Happy birthday Malcolm X
The Malcolm X Movement gives 10 reasons as to what is his relevance today in the situation our peoples find themselves in?
1. Black Power self reliance - ie., the strategy that states colonised peoples can unite and self organise against colonialism without the patronising and sabotaging hand of the western white left and liberals, but we can ally and unite with them on our own terms.
2. Black Power strategic courage and determination - stand your ground, stand by your people and comrades when under attack, don't water down but advocate and pursue your aims, design your tactics towards your strategies. Full freedom, fighting for a total end to colonialism and all the oppressions that it brings!
3. Stay out of the imperialist system defined comfort zones - Develop wisdom, but also be focused on your peoples struggle without hesitating, no matter how much our struggles and peoples are demonised, attempts at making them invisible by the enemy, we keep on keeping on, we keep on loudly and proudly representing them and supporting them. Stay out of the imperialist comfort zone, and develop your work and theories.
4. Fearlessness - "The price of freedom is death" - Malcolm X. Understand that the struggle is against the greatest violent force ever known, but that our peoples struggles yesterday and today is overcoming that violence, and we are part of that struggle and sacrifice, and with militant intelligence and wisdom we must proceed no matter what the price.
5. Constantly learn and self critique - always challenge what you know, listen to others who might be able to develop your understanding even though you may not agree with them. Learn from sucesssful ideologies that have actually liberated our peoples, learn from their struggles, from our leaderships across the world. Visit these struggles, peoples, leaders and countries and work with them and learn from them.
6. Global unity of actually existing forces of struggle - Malcolm X and the wider Black Liberation Movement in the USA was always massively inspired by revolutions across the world and especially Africa against colonialism and for liberation and socialism. Malcolm X made very clear that the Black Liberation struggle in the usa and the liberation of Black peoples in the 'west' is predicated on Africa and Asia being freed, that is why Malclolm X's primary inspiration was the Bandung Movement led by Nasser, Mao, Tito, Nkrumah, Nehru and Sukarno.
7. Organise hard on every level - Malcolm X developed newspapers (Muhammad Speaks, for example), developed self defence security, developed conferences and debates, and did amazing public speaking, organised people into different organisations, made delegations across europe, Africa and Asia.
8. Turn hostile elements into revolutionary elements - Malcolm X always engaged directly and conceptually by those who internalise the oppression of the system, especially those who play a 'gangster' role, ie., an imperialist defined counter revolutionary role in our communities against our peoples, and Malcolm X sought to critique them, recruit them and change them totally into revolutionaries.
9. Develop maximum unity between people and organisations - Especially towards the end of his life, he was working hard to reach out to many different forces including socialists, anti-imperialist nationalists, communists, civil rights leaders to develop a united struggle against capitalism and imperialism.
10. Dedicate your life, heart and soul, to the global struggle against colonialism and racism.
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