Justifiable Means
Malcolm X was a controversial leader. He has been linked with Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the most famous civil rights leaders in history, even though Malcolm X's more bellicose rhetoric calls for extreme resistance to, not mere tolerance of, racial oppression. Indeed, Malcolm X's writing and speeches have been likened by some to the extreme nationalism that so inflamed Germans after WWI. In that period of ignominy and social shame, Adolph Hitler resurrected failing nationalism with his passionate speeches about racial superiority in which he blamed the Jewish Germans for the miseries of the country and proclaimed that Germany had a justification for war. Both Martin Luther King and Adolph Hilter were named Man of the Year by Time magazine and both share some similarities with Malcolm X. Even while espousing the same goals as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X used the idea of a single enemy - much like the mechanisms employed by Hitler, to unite his people to rally around the idea of a common oppressor.
English: Photograph of Rosa Parks with Dr. Martin ...
Martin Luther King leaning on a lectern. Deutsch: ...
President Lyndon B. Johnson and Rev. Dr. Martin Lu...Embodying both of these contradictory combinations, Malcolm X's speeches and writings display his beliefs, that violence, even though not intended, can be justified.
Interestingly, several events in Malcolm X's life paralleled those of Adolph Hitler's life. In Mein Kamph, Hitler related how he was rejected from an art academy. "When I presented myself to the rector, requesting an explanation for my non-acceptance at the Academy's school of painting, that gentleman assured me that the drawings I had submitted incontrovertibly showed my unfitness for painting, and that my ability obviously lay in the field of architecture; for me, he said, the Academy's school of painting was out of the question, the place for me was the School of Architecture (Hitler)."
In a similar turn of events, when Malcolm...