Guerrilla History - BONUS: Malcolm X Assassination

Episode Date: February 26, 2021

This bonus episode of Guerrilla History comes out on the 56th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X, and also comes out less than 24 hours after the unsealing of a deathbed confession related to the assassination.  We plan on doing several Malcolm X specific episodes in the future, but for the commemoration of this anniversary, we focus today primarily on the assassination. Guerrilla History is the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history, and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present.  If you have any questions or guest/topic suggestions, email them to us at [e-mail].  Your hosts are immunobiologist Henry Hakamaki, Professor Adnan Husain, historian and Director of the School of Religion at Queens University, and Revolutionary Left Radio's Breht O'Shea.   Follow us on social media!  Our podcast can be found on twitter @guerrilla_pod and can be supported on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory.  Your contributions make the show possible to continue and succeed!  Please encourage your comrades to join us, which will help our show grow. To follow the hosts, Henry can be found on twitter @huck1995, and also has a patreon to help support himself through the pandemic where he breaks down science and public health research and news at https://www.patreon.com/huck1995.  Adnan can be followed on twitter at @adnanahusain, and also runs The Majlis Podcast, which can be found at https://anchor.fm/the-majlis and the Muslim Societies-Global Perspectives group at Queens University, https://www.facebook.com/MSGPQU/.   Breht is the host of Revolutionary Left Radio, which can be followed on twitter @RevLeftRadio cohost of The Red Menace Podcast, which can be followed on twitter at @Red_Menace_Pod.  You can find and support these shows by visiting https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/.   Thanks to Ryan Hakamaki, who designed and created the podcast's artwork, and Kevin MacLeod, who creates royalty-free music.          

You don't remember den, Ben, boo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare, but they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, and welcome. to a bonus episode of Gorilla History, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report

of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. Before we get into our introductions, I just want to state that this is a bonus episode that was originally intended to be an intelligence briefing. For those of you who are on our Patreon, you already know what intelligence briefings are, but if you're not, intelligence briefings are our roughly twice-per-month bonus episodes that we produce that we put on Patreon, half of which remain Patreon exclusive and half of which come out on a delay. We had been planning this episode for a couple of weeks at this point to coincide with the assassination, the date of the assassination of Malcolm X, February 21st, which is when we're recording

this and when we will release it. We were originally going to release it as an intelligence briefing on our Patreon with a delay before putting it on our general feed. But within the last 24 hours, there was an unsealing of some new documents associated with the assassination of Malcolm X. And we're going to be talking about that in this episode of Gorilla History. And so, since it is so timely, instead of putting it on as an intelligence briefing with a delay, we are instead going to be releasing it immediately to everyone as a bonus episode. So without further ado, let's get into our introductions. I'm your host, Henry Huckimacky, and I'm joined by my co-hosts, as always,

Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. Hi, Henry. Hi, Brett. Great to be with you. Nice to be with you as well, and also joined by Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. How are you doing? Hello. Always a pleasure. Certainly. So as we mentioned, today we're going to be talking about Malcolm X, but we're going to be focusing primarily on the assassination of Malcolm X as well as this new letter that came out. And I'm going to be splicing in a little bit of this press conference later into the episode.

But first, let's talk a little bit, just a very brief blowthrough of who Malcolm X was in case anybody is sadly unaware of Malcolm X. So, Adnan, do you want to maybe give people a brief run-through of who Malcolm X was and why he's important? Sure. Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska. So he's a fellow Nebraska, along with Brett. in 1925 was a major leader during what's often called the civil rights era, although he would not have

identified himself as a civil rights leader, which is common to do so now. He was a more radical figure who joined the nation of Islam, a black nationalist religious movement and organization rose to prominence through them and was a national spokesperson through the 50s and into the early 60s. At a certain point in the 60s between 63 and 64, he started moving away from the nation of Islam over various kinds of conflicts with the political direction of the organization. And he broke away and established two organizations on his own, one called the Organization of African American Unity, which was modeled in part on the Organization of African Unity, which had been established in decolonizing countries in Africa as a pan-Africanist

organization, and Muslim Mosque Incorporated, which was his religious organization after his conversion to Orthodox or Sunni, Sunni Orthodox Islam on a trip to the Middle East. And he also did another major trip of the Middle East and Africa and visited newly decolonized countries like Ghana and visited other leaders and became an advocate for a new kind of politics, a radical orientation within the struggle for black freedom and liberation before, as we know, his assassination on February 21st, 1965. Brett, is there anything that you want to add on Malcolm X? in mind listeners that I know this is

not paying much attention to the life of Malcolm X, but we just want you to know that we are indeed going to be doing future episodes on Malcolm X diving into individual pieces of his history, including his time in the nation of Islam

and how that shaped him when he welcomed Fidel Castro to the United States. We're going to be covering these things in the future. So if we miss something that you think we should have covered, don't worry that we'll be coming in the future. But Brett, is there anything else that you want to add on who Malcolm X was and why he's important before we start jumping into the assassination? Sure. Yeah. And as always, we'll do more work

on Malcolm X and on Rev Left. We have like a two-hour episode on Malcolm X as well. Malcolm X looms large in my sort of political and even sort of religious life. He's somebody that if I had heroes, he would be among a top three person for me. I'm just deeply compelled by not only his politics and his passion but his you know sort of the tragedy of his life um that at the end of his life he was really boxed into an impossible corner and you know he had you know babies that were attacked and you know before his assassination his house was fire bombed um his father was likely killed by the kKK and you mentioned adnan being born in omaha he was chased out as a toddler by the clan after after his father's death they terrorized him his entire life whether it's the state

the far right the nation of Islam itself or a whole other host of actors and so despite all of that he had this courage this sincerity he maintained this sense of humor and you know i see him so much as like a complete human and somebody that i look up to as as a real role model in every aspect of his life and that spiritual aspect of his life that religious aspect of his life you know can never be downplayed it was integral to who he was it was integral to his political and social vision. And at the end of his life, he was going through this really profound process of almost universalizing his spirituality and his religion to to whole new levels. And it's a fucking tragedy that he was ripped away from us because we never got to see that man's full

trajectory. What could he have been given another 20, 30, 40 years? He was on a truly profound track. And so, you know, the background of all of this is that whoever was responsible ultimately for his assassination. They did humanity and injustice. And it's so often the case, whether we're talking about Fred Hampton, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, or numerous other freedom fighters and figures of that sort, they're brought low by men much lower and less worthy than they are. And that's a tragedy, whether it's FBI agents, police, informants, snakes in the grass take away these brilliant, brilliant minds and freedom fighters. And that will never stop being a tragedy as far as. I'm concerned.

So we're now going to jump forward into the assassination itself. So as we mentioned, the assassination took place on February 21st, 1965, 56 years ago, today, as of the time of recording, and we're going to release this episode today. He was killed at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City, where he was going to be giving a speech. And after the assassination, there was three individual. who are all members of the nation of Islam, who were convicted. Now, there's a lot of interesting components that play here. And Brett, I'm going to turn this back over to you since, as you mentioned,

there is a two-hour-long Malcolm X episode on Rev. Left, which I highly recommend to everybody, if you want to get a little bit deeper, quite a bit deeper, into Malcolm X. But Brett, why don't you lay out for the listeners kind of what happened at the time of his assassination? what was perhaps leading up into the assassination and then what actually happened and then we'll have Adnan kind of fill in any holes that remain from there and then we'll jump forward in time to more recent evidence that's come out since then. So as I mentioned, he was being boxed in and cornered by several different factions, including the nation of Islam, which he had recently had a falling out with.

And why did he have a falling out with the nation of Islam? Among other things, it was because Malcolm X truly believes, in the sort of moral fortitude and superiority of Elijah Muhammad. And things started coming out that somebody with the moral conviction of Malcolm X could not simply ignore. It would have been much easier for him in his life if he could have somehow managed to integrate that new information about Elijah Muhammad's immoral behavior behind the scenes relating to sexual activities and young women, et cetera,

and just sort of played a role that was conducive to his. sort of happiness and long-term stability, but because he was so deeply moral, he couldn't countenance any sort of immoral behavior on the part of Elijah Muhammad and the rest of the nation of Islam, people that were completely committed to Elijah Muhammad. So there was that aspect of it. Behind the scenes, though, as well, and we'll get into it, he was a rising figure of, you know, black liberation at a time when you had co-intel pro developing, when you had FBI crackdowns when you had on any sort of black liberation movement as well as any sort of leftist communist or socialist anti-imperialist movement. You had, you know, local police departments

who would sink to any level to make life complicated for any sort of black liberation fighter. And all of this was slowly culminating to a point. And in so many ways, I think Malcolm X knew knew that he was a dead man. I think he said as much, I'm a dead man walking or something like that towards the end of his life. And he knew that things were getting to a peak. And so he had, I don't know the specificitudes. There's a Netflix documentary that's pretty good called Who Killed Malcolm X that really traces out every single detail of this assassination. But he was giving a speech as these things were reaching a crescendo at the Audubon Ballroom, I believe in New York City. And right when he got on to stage, now he had less security than he usually has. He was

psychologically in a very sort of complicated place, knowing that the walls were closing in. And as he got up to give his speech immediately, figures from the crowd stood up, advanced towards him, and began shooting him. And I think it was ultimately shotgun blasts that took his life. Pandemonium ensued in the chaos. You know, it's very easy to just lose track of who did what at what time. And I think, you know, I don't want to say too much because we'll get into some of the details of who was behind it. But basically that was, that was the end of his life. He was 39 years old. It was in 63, I believe, or 65. And Malcolm X, 65, and Malcolm X was taken from us. So, Adnan, if you wanted to fill in any gaps that I might have missed there.

I'm going to jump in for one quick second and mention that you, you mentioned that there was a lot less security than usual. And that's going to come into play with this more recent evidence that we have particularly related to this letter that was just unsealed within the last 24 hours. And I guess I'll introduce that after Adnan has his say on this. But there's one other thing that I want to put out there and I'll let Adnan comment on it. So you mentioned he left the nation of Islam for several reasons. Another one of the interesting ones is that he was admonished by the organization for the comments that he made associated to the Kennedy assassination where he essentially said chickens are coming home to roost.

And chickens coming home to Roos never made me sad. They always made me glad, something along those lines. And he was admonished by the nation of Islam, and that really did drive a wedge between them, even beyond what Brett you were saying, with the kind of behind the scenes immoral actions of Elijah Muhammad that he was seeing, that were distancing him from the organization. There was a distance happening from both sides.

he was distancing himself from them, and they were also distancing themselves from him. Adnan, I'll let you take over now. Oh, yes, just that's a very important part. And I think one important theme that we'll probably want to talk about both in this episode in terms of understanding how and why he was assassinated and broadly the importance of his political direction and career and why he is such an absolutely amazing and inspirational figure who at the end of his life was bringing together what we could say are all the key components of a politics of liberation. Not only, of course, anti-racism, understanding of class and

worker conditions, broadly socioeconomic analysis with, of course, anti-U.S. imperialism and colonialism and bringing that connection. So when he said, you know, that very famous comment about Kennedy's assassination being the chickens coming home to roost and I think he said something as a farm boy I'm always it never made me sad it always made me glad so referring to his roots in Omaha I think he's he was referring to US interference in liberation struggles around the world against colonialism that the US despite saying that it was for freedom and democracy. This is the hypocrisy that Malcolm X was very keen to identify.

He said that this was the violence that was being perpetrated abroad was coming back. And this is the kind of analysis he had generally also about racial violence in the United States. He said the violence that is produced by this system, by actual violence perpetrated against black people and the inequities of this system are very dangerous. Those forces cannot simply be controlled.

he was constantly warning in some ways the authority saying if you don't come to an accommodation there's going to be much worse to come so that remark ensured that he was muzzled because it was very politically dangerous to make remarks like that if you can remember you know any histories about you know that moment in american history how much it is a kind of tragedy in american culture and how people say, you know, where were you, you know, for that generation, it was a momentous, you know, tragic moment. And here he was basically saying publicly that he had no grief, you know, for the U.S. president. And that was seen as something tantamount to treason. So what was also kind of important or interesting in that period that contributed to the tense

situation that brett has so well characterized about how he was boxed in um is also um around um you know this time period um as well he was very critical of the political direction of the nation of Islam he was sent in fact actually to conduct negotiations with the american nazi party because white nationalists white supremacists neo nazis of that time felt that here was one of black group that was interested in something similar which was even though they hate each other that uh black national organizations demanding and calling for a separate homeland for blacks would be a solution to the race problem like yes we can keep white exclusive society let's send these people somewhere else and so there were of course this was never going to amount to anything truly

substantial but the very fact that malcolm x was sent by elijah mohammed to investigate possible collaboration on this agenda just absolutely outraged him and that is something that points to what bret was saying in terms of the moral qualities and dedication of this man you know that this just disgusted him um so there were a lot of things that were contributing to this and because he was muzzled it was very difficult for him to express himself but he continued to have some affiliations and it pushed him to make stronger connections with social groups in New York City, labor groups that were that he could cooperate with on a basis that was different from being the spokesperson and representative of the nation of Islam.

And so these things were exposing him, you might say, to the ire of the nation of Islam, but also was clearly something that looked very exploitable and made him more vulnerable to forces, police forces, FBI, outside, watching that these were. tensions that could be exploited and manipulated right to undermine the black liberation movement and i think we'll get you know further into that um but all i would say is that that documentary is very useful the one that uh brett mentioned who killed malcolm x a several part series that aired on netflix that at least i think was part of the impetus for the fact that um even before today's announcements that you'll get into the new information there already was an effort and has since the day of his assassination been

questions about the nature of the police investigation the bungled prosecution and you know the fact that there are a lot of unanswered questions and that uh re uh producing these because of the documentary and because of a group that was formed an organization that was formed called the innocence project that actually was working with one of the men who will talk about perhaps who was incarcerated and convicted and incarcerated as one of the assassins but who always maintained his innocence that there has been calls to open up the investigation there have been other pieces of evidence that have come out and for a little bit over a year I think the Manhattan District Attorney has had an ongoing review and investigation, but nothing has really

come out. Maybe, you know, today's events will impel further public scrutiny and demands that some answers actually. And in fact, none of the documents have ever official documents have been released. This is unlike, you know, the assassination of Martin Luther King or, you know, all these freedom of information requests there have been declassifying and making public documents related to many many other cases of murder and political assassination in u.s history from this era malcolm x however the the documents surrounding malcolm x have never been released publicly by the new york police department or by the fbi yeah absolutely great points and just a just a A few more things before we move on to the new information.

The fact, you know, the cruel irony that out of Malcolm X's death came the pattern of imprisoning falsely black men for crimes they didn't commit. That's another layer of just, I mean, just mind-boggling irony that should be pointed out. Another thing is, you know, I'm agnostic on the JFK thing. I just think like there's information we don't know. And as somebody who understands how documents come out years and years later and the CIA is behind. nefarious things like it would be absurdly narcissistic to think that you know everything about that a specific case but it could very well be the case down the line when more things are revealed about the JFK assassination that chickens coming home to roost might have been even more prescient

than Malcolm X meant it at that time it could literally be connected in some ways to the CIA again I'm agnostic about that but just worth thinking about how that phrase could become even more meaningful down the line. And then the last thing, just the idea of Malcolm X meeting with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, it just gives me this idea of just the bigness of Malcolm X compared with the tininess of such people. It's like picturing a supernova standing over an aunt. It's just an absurd juxtaposition to have somebody of such integrity, of such depth, of such courage having to even be in the same planet, much less the same room, with sniveling little white supremacists like that. So I could completely understand why that would just nauseate Malcolm.

Just quickly, I wanted to mention that, as Brett pointed out, of course, we'll never know all the real facts. And there is a CIA dimension in that case, as well as I would probably suggest that there are certainly when he was abroad on his trips, multiple trips to the Middle East and Africa, meeting world leaders, radical thinkers, anti-colonial activists and political figures that he was definitely being monitored by the State Department. And so there are intersections in the security establishment that, of course, you know, should be investigated. But overall, what it does remind very much of is Washington, our Washington bullets. I mean, you know, we had a wonderful episode. Everyone, listeners should go check out that inaugural episode with VJ Prussia about

the designed, you know, intended assassination program to undermine resistance movements, liberation movements globally. This is a domestic case, you might say, where that was achieved. Whether it has exactly all the hallmarks and who was involved, those, the result is very similar of a process of undermining freedom struggles this time domestically. So that should be, that analogy I think should be, you know, kept in mind. When we go into the details of it, let's not lose, you know, the forest for the trees. The trees are going to be interesting because there's some new information, but the forest is, is that this is a way of undermining liberation struggles for freedom that we know is part of the program of the U.S. government and U.S. society domestically

and abroad. And just to add on to that, Adnan, as you mentioned earlier, when he was bringing up his chickens coming home to roost with JFK, some of the specific criticisms of JFK that you mentioned were against liberation struggles. And I believe, if memory serves correctly, he specifically cited Lumumba. And of course, we've talked about Lumumba, relatively extensively in our episode on African decolonization and revolutions. So listeners, if you haven't listened to that episode yet that we did with Leo Zelig, go back and listen to it. But yeah, I mean, the absolute force that was Malcolm X was grounded in these sorts of liberation struggles. And that put a mark on him, certainly. But let's move forward into this new information. And I think that that'll

allow us to chat about the assassination itself, some of the information that's out there. And and then perhaps, you know, pick around who did kill Malcolm X for a little bit. Okay, so I guess I'll open this, and I'll actually open the segment with a clip of the press conference that had been done in the last 24 hours by the relative of a farmer undercover NYPD officer alongside the civil rights lawyer, Ben Crump, and three of Malcolm X's daughters. So I'm going to splice that audio in right here. After Ray's passing, I found a confession letter that Ray had written and mailed to my father back in 2011. This letter details his, the FBI, and the NYPD's involvement in the assassination of Malcolm X and how he was forced to betray his people.

This letter helps me to understand the pain and guilt that Ray felt for the last 55 years. He conspired to help the NYPD assassinate Malcolm X. On behalf of Ray, he wanted the world to know that he is deeply sorry. I hope that this information helps. helps the Shabazz family to more clearly understand what happened to their father on that horrible day. As a black man, I am disgusted to know that what happened 60 years ago is still going on today. We are living under Jay Edgar Hoover's Jim Crow system.

of policing our black and brown people. He is the architect of these constant injustices and tactics against our people. I am now going to give a copy of this letter to the Shabazz family. I intend to give a copy of this letter to Khalil Saeed's family, Walter Bowes family, Thomas Johnson's family, Herb Collander's family, and Afini Shakur's family. These are the families of individuals that I am aware of who have been falsely convicted due to raise actions. Okay, so you just heard a little bit of the audio from this press conference that was just

given. Basically what happened, if you go back and listen to the whole 43-minute-long press conference, essentially what happened, there was a letter that had been sealed, a deathbed confession, as it were, by Mr. Ray Wood, who was a former undercover NYPD officer. So he was on his deathbed. He made a letter. He put it into an envelope and said, do not open this until I die. Gave it to his cousin Reggie Wood, as well as Malcolm X's three daughters. They decided yesterday, evening, I believe, so the evening of the 20th, the day before the anniversary of his assassination, that they would open this letter and read it to the public. And long story short, again, you can go online and find the whole press conference, but long story short is Ray Wood

claimed in this letter that his job given to him by the NYPD and in collaboration with the FBI was to infiltrate civil rights movements, civil rights organizations, to gain the trust of individuals. He was an African American, gained the trust, work his way up in the organizations, and then convince certain individuals in these organizations to commit felonious acts so that then they could go out and arrest these strategic individuals and cripple these organizations. And one of the specific examples that he cites here in this letter is the security guards of Malcolm X. And this calls back to earlier when we mentioned that there was less security at the Audubon Ballroom than there otherwise would have been.

A few days prior to the assassination, Ray Wood, this undercover police officer, had undertaken the arrests of the security guards, the bodyguards of Malcolm X, after he had infiltrated these organizations. and had basically picked up some dirt on them, that, according to Ray Wood, was to allow there to be very little, essentially no security of the ballroom at this time, which really would open the door for an assassination attempt. So the implication here being, again, and this is what's being claimed in this new unsealed letter, is that this coordination between the NYPD and the FBI had the explicit purpose of allowing an assassination to happen. Now, it doesn't make any claims about who pulled the trigger.

But the idea here is that these organizations, the NYPD and the FBI, working in collaboration, allowed it to be possible. And then that still leaves open the door of who killed Malcolm X. So Brett, Adnan, is there anything that you want to jump in with initially? We've got a little bit of time left here. Adnan, I'll let you start. why don't we talk a little bit about Ray Wood? I know that you know a bit about Ray Wood. We'll talk about Ray Wood and we'll talk about who killed Malcolm X.

Yes, well, clearly Ray Wood indicates that he was involved and he knew about what was going on and that he'd been involved with infiltrating several organizations in the New York area, one of which was the Bronx chapter of core, which is really where he started his earning the bona fide. days as a point of entree into the radical community into the groups struggling for you know equal rights and various other kinds of you know resistance to the to the system on for social justice so you know he became actually a high official of core

he also seems to have managed to infiltrate but it's not clear whether he was you know a jean provocateur or the person who infiltrated and reported on a plot of the black liberation movement to bomb the statue of liberty for which several arrests were made and they got quite a bit of press attention at the time because it was the sort of the sensational you know oh black radicals are trying to destroy the statue of liberty as a symbol of america or something like that there is evidence that he may have been the one who suggested or had been pushing for this plot you know there's some evidence that even a year earlier among certain radicals in core he was trying to encourage people to do something like this so you know this line between being an infiltrator and informant

in order to expose activities and being actually you know the mode of force in order to set up, you know, people and destroy these movements. He already seems to have had a pattern of being involved in these sorts of things. And it has come out, actually. It's not just, you know, his letter six years ago. There was actually documents that came out, notes by an activist, a Japanese-American activist, Yuri Kocayama, who was attending one of the OOAU's sessions on March 6th after in 1965 after malcolm ex's assassination people in his organization came together to try and kind of figure out what's going on and what do we do and so on and it seems that in the course of the discussion according to the notes of this japanese american activist ray rayman wood was

identified you know the the note reads ray woods is said to have been seen also running out of audubon he was one of two picked up by police was the second person running out so when there were reports that there were two people who ran out and that the police picked up two people one of which was talmage hayer who ends up being convicted for this and two others were picked up subsequently the next next day you have a situation where it's been unexplained who was you know the second person and who was this person and it turns out that it was raywood who was working you know for the bureau of special services and investigation and who has this whole history of being involved in counterintelligence and counter, you know,

disruption of black radical movements as an informer slash provocateur. So it's already been six years. In fact, actually, that this was known. This investigation should have been reopened a long time ago. Brett, feel free to take up whatever you want at this point. Yeah, so here's a picture that emerges, and I would love to get both of your views on how close to possibly true this might be, given what we learned about in Who Killed Malcolm X, given these new documents, there's certainly no doubt there's infiltration all along. We know that just generally. I mean, the Fred Hampton, Judas and the Black Messiah just came out. You know, it's very clear that similar sorts of infiltration and the sort of agitating to ratchet up behaviors so you can

make people commit crimes is a sort of a hallmark, especially of this era, but probably much more broadly and probably even to some extent to this day. I mean, we know, for example, in post 9-11, you know, when the NYPD and the FBI are going after homegrown terrorists, it was so often this attempt to find somebody who was, you know, maybe impressionable, get them to think about crimes that they wouldn't otherwise have thought about and then verbally commit to them and then grab them, lock them up and say, see, we're winning the war on terror. So these tactics are certainly always present. But here, Here's a general outlook, and let me know if you disagree.

It could be the case, as it was sort of put out there and who killed Malcolm X, that the Newark branch of the nation of Islam actually were the trigger men, right, the people that pulled the trigger and ended his life. But we all know that there's active infiltrators involved all over the nation of Islam and more broadly. The FBI, keeping close tabs on organizations like this, could on some level have been aware that this plot was going to, play out, and they wanted to assist it and make sure it happened successfully in any way that they could. That came down to whoever was, you know, Ray Woods handlers telling him to not only ratchet

up possible crime, so you could pick some people off, but to go out and specifically arrest the people who would be providing security for Malcolm X at the Audubon Ballroom on that day. So, you know, it's likely possible that it wasn't actually the FBI. themselves who did the assassination plot, but they knew about it, opened up space, used the police to ensure that success was more likely to be happening. Then what did they do? They turned around and said, this is all black extremism. This has nothing to do with the FBI or the police department. This is black on black crime, right? Extremist black on extremist black crime. And that gives them a perfect out and can even further sort of dehumanize the black liberation

movement more broadly. So does that seem like something close to what all? of this information is pointing towards as a possibility? I'll just briefly chime in and then Adnan, feel free to expand on your thoughts on this. But I would say that that's highly likely. We know, based on documents from Cointel Pro, that this infiltration was widespread and pervasive among many organizations,

including, as you said, the Black Panthers, but everything, including the American Indian movement, the Young Lords, the Communist Party of the United States, These all had a significant amount of infiltration by FBI agents. And these agents certainly weren't just going into supervise what things, you know, to record what was going on. It's almost certain that they were also trying to drive things to happen. And that's not necessarily saying that they were trying to ensure that there was an assassination,

but you don't just put informants in all over the place at high levels of, of position to take notes. You also try to drive those organizations into the ground. And we know that, as you said, these organizations in the area had a significant amount of infiltration, and it is an extreme coincidence, an unbelievable coincidence, that this infiltrator, associated with the NYPD, but with instructions also from the FBI, had infiltrated these organizations, had been responsible. for the arresting of the exact people who would have been responsible for preventing an assassination

from happening in the days leading up immediately preceding when the assassination did happen. Now, also at the same time, it's not as if these informants or these infiltrators to these different organizations wouldn't have some sort of communication lines between them, whether directly between other informants or whether through their command structure. It's not as if, you know, they heard through the grapevine that there was going to be an assassination attempt made by the, you know, nation of Islam. And then they heard that through the grapevine and they figured, ah, well, maybe if we happened to get rid of some security guards, that'll increase the odds of it happening

whenever it happens to happen, these people, these informants were integrated deeply into these organizations. They knew exactly what was going to be happening. They knew exactly when these things were being planned to happen. And they're going to be relaying that information to their command structure. It would be very strange if, for example, and again, I'm not claiming that this is absolutely the case, but for example, if the FBI did want to get rid of Malcolm X, they would have absolutely had the means to do so. They would have known about any assassination attempts that were being formulated. And they also would have had other individuals in place to do what was necessary to open up the avenues for that to take place. So when you ask, is that in the realm of

possibility? Sure, it's absolutely in the realm of possibility. There is a lot of coincidences there that come into play. And again, we're not saying that this is absolutely what happened. There's a lot of information that is not known and hopefully will become known as time goes on. But when you ask, is it a possibility? I would say it is firmly a possibility based on what we already do know. And I'm sure that when more information comes out, it may increase the likelihood of that actually having been the case. Adnan? Well, I do think that more information will come out.

It's just that clearly people are being protected. So when the relevant people die, we'll probably hear more. Just as in this case, the letter was released after the death of Ray Wood. I don't know exactly when he died, but among the papers that he left was this letter sent to his brother, I believe, and released by his nephew. So, you know, there are people who are still alive potentially who know more who are involved or potentially implicated. And that's the reason why, unlike in many other cases, the bossy papers and records on this, despite freedom of information requests and the long period of time since these events have nonetheless not been made public by the New York Police Department.

The FBI has also not released information that they have in some other cases, although we could dispute whether it's the full record that's available. But we do know that, you know, even in the Fred Hampton case, and there's a great episode, of course, on Rev Left Radio, everyone should go listen to that about new information that's come to light there, that, you know, the head of Fred Hampton's security was an FBI informant. So they had, it wasn't just that they infiltrated. It's that they placed people.

early on in emerging movements so that they could gain credibility and you know rise to positions of influence to direct the policies and to sow discord and provide intelligence and so although Ray Wood didn't necessarily work for the FBI I mean that would be interesting if more comes out about whether they had access to some of his reports and and so on but at least you know working working for Basi means that he was placed in positions where he would have influence on the activist community. So we can theorize and imagine that it wouldn't be farfetched that in the Newark Mosque of the Nation of Islam, that there would be people who were both loyalists and

radical loyalists to the nation of Islam under Elijah Muhammad's leadership, but also perhaps people collaborating with and working under some direction or at least informing the FBI. I mean, it's known that people very close in the Chicago headquarters. In fact, members of Elijah Muhammad's family provided information to the FBI. So the fact that there's obfuscation around whether there could be interconnections, at the very least, it's hard to imagine the FBI not having a lot of advanced. knowledge and awareness of what was being planned and organized and it is the perfect situation to be able to foment and practice they may have even heightened

some of the conflict between Malcolm X to make sure that he would be isolated and seen as a threat to the nation of Islam nation of Islam's leadership they may have helped create the conditions to exacerbate those tensions but when it came to the actual shooting and organizing. We don't know whether they would have had a hand in it, but it's clear that they would have easily exploited this circumstance and been able to put in place with the police department some of the conditions for making it possible.

And sometimes these different intelligence agencies don't coordinate, these different police and security organizations and agencies don't coordinate and communicate well, So we can't just assume there's all some seamless sort of interface, but there's enough links and enough evidence of a similar sort of pattern that suggests that at the very least they weren't unaware, perhaps, of what was taking place. So we're pretty much at time right here. So I'm going to wrap this up.

But I just want us all to take just a second each to reflect on the tragedy that was the assassination of Malcolm X. As I said at the top, this is the 56th anniversary of his assassination. And he was so young. Brett, as you mentioned, he was so young. He was still in his 30s. And his political consciousness was only continuing to grow at that point. It's incredible to think of where he would have gone and what he would have done. Had he lived long enough to actually institute the knowledge that he was still picking up at that time into material action and how the American history would have changed had he been around a man with his voice and his mind, his following. It's very sad to think of what could have been had he not been

assassinated 56 years ago today. And it's truly an American tragedy. I want everybody to just reflect on that yourself. I know many of you listeners probably already know quite a bit about Malcolm X. Perhaps you've listened to the two-hour episode of Rev Left Radio on Malcolm X, and if you haven't, you should. But just reflect a little bit today on what could have been and what was taken from us far too young, far too early, when there was so much more that could have been done. and so that's that's what i'm going to say of course there's so much more that we could say on malcolm x there's so much more we could say on the assassination of malcolm x but we'll wrap it up for now and as i said listeners we will be covering malcolm x and individual parts of his life

in future episodes so don't be too sad that we didn't get into uh you know specific events that you wanted to hear about we will get into those in the future but brett why don't i pitch it over to you now, and just give your two cents on the assassination of Malcolm X and the tragedy of it. Yeah, a couple points. One is, it's a pattern. And, you know, it's not perfect across all three cases, but there is a general pattern that once these Black Liberation movement leaders specifically start making inroads to build broader coalitions, there is an attempt or an assassination on their life. So Martin Luther King, Jr. Now, obviously the FBI was harassing him the whole time. Reactionaries wanted him dead for many, many years. There was at the very end of his life, though, this attempt to do the

poor people's campaign, which is not just about black civil rights, but it's like, can we unite this black civil rights movement with a broader working class movement and an anti-war, anti-imperialist movement, and March on Washington. And that might have been something that escalates and speeds up assassination attempts against him. Fred Hampton. Now, Fred Hampton was killed at 21 years old, so he didn't have a lot of time to do what he could have done, but certainly the Rainbow Coalition was one of these steps towards broadening out a coalition that could come from many different angles and address many different concerns, rooted in class struggle, and trying to bring disparate groups together, which is going to be a much bigger threat, especially at that time, to the white

establishment than a simply pro-black movement. Now, Malcolm X, could even have been useful when it comes to scaring white people, right? When he was a militant black separatist and he was saying things that, you know, would scare and, you know, concern white people. And you could even use that to some extent. See, this is all the black liberation movement. This is the civil rights movement. If you give them an inch, they're coming for your suburbs next, right? That's sort of a narrative.

But what happened at the end of his life, he has these religious experiences. He breaks off from the nation of Islam, starts expanding and universalizing his politics, sets aside some of the more virulent anti-white aspects and says, you know, I don't care what color you are. If you're down to change these miserable conditions, you're a friend of mine, right? And that is very, very scary because somebody with that integrity, with that voice, with that passion, moving in that direction is a real threat to the white establishment more than just being a nation of Islam black separatist ever, ever could be. So those developments and when those leaders were assassinated, I think is interesting. And then the last thing I'll say, one of the reasons I love Malcolm X and something I try to do in my own life is to make zero space between your public life and your private life. There should be no grounds for hypocrisy. There is no, you know, Malcolm behind the scenes doing immoral stuff and Malcolm in public presenting himself as a different figure.

There is zero space between who he was in public and private, something we should all strive for. and some of his words that always stick with me is his commitment to sincerity right he says a couple quotes he says i do not pretend to be a divine man but i do believe in divine guidance divine power and the fulfillment of divine prophecy i'm not educated nor am i an expert in any particular field but i am sincere and my sincerity is my sincerity is my credentials and then the other quote is i want to be remembered as someone who was sincere even if i made mistakes they were made in sincerity if i was wrong i was wrong in sincerity shows this lack of hubris, this reflective aspect of who he was, this, this humility inherent in his character, but this passion that he had that everything he did came out of a place of pure raw authenticity. And that is a figure no matter who you are that you can look up to and

try to replicate those values in your own life. So Malcolm was a political role model, a spiritual and religious role model. And on the human level, as a human being, was an existential role model. And I think that's things that we should take away from Malcolm X and his legacy. Beautiful. Adnan, what are your final thoughts on this? Well, it's so hard, you know, to talk about Malcolm X. Because of the tragedy, what was lost, you know, I think even five years of his life, you know, would have been transformative in this country and globally, you know, for freedom struggles. He had that kind of force and impact, and it's exactly why his assassination seems to me to have been necessary and foretold by him, as he understood, that the kinds of connections he was making were dangerous.

They were dangerous to the establishment. They were dangerous to U.S. society. They were dangerous to capitalism and imperialism globally. And that's exactly the point. Martin Luther King, Jr., really became a target of the security establishment, I feel, when he came out and criticized the Vietnam War and linked the domestic radical program of economics, social structures, and anti-racism with an anti-imperialist kind of understanding

of the interconnections between struggles at home here and the struggles of others abroad. That is a very dangerous mix, and that's what made Malcolm X so dangerous, is because he had an understanding of an internationalist solidarity and politics of alliance that moved from trying to treat

the problem of race in America as just a question of civil rights under the Constitution to a universal and a global question of human rights that connected that struggle with every single struggle for justice around the world. That is,

you know, so dangerous to the establishment. So the second thing is just to pick up a little bit. I've been fascinated, you know, as a Muslim, you know, born and raised, Muslim myself. I've always idolized Malcolm X in a certain way as the paragon of how you could have deep, religious, and spiritual, ethical, moral commitments and self-discipline and combine that with a radical politics, you know, of really being engaged. in transformation not just for yourself but that that was part of the way you connected your struggle of transformation for equality justice for everyone that was also just so important and powerful he's somebody who rightly was regarded

as Brett mentioned as as humble having a humble attitude willing to acknowledge errors when he made them and correct it you know his conversion to is to Orthodox Islam and rejection of the idea of a kind of counter-racist ideology, right? I mean, you know, I hate to sort of put it in that framework because there still was a lot that was really important about the nation of Islam and its views in terms of black dignity, black pride, black national understanding that they could do things themselves. It was so important. But this idea that, you know, the white man was the devil.

And what he moved to understanding, I think, was not to theologize the racial, but that that was a symbol of the establishment of oppression. So it wasn't, it's the white, you know, man's system that is devilish, you know, and he moved from that kind of personalizing it all about race as an essential characteristic to understanding that it was a social construct that was part of the system of oppression that needed to be. confronted and so you know that was so important you know in in his transformation who's willing to grow willing to be humble about if he felt that there was a better idea he would adopt it he did not have that kind of arrogance of self-protection he had a kind of confidence because he was dedicated to the cause of justice that's what gave him confidence and so he was also a very ascetic person you know he did not amass wealth and he was struggling to support his family, one of his great worries at the end was when he knew and thought, yes,

I might be killed is, well, what can I do for my family? Because he had almost nothing. He said his greatest possessions were a wristwatch, you know, a briefcase and a pen. I mean, this is what the man had is the means of expressing and engaging in the struggle. And he loved the wristwatch because it kept him on time that was important for him to have this discipline, having a briefcase to organize his papers and these were like his prized possessions and he said that's all I need is if I have that and of course you know security for his family but he was a very very powerful figure there's no wonder that he's been commercialized and it's because there's such a charisma of truth and honesty in his in his in his life that everybody wants to get a bit of that and some people

exploit it and we lose the real message, which is that you have to have the courage of your convictions. That's what it was all about for Malcolm X. Well, that's it for this bonus episode of guerrilla history talking about the assassination of Malcolm X on the 56th anniversary of his assassination. It was sobering and infuriating, but very intellectually stimulating conversation, both Adnan and Brett, and I appreciate being able to have these conversations with you. So thank you both for for doing the show with with me. So I guess now we'll turn to how the listeners can find you on the social media. But first, I'm going to mention that the shows are all now going to be on YouTube. We don't

have video versions of the shows yet. But if you're somebody who prefers to listen on YouTube or if you have a relative, like, you know, elderly relatives that know how to use YouTube but don't know how to use podcasts, I have several of those. These shows are all going to be going up on YouTube now as well. You can find those by looking for the channel, Revolutionary Left Radio. There's been a bunch of episodes of Rev Left Radio and the Red Menace that have gone up in the past few days. And we're going to start releasing episodes of Gorilla History on the channel as well in the next couple of days and then start releasing them one per week until we get caught up to the present time, which will take a couple of months. But you'll start getting episodes, the pilot episode and

the Washington Bullets episode with Vijay Prashad in the next couple of days. So subscribe to the Revolutionary Left Radio YouTube channel and let people know about it. That's another way for people to get the content that we're putting out there. So Adnan, how can our listeners find you and the work that you're doing right now? Well, You can listen to my other podcast, The M-A-J-L-I-S, about the Middle East Islamic world. We have some interesting episodes coming up about Islamophobia and what's going on in France recently, some discussion of that. And also, you can find me at Twitter at Adnan-A-H-U-S-A-N. Excellent.

Brett, how can our listeners find you and the excellent work that you've been doing and continue to do? Thank you. You can go to Revolutionary LeftRadio.com, find everything you need about all three of our projects, our social media, Patreon, et cetera. Great. As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck1995, or you can support me on Patreon if you want public health and science information on my Patreon at patreon at patreon.com forward slash Huck1995. And I'll just throw a brief mention in there that I've just confirmed that I'll be speaking at the University of Texas medical branches. fourth annual conference on migration and health to talk about the influence of capitalism and imperialism and how those factors have shaped the pandemic that we've been living in for more than a

year now. That'll be taking place on March 24th at 12 o'clock central time. It'll be open to the public. Follow me on Twitter at Huck1995 and I'll make sure that everybody knows how to attend that event if you are interested in hearing my thoughts on how capitalism and imperialism have been affecting how the pandemic has unfolded. You can also follow our show on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod, G-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-R-I-L-A-U-Skore-Pod, and support us on Patreon at patreon.com forward-slash-Garilla-Histry. Again, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history.

Thank you, everybody, for tuning in. Hopefully this was an illuminating conversation for you, especially with this new document that was just unsealed within the past 24 hours. Until next time, this has been guerrilla history, solidarity with all of you. You know what I'm going to be.