Malcolm X (né Malcolm Little) visited
the West Bank and Gaza during his lifetime, including many refugee camps, a
hospital, and a mosque. He had talked on Palestine, and his trip “deeply
transformed him.” He wrote a critique of Zionism shortly before he was killed. Black
Nationalists in the U.S., including De Bois, had viewed the Jewish fight for
self-determination and nationhood as a struggle like that of Black Americans in
the United States. Malcolm, however, advocated for the Palestinians because of
how the Jewish nation had materialized at the expense of Palestinians, as many had
been thrown out of their houses with little or no notice when the state of Israel
was founded. Former victims had become victimizers, and the UN had failed to
oversee the transition, which could easily have been anticipated to be rough. As
tempting as it is to discuss the atrocities being committed in Gaza in
2024-2025, the thread running throughout Malcolm’s political philosophy is also
worthy of attention. I submit that the sheer extent of intentional civilian
casualties and injuries both in Ukraine and Gaza render Malcolm’s political
philosophy anything but radical in retrospect.
Malcolm’s political ideology
had a lot to do with Black Nationalism. This resonated for him with the plight
of the Palestinians in the occupied territory. He did not rule out armed
struggle on either front. He “embedded” the Palestinian cause into Black
identity; in fact, Black-Palestinian solidarity was a movement. Also,
anti-Zionism was set as part of the anti-colonialism movement, which involved
post-colonial states in Africa. African states and Arab states in the Middle
East did not reconcile. Malcolm wrote against Israel’s efforts to drive a wedge
between the Middle East and Africa. For example, decades after Malcolm’s life,
in the 21st century, Israel supported South Sudan to destabilize
Sudan.
In short, Malcolm expanded his thinking and perspective to include internationalism in a way that dovetails with his positions (changed due to his trip to Mecca[1]) on civil rights in the United States. It was not lost on him that a formerly-oppressed group in Europe became a colonizing, racially-discriminatory state within its own borders, and that that state was even interfering with post-colonial states in Africa so they would not form a coalition with the Arab states in the Middle East.
Ironically, the thread running through Malcolm’s domestic and
internationalist political philosophy can be encapsulated by a saying that U.S.
Senator Alan Simpson, ironically a Republican, often stated on the Senate
chamber: “I’m for the little guy.” In the midst of the blatant, naked state
aggression going on with impunity in the international arena especially in 2024
and 2025, the world needs fewer enablers of aggressors and more voices standing
up for the little guys. This would hardly be as radical as Malcolm’s political
philosophy has been characterized. Calls for the global community to resist
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Netanyahu’s crime against humanity of extermination
by armed struggle could hardly be considered as radical, given the extent
and depth of the intentional atrocities against civilians occurring with profane, damning impunity.
1. It
would be interesting to compare that transformation with the one while Malcolm
was in Mecca. Interestingly, the “Mecca transformation” was hardly mentioned at
a conference on Malcolm X at Yale in 2025. Nevertheless, I have included
material from the conference’s session on “Malcolm and Gaza” in this piece.
