No leader for Black people

Scan page 18

With his melodic oratory he rallied and he railed. Indeed, he was an accomplished singer. Minister Louis Farrakhan, during his tenure as head of Harlem's Temple No. 7 and as a national representative of Elijah Muhammed, seemed often to approach the speaking majesty of Malcolm X himself.

Close observers, however, discerned key differences-differences which reflected their two distinct personalities and political trajectories. Farrakhan dazzled while Malcolm blinded. Farrakhan tap-danced while Malcolm relentlessly pressed forward.

Malcolm's uncompromising principles led him to break with a leader, Elijah Muhammed, to whom he had devoted a huge part of his life. Farrakhan seemed incapable of such bold actions. Despite his close personal ties to Malcolm X, Farrakhan not only remained in the Nation of Islam after Malcolm's expulsion, but took part in the campaign of vilification against Malcolm.

After the death of Elijah Muhammed, his son, Wallace D. Muhammed, took over the reins of the Nation of Islam-now. renamed the American Muslim Mission. Farrakhan worked after 1978 to restore the nationalist legacy of the Nation of Islam. But he has now discovered a new apparatus and leader to claim his allegiance. The apparatus is the Democratic Party and the new leader is Jesse Jackson.

"I believe the Rev. Jackson has transcended himself and is an instrument that Allah is using for a much larger purpose than perhaps he himself realizes, states Farrakhan. "Jesse Jackson is the last chance for Black people in America. When I hear him talking, I don't hear Jesse, I hear God talking Louis Farrakhan through Jesse. He's talking about justice and including the poor masses who have been shut out. That sounds to me like God.' With such evangelistic fervor has Farrakhan become a partisan of Jackson.

Farrakhan, in fact, played a major role in Jackson's dramatic efforts to secure the release from Syria of the agent of imperialist policy, Lt. Goodman. Farrakhan's mastery of Arabic seems now to have purposes other than decrying the crimes of racism.

Nation of Islam derailed Farrakhan may now maintain the fiction of an Islamic grouping loosely based on his particular interpretation of Elijah Muhammed's political heritage. Such an outfit will undoubtedly function as a "progressive" pressure group for reformist Black (and possibly other) elected officials. However, Farrakhan's move spells the end of the Nation of Islam as an autonomous political formation in Black America.

Despite its abstentionism and passive role in the fight for Black self-determination, it was the Nation of Islam's autonomy that the U.S. ruling class feared most. The Nation of Islam played an important role in the radicalization of Black youth during the 1960s and 1970s, with its rejection of the idea that the American system had the capacity to end racism. Equally important was its support for revolutions in the colonial world, its encouragement of the study of Black history, its mobilizations of Black people, and its stand against support for the twin parties of American racism-the Democratic and Republican parties.

With its complete independence from the ruling institutions of U.S. society, the explosive potential of the Nation of Islam was not lost on the U.S. ruling class. But this autonomy, first undermined by the all-American patriotism of Wallace D. Muhammed, is now virtually eliminated by the present positions of Louis Farrakhan.

"The Democrats get Negro support, yet the Negroes get nothing in return?" "The Negroes put the Democrats first, and the Democrats put the Negroes last," was how Malcolm X correctly summed up the relationship between the Democratic Party and Black people.

This was a view Minister Farrakhan also subscribed to until recently. It is a view verified by the abysmal conditions of Black America. It is a view central to regenerating the mass mobilizations that alone are capable of reversing the defeats suffered by Black and working people in the recent period. Minister Farrakhan, by his new-found affinity for the Democratic Party, has shown that he undoubtedly will not be a major part of that process of regeneration.