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Black radicals don't need white saviours The new Adam Curtis series features a dubious portrayal of Michael X

A still from Can't Get You Out Of My Head. Credit: IMDB


February 11, 2021   6 mins

Michael de Freitas, otherwise known as Michael X or Michael Abdul Malik, claimed to be the most powerful black man in Europe. In the Sixties he was a pimp, a gangster, and a revolutionary. He started the decade as a rent collector for the notorious landlord Peter Rachman, who rented exorbitantly priced property to prostitutes and West Indian immigrants in Notting Hill. Later in the decade, after establishing the Racial Adjustment Action Society (RAAS), an anti-racist Black Power organisation, Malik became Michael X; a hotel worker thought he was Malcolm’s brother and the name stuck. In 1975, he was convicted of double murder and hanged in Trinidad.

Malik features prominently in the first two episodes of Adam Curtis’s new film series, Can’t Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World. It begins like many of his previous films, with the conviction that the current state of the world is confusing, and then proceeds to trace this confusion back to obscure movements and individuals in the past.

Curtis’s subjects include, besides Malik, Mao Zedong’s last wife, Jiang Qing, the British model Sandra Paul and her aristocratic husband, Robin Douglas-Home. These episodes are concerned, principally, with whether the individual can impose his or her own fantasies on the world — and at what cost. The viewing experience is trademark Curtis — a mishmash of visual clips juxtaposed with the narrative voice of the traditional BBC. David Lynch meets David Attenborough.

Tracing Malik’s life in Britain, we see clips of him being interviewed on colour television; we also see him in black and white stills, adorned with the beard of a cult-leader. When he first appears in the film, with his softly-spoken Trinidadian accent, the impression is of a reflective man, not someone beholden to dangerous fantasies. His only discernible desires are the empowerment of black people and an end to racial injustice.

V. S. Naipaul, in his extraordinary essay on Malik, offers a very different impression of the man. Written in 1979, ‘Michael X and the Black Power Killings in Trinidad: Peace and Power’ presents him throughout as a narcissist utterly divorced from reality. He is ready to kill to fulfil his delusions. Naipaul’s point, still relevant today, is about how ostensibly noble politics can be deformed by individual pathology; and how idealism, when it is not rooted in reality, can degenerate into a sectarian fantasy. Naipaul notes that Malik espoused an essentialist view of black people: “the Negro who had not dropped out, who was educated, had a skill or a profession, was not quite a Negro; there was no need for anyone to come to terms with him. The real Negro was more elemental.”

After 14 years in Britain, Malik had grown frustrated with it. He was prosecuted and imprisoned for 10 months under the 1967 Race Relations Act for inciting hatred against white people. In 1971, he moved back to Trinidad to establish a commune. There he was visited by a strange couple.

Gale Benson was a 27-year-old divorced British model and socialite — and the daughter of a former Tory MP. Her lover, Hakim Jamal, was a black American revolutionary-playboy who had previously dated the actress Jean Seberg and the editor Diana Athill. (Athill, incidentally, was a long-term editor of Naipaul.) After two months staying in Malik’s commune, Benson was stabbed with a cutlass by Malik’s followers and buried. Very soon after Benson’s murder, a local Trinidadian man named Joseph Skerritt was also killed. Jamal was told that Benson had simply ran away; he subsequently left. A year later, he was killed in a gang-related incident in Boston.

The bare facts are well-established. But Curtis and Naipaul diverge on the motivations behind these murders. Strangely, Naipaul’s explanation for them is more Curtisian than Curtis’s: they were the fulfillment, he suggests, of a fundamentally sinister fantasy. Naipaul describes Malik as a “Carnival figure”.

“He was an entertainer, a playactor; but he wasn’t the only one. He failed to understand that section of the middle class that knows it is secure, has no views, only reflexes and scattered irritations, and sometimes indulges in play: the people who keep up with revolution as with the theatre, the revolutionaries who visit centres of revolution, but with return air-tickets, the people for whom Malik’s kind of Black Power was an exotic but safe brothel.”

This characterisation of liberals who fethisise black radicalism, whilst leading affluent lives, recalls a passage from Albert Murray’s 1970 essay collection The Omni-Americans. In it, he quotes a black resident of Westchester County who said to Murray: “If you don’t go in there moaning and pissing and moaning and making threats, they’ll call you a moderate and drop your butt fifty times faster than Malcolm ever could.” The resident later emphasises the gratuitous nature of this spectacle. Speaking directly about his wealthy white neighbours, he writes: “But damn, man, the minute you sound off, you realized they’ve tricked you into scat singing and buck dancing for them; because there they are, all crowding around, like watching you masturbate, like they are ready to clap their hands and yell, ‘Go man, go, get hot man’”.

This speaks directly to a tendency among many white progressives today who encourage black people to be angry. Of course, black people often have a justifiable reason to be angry, and solidarity against racism is a good thing. But the fixation of some progressive white people with that anger speaks more of condescension than solidarity. It implies that to be authentically black is to perpetually resent white people — which is another way of centring white people, and allows little space for the other emotions and experiences that constitute the life of a black person.

This is the way Naipaul presents Malik and Jamal: men whose radicalism was patronised, in both senses of the word, by affluent white people. And they seemed to welcome this. John Lennon, for instance, donated his hair and money to support one of Malik’s communes — even as he denounced the white liberal as the devil. Jamal pursued relationships with wealthy white women while promoting an especially sectarian brand of black nationalism.

Malcolm X had a different approach. Like them he grew up a petty criminal. After he underwent his prison transformation, however, the sanctimony of his rhetoric was consistent with his puritan lifestyle. Part of the reason he left the Nation of Islam was that Elijah Muhammad spoke like Pat Robertson to the public but behaved like John F. Kennedy with his secretaries.

But Malcolm wasn’t simply puritan in his personal life — he was also frugal when it came to support from white people. There is one striking scene in Spike Lee’s film on Malcolm, for instance, where a young radical white female college student is trying to get his attention: “What can I do?”, she asks. How can I support the cause? Malcolm responds by calmly saying: “Nothing.” Self-described disciples of Malcolm, Malik and Jamal, might have said the same, but their actions reflect a different answer: give us lots of money and sleep with us.

This tension — between servility on one side and hatred on the other — is destructive for any type of politics concerned with social justice. Malik was a performance artist who gratified the appetite of white progressives, and whose desires were in turn encouraged. He was led to believe he was God; but he still needed the approval of white people for this. His mind was full of these strange, polarising extremes. When Jamal had apparently told him that Benson had become a “mental drain”, ordinary moral constraints need not apply: she would have to be killed. Malik and Jamal had developed a close bond, and she was getting in the way.

According to Naipaul, Benson was Jamal’s slave in the relationship. She wore African clothing and adopted the name Hal Kigma, an anagram of ‘Gale’ and ‘Hakim’, to represent her total devotion to her lover. The white liberal woman is either a slave to the empowered black man or a hindrance to the movement — a wolf in sheep’s clothing. And the murder of Benson, Naipaul’s account suggests, was the latter. After she was killed, Malik led members of the commune to wash in the sea. They wanted to purge themselves after killing a devil.

Curtis’s film offers a different account for the motivation behind the murder of Benson. According to Curtis, Malik’s actions were a reversion to his criminal past. The all-black commune he’d established, Black House, was simply a front for his drug dealing. He murdered Benson not out of race redemption, but because in Trinidad he was growing and exporting marijuana to America, and he thought Benson was going to rat him out. In Naipaul’s account, Malik’s Black Power rhetoric was underpinned by the fantasies of a madman. In Curtis’s film, by contrast, the Black Power rhetoric was underpinned by the logic of a callous gangster.

Curtis’s account certainly seems more plausible, but Naipaul’s account is more instructive for today. It is an indictment of a culture fascinated by the strength conferred by victimhood — a culture vulnerable to the grievous abuse of those who view reality through the prism of transgressive play. But it is also a critique of white progressives who, instead of treating black people with dignity, mistake condescension for solidarity — and confuse the rage of a black person with his entire personality.


Tomiwa Owolade is a freelance writer and the author of This is Not America, which is out in paperback in May.

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Vikram Sharma
Vikram Sharma
3 years ago

The headline is the wrong way around.
White saviours need black radicals. Where would they be without a group to patronise and pour their pity on? How else would they feel smugly superior?

Annette Kralendijk
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Reply to  Vikram Sharma

Spot on.

David Ford
David Ford
3 years ago
Reply to  Vikram Sharma

Great observation.

Karen Lindquist
Karen Lindquist
3 years ago
Reply to  Vikram Sharma

Indeed. I am living in the heart of that in Boston. From our lying politicians to the Ivy League students.
It’s nauseating. Ironically, very few of them actually live amongst or are friends with anyone who is not a white, upper middle class, pedigreed SJW.

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago

Yes, I read Naipaul’s brilliant essay about all this at least 20 years ago. For anyone who is interested, It forms part of a collection of his essays called ‘The Writer and the World: Volume 1’.

It opened my eyes a little wider (although they were already very open) and is one of the reasons I simply roll those same eyes when I see all the middle-class white progressives pathetically jumping on the BLM racket.

Su Mac
Su Mac
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

Good tip thanks, time to rummage the 2nd hand online bookshops

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago

Leftist white people, especially wealthy leftist white people, have this ongoing need to adopt black people as pets and mascots. The condescension is breath taking – they regard blacks as having no agency, yet freely lecture everyone else on how the white condition is solely responsible for any bad thing that happens to anyone. To anyone non-white, of course; whites who struggle are victims of their own circumstance. It’s pathetic yet treated with a merit that is undeserved.

Charles Knapp
Charles Knapp
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Your description also encompasses a certain distorted Western perception of the Israeli-Arab conflict where, contrary to the facts but aligning with the politics, the Jews are today assigned the malign role of “white” and the Arabs generally and the Palestinians in particular are assigned the agency-less patronized “Black” pure victim role. And thus are Jews made the scapegoat for what the West hates in itself.

The common element of Western self-loathing among that section of the left-leaning population manifests itself in their violent fantasies – safely projected onto others far away and in such a manner that you can still imagine yourself occupying the moral high ground when, in fact, you are calling from the abyss.

Majalli Fatah
Majalli Fatah
3 years ago

This is beautifully written, especially this part: “This tension ” between servility on one side and hatred on the other ” is destructive for any type of politics concerned with social justice. Malik was a performance artist who gratified the appetite of white progressives, and whose desires were in turn encouraged. He was led to believe he was God; but he still needed the approval of white people for this.” This encapsulates the psychological underpinnings of so much of the posturing and righteousness that now passes for “anti-racism” and reminds us of how people’s best intentions can be abused.

Su Mac
Su Mac
3 years ago

Part of this very interesting article reminds me of one of the themes of Dominion by Tom Holland, namely the sanctification of “victimhood” by early Christianity, an unheard of phenomenon in Roman society. This elevated moral power which Jesus teachings attached to the status of the poor, the enslaved, society’s down trodden was radical to the Romans. Christianity elevated and made global the Old Testament “mercy to widows and orphans” approach with the idea that the Son of God could die the humiliating death of a criminal slave. Intersectionality is probably it’s peak manifestation!

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
3 years ago

Mr Owolade really is an excellent historian. I learnt a lot reading this article.

Andrew Baldwin
Andrew Baldwin
3 years ago

A fine piece by Tomiwa! Just one caveat: I read “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”. The incident shown in Spike Lee’s film is described in the book. Malcolm X said it was his gut reaction to the girl’s question. However, he was haunted by the hurt expression on the girl’s face and regretted being so abrupt with her. If he had to do it all over again, he would have told her that he thought black movements of the past had been emasculated by too much white involvement, and didn’t want her to participate in such a white takeover. She seemed like a good person, and just by living her life day to day, without prejudice, she would set a good example for the people around her. That was enough. She really didn’t have to do anything more. Of course, this regret was nowhere to be found in Spike Lee’s film. It was a wonderful performance by Denzell Washington in the title role, but the film itself was very disappointing, perverting Malcolm X’s book to stoke up resentment against white Americans.

stephen f.
stephen f.
3 years ago
Reply to  Andrew Baldwin

Spike Lee has given up even pretending that he is anything but a partisan and racist.

Andrew Best
Andrew Best
3 years ago

Sounds like plain old racism towards white People.
How progressive, no hang on that’s the opposite

peter lucey
peter lucey
3 years ago

Fine article; thank you. I’m reminded of Shiva (brother of VS pf course) Naipaul’s excellent “Black and White” – about Jonestpwn and its links to radicalism, liberalism and race. Also “Speaking directly about his wealthy white neighbours, he writes: “But damn, man, the minute you sound off, you realized they’ve tricked you into scat singing and buck dancing for them;”
Rap, perhaps, as Mark Steyn’s piece on Tupak Shakur’s death (“Bozo in the Hood” suggests.

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Reply to  peter lucey

Funnily enough I recently picked up a signed copy of Shiva Naipaul’s ‘Black & White’.
I started to read it but couldn’t really get into it. I found the structure to be rather disjointed. Also, I wasn’t particularly interested in Jones and his merry bunch of loonies. Perhaps I’ll give it another go.

peter lucey
peter lucey
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

The second half of B&W explores how the radical-chic left allowed Jim Jones to exploithis followers. (He was a political Force in 1970s SanFran. (What do you pay for the signed copy – if that’s not an intrusion?

Jurek Molnar
Jurek Molnar
3 years ago

I like the comparison with Malcolm X a lot. Malcolm indeed had beside all his failures actually a strong moral code. Michael X was just an imposter, who tried to exploit others. And the poor woman who fell in love with a psycho paid the ultimate price.

“But it is also a critique of white progressives who, instead of treating black people with dignity, mistake condescension for solidarity…”

That’s a very harsh and unfair characterisation of that poor murdered woman.

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
3 years ago
Reply to  Jurek Molnar

It’s a fair characterisation of the generality of self-hating white progressives though.

Geraint Williams
Geraint Williams
3 years ago
Reply to  Drahcir Nevarc

Why “self-hating”?

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago

Because their argument often paints whiteness itself as an offense against humanity. Anything negative that occurs to a black person is never the result of that person’s choices; it is always the result of some “white” construct or institution. In recent years, things like math, science, correct grammar, and punctuality have been characterized as evidence of whiteness.

Last Jacobin
Last Jacobin
3 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

It’s ‘maths’, not math. It’s short for mathematics.

If you disagree, it’s because you don’t understand the prevailing linguistic orthodoxies of your superiors.

Karl Schuldes
Karl Schuldes
3 years ago
Reply to  Last Jacobin

Coming from someone who thinks “labor” is spelled with a “u”.

Susannah Baring Tait
Susannah Baring Tait
3 years ago
Reply to  Last Jacobin

In the UK. Not in the US.

R P
R P
3 years ago

Very interesting to read thankyou – it also reinforces some of the thoughts I have had on this and the whole BLM movement.

Tom Adams
Tom Adams
3 years ago

The Race Relations Industry has taken a bit of a battering in recent times – glad to see it back in excellent hands and once again a lucrative (financially and psychologically) career choice!

Derek M
Derek M
3 years ago

I’ve not seen this Curtis film but if it’s like the rest of his output I can’t see it being anything other than an incomprehensible mess which tells us nothing about its supposed subject but a lot about the profligacy and self absorption of those who commissioned and produced it. Or to put it more simply, his films are cobblers

Warren T
Warren T
3 years ago

This is a brilliant piece that points a harsh spotlight on the affluent, suburban, white female socialites in America, otherwise known as “Soccer Moms”. The ones that still have BLM signs on their immaculately kept lawns in front of their multi-million, very stylish abodes, replete with turrets and hanging flower baskets. Their beautiful blond children go to the local school with all the other blond children and will some day rely on those relationships to “find” a suitable job that will continue the cycle. They post pictures of their daughters’ lacrosse teams, whereby every last team member has a blond ponytail and looks like they all came from the same set of parents. They drive home from the match in their $120,000, 8-cylinder SUV, while admonishing others to “save the planet”.
Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with this, but please spare me the virtue signaling. Like Malcom said, “The white liberal is the worst enemy to America.”