Deconstructing NATO’s War of Aggression On Libya With Malcolm X’s Template

They’ll use the press to create a humanitarian image, for a devil, or a devil image for a humanitarian. They’ll take a person whose a victim of the crime, and make it appear he’s the criminal, and they’ll take the criminal and make it appear that he’s the victim of the crime.

[From The Archives]

Below are excerpts of Malcolm X’s famous presentation at the Oxford Union debate in 1964. While Malcolm was discussing the Congo, which had just won its independence, only to be quickly cannibalized by former colonial ruler Belgium, in league with the the United States, by substituting “Libya” for “Congo” and “Benhazi” for “Tshombe” the reader can get a better understanding of NATO’s and the U.S.’s current campaign to “rescue Libyan civilians.” Malcolm provided the template for understanding NATO’s and the U.S.’s Libyan war of conquest almost 50 years ago and the supportive propaganda role played by “news media” such as The New York Times and the BBC.

When you’re in a position of power for a long time you get used to using your yardstick, and you take it for granted that because you’ve forced your yardstick on others, that everyone is still using the same yardstick.

So that your definition of extremism usually applies to everyone, but nowadays times are changing, and the center of power is changing.

People in the past who weren’t in a position to have a yardstick or use a yardstick of their own are using their own yardstick now. You use one and they use another.

In the past when the oppressor had one stick and the oppressed used that same stick, today the oppressed are sort of shaking the shackles
and getting yardsticks of their own, so when they say extremism they don’t mean what you do, and when you say extremism you don’t mean what they do.

There are entirely two different meanings. And when this is understood I think you can better understand why those who are using methods of extremism are being driven to them.

A good example is the Congo. When the people who are in power want to, again, create an image to justify something that’s bad, they use the press. And they’ll use the press to create a humanitarian image, for a devil, or a devil image for a humanitarian.

They’ll take a person whose a victim of the crime, and make it appear he’s the criminal, and they’ll take the criminal and make it appear that he’s the victim of the crime. And the Congo situation is one of the best examples that I can cite right now to point this out. The Congo situation is a nasty example of how a country because it is in power, can take it’s press and make the world accept something that’s absolutely criminal.

They take pilots that they say are American-trained, and this automatically lends respectability to them and then they will call them anti-Castro Cubans, and that’s supposed to add to their respectability, and eliminate that fact that they’re dropping bombs on villages where they have no defense whatsoever against such planes, blowing to bits Black women, Congolese women, Congolese children, Congolese babies, this is extremism, but it is never referred to as extremism because it is endorsed by the west, it is financed by America, it’s made respectable by America, and that kind of extremism is never labeled as extremism.

Because it’s not extremism in defense of liberty, and if it is extremism in defense of liberty as this type just pointed out, it is extremism in defense of liberty for the wrong type of people.

I am not advocating that kind of extremism, that’s cold blooded murder. But the press is used to make that cold-blooded murder appear as an act of humanitarianism.

They take it one step farther and get a man named Tshombe, who is a murderer, they refer to him as the premier, or prime minister of the Congo, to lend respectability to him, he’s actually the murderer of the rightful Prime Minister of the Congo, they never mention this.

I’m not for extremism in defense of that kind of liberty, or that kind of activity. They take this man, who’s a murderer, and the world recognizes his as a murderer, but they make him the prime minister, he becomes a paid murderer, a paid killer, who is propped up by American dollars. And to show the degree to which he is a paid killer the first thing he does is go to South Africa and hire more killers and bring them into the Congo.

They give them the glorious name of mercenary, which means a hired killer, not someone that is killing for some kind of patriotism or some kind of ideal, but a man who is a paid killer, a hired killer. And one of the leaders of them is right from this country here, and he’s glorified as a soldier of fortune when he’s shooting down little black women, and Black babies, and Black children. I’m not for that kind of extremism, I’m for the kind of extremism that those who are being destroyed by those bombs and destroyed by those hired killers, are able to put forth to thwart it.

They will risk their lives at any cost, they will sacrifice their lives at any cost, against that kind of criminal activity. I am for the kind of extremism that the freedom fighters in the Stanleyville regime are able to display against these hired killers, who are actually using some of my tax dollars which I have to pay up in the united states, to finance that operation over there.

We’re not for that kind of extremism. Now again I think you must point out that one of those who are very much involved as accessories to the crime is the press. Not so much your press, but the American press which has tricked your press into repeating what they have invented.

But I was reading in one of the English papers this morning, I think it’s a paper called The Express, and it gave a very clear account, of the type of criminal activity that has been carried on by the mercenaries that are being paid by united states tax dollars.

And it showed where they were killing Congolese, whether they were from the central government or the Stanleyville government, it didn’t make any difference to them, they just killed them.

And they had it fixed where those who had been processed had to wear a white bandage around their head, and any Congolese that they saw without their white bandage, they killed them.

And this is clearly pointed out and at the beginning of last week there would have been an outcry and no one would have allowed Belgium and the United States and the others who are in cahoots with each other, to carry on the criminal activity that they did in the Congo, which I doubt anyone in the world, even here at Oxford, will accept….

….Now there was a time when the dark world, people with dark skin, would believe anything that they saw in the papers that originated in Europe. But today, no matter what is put in the paper, they stop and look at it two or three times and try and figure out what is the motive of the writer.

And usually they can determine what the motive of the writer is. The powers that be use the press to give the devil an angelic image and give the image of the devil to the one who’s really angelic.

They make oppression and exploitation and war actually look like an act of humanitarianism. This is not the kind of extremism that I support or that I go along with.

“Speaking Truth To Empower.”

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