Malcolm named US foreign policy for what it was: violent, racist, and imperialist. He opposed the US government not only for how it treated black Americans, but for how it destabilized and dominated other nations. He denounced the CIA’s involvement in assassinations and coups in Africa and Latin America. He exposed US support for apartheid South Africa. And he called out the hypocrisy of a nation that claimed to defend freedom abroad while denying it at home.
Today his critique remains devastatingly accurate.
Malcolm’s warnings echoed America’s ongoing support for Israeli bombardments of Gaza — where entire families are buried under rubble with US weapons. The dehumanization of Palestinians, portrayed as terrorists rather than a people under siege, mirrors the same propaganda Malcolm denounced when black Americans were criminalized for resisting systemic violence. Just as Malcolm exposed the double standards of US policy — human rights for some, occupation for others — today’s mass atrocities in Gaza underscore the same imperial logic he spent his life fighting against.
We see it in the military occupation and destabilization of Haiti, where US-backed governments have left the country in chaos. And we see it in the nearly $1 trillion defense budget that fuels drone wars, coups, and hundreds of military bases around the world, even as poor communities in the United States are starved of basic services and a significant portion of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
Domestically, Malcolm X’s analysis of systemic racism has never been more relevant. He described the police in black communities as an occupying army — language still echoed by activists in the wake of police killings from Ferguson to Minneapolis. Malcolm also understood mass incarceration before it had a name, warning that systems of punishment were designed to control and contain black people, not rehabilitate or protect. “This is what they mean when they say ‘law and order,’” he declared. “They mean they want to keep you and me under control.”
The moment Malcolm returned to the states after he completed his Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, and met with leaders and intellectuals during his travels through the Middle East and Africa, he held a press conference at JFK airport. There he spoke about the transformation in his thinking and introduced the idea of approaching the African American struggle as a human rights issue, declaring he would work to bring charges against the United States for its treatment of black people.