He recounts Malcolm X’s secret 1961 meeting with representatives of the Georgia Ku Klux Klan to discuss their shared insistence on racial separation. He notes that at a few NOI rallies Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad hosted George Lincoln Rockwell of the American Nazi Party. (…)
According to Marable, jealousy, enmity, pettiness, and corruption poisoned the inner circle of the NOI. He describes NOI officials beating followers as a mode of discipline and demanding increased tithes to pay for personal extravagances, such as luxury automobiles. He maintains that Malcolm X’s marriage to Betty Shabazz was a loveless affair, marked by neglect (his) and infidelity (hers). He claims that “circumstantial but strong evidence” suggests that at least once Malcolm X indulged in a paid homosexual liaison. He confirms Malcolm X’s allegations that Elijah Muhammad, while married, seduced young followers, got them pregnant, and then abandoned them and their children, all the while preaching the virtue of chastity and patriarchal duty.
I note the absence of the word “prone” in this admirable review, however…
