting to believe that anything “Black” (whatever that means) should be universally supported by African people everywhere and anything short of that is treason against our people.  We completely and unilaterally reject that unscientific position.  People operate with all sorts of capitalist inspired, money making agendas that have absolutely nothing to do with our people’s liberation, despite their ability to fool most of us who understand our movements only on a Hollywood surface level.  We also should point out that there are those among us who will go down to the bitter end depending our right to be as ignorant as we want to be while refusing to be honest enough to acknowledge that there are people out here who, while you spent all your time partying, playing with your shoelaces, or whatever you have spent your life doing, have been studying and working around questions like who really killed Malcolm.  In other words, inspite of the illusion of social media, there are many people who know much more about this than you do.  Despite this clear contradiction, we recognize some of us will die before we acknowledge this, choosing instead to maintain our superficial understanding of these critical questions that are reinforced by production’s like Muhammad’s.  For you folks, we are impressed that you have even read this far because this piece really isn’t for you.  Its for the masses of serious students of history who understand that Malcolm was a burgeoning revolutionary Pan-Africanist.  For those of you who know that Malcolm may have said or written whatever to try and appease Elijah Muhammad, but that he truly didn’t want back into the Nation of Islam (no more than you really want to hold onto that toxic relationship in your life that you do some much to maintain).  Serious people know that Malcolm’s comments about John F. Kennedy’s assassination at the Manhattan Center (where John Ali orchestrated complete sabotage against Malcolm in a clearly coordinated way) on December 1, 1963, clearly indicate his political outgrowth beyond anything the Nation of Islam was capable of talking about.  Malcolm’s analysis, which Muhammad glosses over in this work, was as clear a denunciation of imperialism’s criminal role (it continues to play) in Africa and around the world, using the Congo and the U.S.’s leadership role in Patrice Lumumba’s assassination to preserve imperialism’s dominance in mineral rich Central Africa.  Malcolm’s leadership role in articulating these crimes against humanity and his strong organizational work to unite with revolutionary Pan-African forces in Africa working against these injustices, as well as his still unknown linking up with Cuba’s socialist revolutionaries.  These are clearly the reasons Malcolm was killed regardless of who uncle sam ended up getting to pull the trigger.  Malcolm’s assassination has to be seen in the political context that it occupies.  The murder of Lumumba.  The destabilization of the Congo.  The murder of Malcolm X.  The overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah’s government in 1966.  The overthrow of Keito’s government in Mali in 1968.  The Portuguese invasion of Guinea in 1970 (with its objective of overthrowing the Democratic Party of Guinea, assassinating Sekou Ture, Kwame Nkrumah, Amilcar Cabral, and destroying the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau).  The destabilization of revolutionary Pan-Africanism., etc.  The rolling out of neo-colonialism in Africa and the destabilizing of revolutionary organizing efforts.  All of this is for serious students only though.  Not anyone content to rely on Hollywood productions to pretend to understand true revolutionary African liberation history.