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  mekka okereke :verified:mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io

  Oct 19, 2026, 1:54 PM

  @somebody

  Not the point of the joke, but context that people often miss:

  A lot of people still think that this photo of Malcolm X, along with the quote "By Any Means Necessary" is justifying violent terrorism to achieve Black liberation. That couldn't be further from the truth, for two reasons:

  1. Malcolm X advocated violence only in defending yourself from racists, because the police sure weren't going to do it.

  "So I don't believe in violence—that's why I want to stop it. And you can’t stop it with love, not love of those things down there, no. So, we only mean vigorous action in self-defense, and that vigorous action we feel we're justified in initiating by any means necessary. Now, the press, behind something like that, they call us racist and people who are “violent in reverse.” This is how they psycho you. They make you think that if you try to stop the Klan from lynching you, you're practicing “violence in reverse.”

  — Malcolm X, 13 February 1965.

  2. Malcolm X was not seen as a serious target for COINTELPRO while he was Black separatist and member of the Nation of Islam, because he didn't have enough popular support to sway any elections at a national level. White allies were not welcome in his movement. But after Malcolm X took a pilgrimage to Mecca, he realized that racial separation was incompatible with Islam. He could either be a Muslim and give up segregation, or be a separatist and accept that the version of Islam he had been following was false. He decided to split with the Nation of Islam, give up separatism, and include white allies in his anti-racism. This made him popular not just with Black people, but suddenly with the good half of white people too. He basically started turning into the 1960s Obama. This caused both members of the Nation of Islam and the FBI to suddenly see him as a threat. Both the FBI and the Nation of Islam became equally interested in seeing him gone. They both threatened his life. Within a few weeks of this picture of him in his home in Queens, that home was fire bombed with his wife and children inside, and he was assassinated.

  

  
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