Radicals : Portraits of a Destructive Passion (9781621570066) by Horowitz David

Author:Horowitz, David [Horowitz, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781621570066
Publisher: Perseus
Published: 2012-09-07T05:00:00+00:00

When West refused to back down, George X threatened him: “Young brother, you’ll be lucky to get out of this building alive. And if you do manage to slip out, you’ll be gone in five days.”

Rising to the melodrama, West was defiant: “Well, if that’s the only response to my challenge, then I guess you’re just going to have to take me out.’”29

A striking aspect of West’s account of the incident is his failure to acknowledge the fact that Malcolm X was murdered by Nation of Islam assassins. The “death warrant” had been ordered by Elijah Muhammad, and was issued by his lieutenant Louis Farrakhan. Why, then, would it seem “shocking” when George X referred to Malcolm as a “dog”?

The sins that warranted Malcolm’s execution were his rejection of Elijah Muhammad’s racist bigotry and, worse, that he had revealed family secrets, in particular that the Honorable Minister had impregnated several teenagers, which not only broke the law but violated the puritanical codes he had set up for his cult. While certainly aware of these facts, West fails to mention any of them or explain why in view of this he would have any respect—then or now—for violent and degenerate criminals. On the contrary, writing from a vantage more than forty years distant, West still thinks that “[Malcolm] was wrong to have castigated the Honorable Elijah Muhammad in public,” and then adds this aside: “And God knows, following Malcolm’s lead, I had hardly been discreet in castigating George X. But when the Four Tops sang ‘I Can’t Help Myself,’ they might as well have been talking about me.”30

Friends rescued West from the confrontation with George X, after which he immediately went into hiding: “I went underground. I kept moving around from dorm room to dorm room, staying with various friends who had my back. I was afraid to attend class.... For as long as I was on the Nation’s most wanted list, I didn’t get a good night’s sleep.”

But this life-threatening episode seems not to have affected West’s admiration for the Nation. Instead of reporting what had taken place to university administrators and protecting other students, West sought out “one of the most prominent Black Muslims on campus” to try to repair the breach. When they met, he solicited the student’s views on what had happened, which led to this strange dialogue:From the Nation’s point of view, you disrespected one of our ministers, just as Malcolm disrespected the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Do you realize what Minister Muhammad meant to Malcolm?

“I do,” I said. “I’ve always believed that there’s no Malcolm without Elijah. . . . But you all be calling the brother a dog, and I can never allow that. Not in public. That’s a level of disrespect that’s too much.”31

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