New Malcolm X biography slanders the man and his ideas

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"Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America," by Bruce Perry. Station Hill Press, Barrytown, N.Y. 542 pp. $24.95.

Bruce Perry has written a biography of Maicolm & that the publishers claim is "the first comprehensive biography of Malcolm." But for anyone who knew Malcolm X and saw the man that he had become in his last years, nothing could be further from the truth.

Although Perry spent a lot of time interviewing people who knew Malcolm X throughout his life, he has used the information to do his own psychoanalysis of the martyred Black revolutionary in terms of the current reality of today. He then tries to apply that reality to the 1930s, '40s, '50s, and '60s.

In reporting on Malcolm's early youth, Perry psychoanalyzes Malcolm's relationship with his family, teachers, and friends completely out of context of the conditions that Blacks endured during this periodJim Crow laws, racist curriculums in school, and no chance for a decent job.The target of Perry's "biography"— in the last analysis—is to attack Malcolm X's autobiography.

Perry conjectures that Malcolm's father had burned down his own house. And he implies that Malcolm X followed in his father's footsteps by setting fire to his own house in 1965, shortly before he was assassinated.

Throughout the book, Perry reports as "fact" that Malcolm X had homosexual relationships, and that the young Malcolm operated out of deep-seated fear and tried to act "fearlessly" in order to hide his doubts about his manhood. Perry makes these allegations based on conversations made about 30-40 years later, without providing any concrete evidence.

While describing Malcolm's life during the war years of the 1940s, Perry declines to take into account the problems of the Black ghetto in white America. Blacks had nothing to gain by joining a segregated army to fight for a country that did not recognize their rights and whose sole aim was to become the main imperialist power in the world. So Perry applies his psychological theories about Malcolm's manhood to explain why he did not join the war effort during World War II.

Malcolm and the Nation of Islam In prison, Malcolm was recruited to the Nation of Islam. The basic appeal was that the Nation explained that white America was responsible for dehumanizing Black America. The Nation said that Black America must take pride in itself. It pointed out that Blacks cannot rely on white America to solve their problems, but rather, that Black America must rely upon itself and separate itself to achieve independence from the white power structure and and the opiate of Christianity.

The appeal of this position was powerful then, and it is powerful now. But Perry doesn't explain this. Instead, he psychoanalyzes Malcolm and concludes that he needed a father-figure.

Perry credits the rise of the Nation of Islam into a mass organization to Malcolm's individual abilities rather than to the rise of the civil rights movement in the United States and of the Black liberation movements in Africa.

It's true that Malcolm's ability to articulate the aspirations for equality and freedom was quite powerful. But he would have had little effect if what he said did not reflect the mass movement that developed among Blacks in the late '50s and early '60s. He and the Nation addressed the problems of Blacks "Up South"—problems that the civil rights movement didn't address "Down South."

Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam emerged as the organization that gave hope to Blacks in the North-where the struggle was not against Jim Crow laws, but was and still is a struggle for economic and political power. They underscored the need for education and organization to secure those rights.

Falling out with the Nation Perry goes on to explain his concept that, psychologically, the split between Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad was a father-son quarrel and a personal battle for power in the Nation of Islam. He doesn't explain that Malcolm was responding to the pressure of the Black masses for the Nation to get involved in the day-to-day struggles, which he saw as the next step for the development and growth of the Nation. Perry mentions the different areas of conflict but draws no conclusions.

Malcolm X identified with the struggles of his people and was incapable of separating himself from them.

In his autobiography, Malcolm X explained why he wanted the Nation of Islam to be more involved:

"If I harbored any personal diaappointment whatsoever, it was that privately I was convinced that our Nation of Islam could be an even greater force in the American Black man's overall struggle-if we engaged in more action. By that, I mean, I thought privately that we should have amended, or relaxed, our general nonengagement policy. I felt that, wherever Black people committed themselves, in the Little Rocks and Birminghams and other places, militantly disciplined Muslims should also be there—for all the world to see, and respect, and discuss.

"It could be heard increasingly in the Negro community: "Those Muslims talk tough, but they never do anything, unless somebody bothers Muslims.' I moved among outsiders more than most other Muslim officials. I felt the very real potentiality that, considering the mercurial moods of the Black masses, this labeling of the Muslims as 'talk only' could see us, powerful as we were, one day suddenly separated from the Negroes' front-line struggle."

As he does throughout the book, Perry explains Malcolm's last years in psychological terms, emphasizing Malcolm's "fear of death." He doesn't mention Malcolm's opposition to the war in Vietnam, or that Malcolm said that the struggle of Blacks was a struggle for human rights and part of a worldwide international struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors.

Perry does not mention that when Malcolm was speaking of Vietnam, China, and Cuba, he stated that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

The worst accusation that Perry makes is that Malcolm was a con artist, who spoke differently depending upon the audiences.

I was in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) at that time and was responsible for organizing the security when he spoke at the Militant Labor Forum. I also attended all but two of Malcolm's meetings at the Audubon Ballroom.

At many of the meetings, Malcolm urged the crowd to read our socialist newspaper, The Militant, because it told the truth about him and his organization. The Militant had reprinted all of his speeches at the Militant Labor Forum, and it was not uncommon for me to sell over 100 copies of the paper prior to the meetings.

Most of Malcolm's supporters were well aware of what he said "downtown," and they were familiar with his opposition to capitalism, expressed in speeches at the Militant Labor Forum and the Audubon Ballroom.

I remember one meeting at the Audubon several months before Malcolm's murder. Dick Gregory, Fannie Lou Hamer, and several revolutionaries from Africa were there. Malcolm read a message from Che Guevara to the meeting. He told the audience that he had invited Guevara to attend the meeting, but that Guevera could not accept because of security problems and the large anti-Castro Cuban community living in New York at that time.

Perry charges that socialists have claimed that Malcolm, too, was a socialist. This is untrue. We in the Socialist Workers Party (and later, in Socialist Action) said merely that we agreed with his anti-capitalist positions and his opposition to both the Democratic and the Republican parties.

We approached Malcolm as a revolutionary of action (as we did Fidel Castro) and we defended him to the best of our abilities while he was alive-and after his assassination. In fact, Perry never interviewed people like Clifton DeBerry or Kwame Somburu, socialists who knew and worked with Malcolm.

Cover-up for police

Perry's explanations of the 1964 Harlem "riot" and of Malcolm's assassination are taken directly from the police versions of what happened. I was there and I sat in the front row two seats from center aisle stage left. (The cop version was that there was no center aisle.)

Perry accepts as good coin that Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15x Johnson, two acknowledged Muslims, were there. However, I was called before the Grand Jury at the same time as Malcolm's lieutenant, James Shabazz, whom Perry claims to have interviewed. Shabazz told me at that time that Butler and Johnson were not there.

Perry acts like a lawyer for the police. He dismisses any possibility of police, FBI, CIA, or government involvement. However, the assassination could only have been planned and carried out with prior knowlege that there would not be the normal large presence of cops. (The cops were virtually non-existent at the meeting where Malcolm was killed on Feb. 21, 1965.)

Perry accepts the police version that the Nation of Islam, acting alone, was responsible for the assassination and discounts the FBI's COINTELPRO program or any activity by agents provocateurs—one of whom was responsible for Malcolm X's security. The purpose of Perry's book is basically to slander Malcolm's character and to distort Malcolm's development after he left the Nation of Islam.

Malcolm X told me and Clifton DeBerry, the presidential candidate of the SWP in 1964, that he hoped to live long enough to build a viable organization based on his current ideas—so that he would be more dangerous dead than alive. Unfortunately, he did not have the time.

The best way to understand Malcolm is to read his speeches published by Pathfinder Press. Little can be learned from Perry's book, which in all honesty should be entitled: "The Second Assassination Malcolm X."

Hear a re-creation of his speec "The Ballot or the Bullet"

by actor Michael Lange as Malcolm X.

Also speaking:

Malik Miah "Who Killed Malcolm X?" Kwame Somburu Founding member of Malcolm X's Organization for Afro-American Unity (O.A.A.U.)

Friday, Feb. 21 at 8:00 p.m.

3425 Army St., San Francisco Donation $3 Call: (415) 821-0511

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Commemorate the anniversary of the assassination of MALCOLM X